CMJ ISSUE 1383 WEEK 10 RECAP

The last few weeks have been so exciting on and off the charts that I almost feel let down writing this.  If you missed it check out the special post from Hannah below discussing CMJ.

San Cisco took #1 most added in somewhat of a surprise over Will Butler. I saw one tweet asking "Who is San Cisco" so I guess that makes that even more impressive.

The charts were dominated by Father John Misty with Sleater-Kinney continuing to hold down #2.  Dan Deacon made the move we thought he would up to #3 and Purity Ring comes in at #8.  Of Montreal, last weeks #1 most added came in at #12.  Father John Misty looks like he will hold the spot as long as we saw Sleater-Kinney hold it before.   The thing that FJM has in his favor, more than Sleater-Kinney did is Spring break.  Spring break can reek havoc on the charts. It gets harder to get groups of stations on the same page. That coupled with SXSW next week makes any huge changes hard to gauge.

One thing that comes up a lot when talking about CMJ are the rankings.  I hear some stations think they don't matter at all because they are not a CORE station. I disagree with that but I see what they are saying. Do I treat a station ranked 4, 5 or 6 differently than a station ranked 1, 2, 3 ? Yes no doubt but not as much as you might think. The main difference for me is the amount of patience I have with the station. Being a higher rated station affords you that flexibility.  

Now I am not here to argue against the ranking system. I like it. I think some stations are worth more than other stations, as much as that will upset some of you.  However I do wish that there was an opportunity for stations to move their rankings more often.

For example what If a station ranked as a 3 had the opportunity, with improvements to move up to be a 4? I think you would see improvements galore with that 3 ranked station. Or to counter that if a station fails at being a 4 then they can get bumped down to a 3.   I think this would be a vastly improved system. I love the idea that stations that worked to improve themselves would be rewarded and those that did nothing would be punished.

I guess also within this discussion we could have the conversation about what makes a 1 a 1 and a 6 a 6? Maybe there should be a set number of each ranking so that 6 only means the top 4 stations in the country and the ranking of 5 means the next 15 stations. I think it would help stations if they knew what they were ranked and why they were ranked that way.

This of course is just a starting point but what do you guys think. Feel free to leave a comment or lets talk about it on Twitter. If you missed it we had a TON of great conversation on Twitter last week that prompted the below response.

Thanks for reading!

Douglas