COLLEGE RADIO RECAP WEEK 4, CMJ ISSUE 1425

It is crazy how many of you are loving David Bowie. I mean I guess it is not that crazy considering the circumstances. No one is even close right now. 66 stations have him at #1 up from 57 last week. The #2 record Grimes has 13 #1's and the #3 record Hinds has 5. So we have a long way to go before we see a new #1. 

The record with the best chance might be the new Ty Segall that went for adds this week. Or could we be seeing Ty Segall fatigue? The record was easily #1 most added this week but the # of adds is down significantly. With 233 reporting stations there were 106 stations that added Ty Segall. The last record had 141 adds with just around the same number of reporters.  The record before that also had 140+ adds and around the same number of reporters.   

If I were to have to bet though I would bet on Ty Segall over anything else currently on the charts. Just seems to be off to a slower start than previous records. It will also be interesting to see if the older Ty Segall remains reportable as that could impact the new records run to #1. Will be interesting to watch. 

Not a lot to report this week aside from that. We should hopefully see some bigger records come over the next few weeks and make the charts a big more interesting. 

I would like to talk a bit more about David Bowie though.  College radio is a great community, you were and MD or a DJ at a station years ago and you always will feel connected to that station. I had an old MD message me yesterday on Facebook. This person has not been at his radio station for at least 7 years yet he still listens, still pays attention, still cares what the station is reporting.  

Well he wrote me:  

I see Bowie is #1 on XXXXX charts

That's great and all, but like - who benefits from stations charting Bowie? Yes, we want to remember him. But why? A small indie artist gets cut off the charts because a major label wants to push a record?

Is a promo company pushing that? Sorry Dougy, just curious. I remember one time JJ at Team Clearmont exploded at me because I refused to chart an R.E.M. reissue because i thought it was pointless for a college radio station to do that

I think it is a great question.  ( of course there is a big difference between charting a reissue and a new record ) However you could make the argument that artists that have "made it" don't need college radio at all. How does charting David Bowie or Bob Dylan or Prince help the artist at all? 

For me I think heritage artists do have a place on college radio and completely understand why people are charting him. At the same time I get his point of view as well. 

I don't think one way is right and one way is wrong.  I think charting Adele on college radio is wrong but perhaps that station is fulfilling a need in that area. I don't know. 

What are your thoughts? 

Lets talk on twitter! 

COLLEGE RADIO RECAP WEEK 3. CMJ ISSUE 1424

So many things to get to this week. 

In what is probably the biggest story of the week I encourage everyone to read this

http://consequenceofsound.net/2016/01/dirty-projectors-amber-coffman-accuses-music-publicist-heathcliff-berru-of-sexual-harassment/

and read up on the story.  I don't have much to add to it but I really liked what David from CMJ had to say about it on Facebook. 

So this thing about Heathcliff Berru being a scumbag who sexually harasses and assaults women. Mentioned some thoughts...
Posted by David DeKeyser on Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Now on to the charts. 

In what has to be the most unsurprising chart result ever David Bowie went from #1 most added last week to #1 this week. When I look at the charts right now we are in that period of time where everyone is trying to quickly move out the old and push in the new. So we see inflated chart numbers for many records. Top 5 albums from bands that had they gone any other time of year they would maybe be top 30. I am not hear to tear down any bands or records so we are not going to concentrate on those instead I wanted to take a closer look at Bowie. Because this record would be #1 no matter what the circumstances were. 

This week 56% of all stations charted David Bowie. That is on par with a solid #1 record. We have seen higher for sure with 60% being the benchmark for a really good #1. However I am not sure I have seen this before. 50% of the stations charting Bowie have him at #1.  That means that almost 30% of all #1's are David Bowie. To give you some perspective the average #1 record last year had around 20% of if its reporters chart at #1. The high for last year was Beach House with 36% and even that was very high. But I am not sure I have ever seen HALF of a records charters have the record at #1.  What is crazy is I would not be shocked if it grew. 

Hinds was this weeks #1 most added with well over half of the stations adding it. I am not sure if this is because Hinds is that good and have a shot at #1 or just that the competition was not that great. 

The early in the year charts can be hard to gauge. Last year at this time Viet Cong went from #170 to #4. But it only went as high as #3.  Ty Segall had an EP that debuted at #6 and only went as high as #5.  So while the top 20 is littered with big debuts and big movers its hard to really know if they are for real or just products of the time of year. We shall see over the next few weeks for sure.  

Ok lets talk on twitter!  

thanks for reading. 

doug

College radio recap week 2. CMJ ISSUE 1423

We saw a nice uptick this week in the number of stations reporting with almost double the number of ADDS reporters and a nice uptick for top 200. I think we are still a few weeks away from normalcy though. Right now the charts are a weird mix of leftovers from last year that won't go away and new stuff that people sort of care about but not really.  Over the next few weeks we should see bigger name records come and take over.  

The first of those came this week with David Bowie.  It was amazing to see so many of you show love and support for Bowie. I have spent the whole week just listening to his records as I am sure many of you have.  Before his death I talked to some other promoters about what we thought would happen with the record on the charts. No one I talked to really thought it would have a shot at #1. But now, it seems like it would be a major shock if it did not hit #1. Perhaps as soon as next week. 

Over the years there have been many posthumously released records. The last Elliott Smith record comes to mind. That went #1 but it also came a good amount of time( i.e. not the week of release) after his death.  Joe Strummer had a record shortly after his death, it peaked at #2 though.  

As far as i can tell this is a pretty unique occurrence, it's actually surprising it hasn't happened before. 

While the charts and Adds warm up for the year I thought it would be fun to look forward to big records in 2016. It's hard to know what might come out so I checked out the Most Anticipated lists on Consequence of sound and Pitchfork guide to winter 2016 as my guide.  So Lets look at some of the big records coming out this year that we know of. 

Animal Collective

Crystal Castles

Grandaddy

PJ Harvey

Tegan and Sara

The Strokes

The Shins

Blood Orange

Yeasayer 

Bon Iver

Band of Horses

James Blake

Phoenix

Spiritualized

Nine Inch Nails

M83

Dr. Dog 

Savages

Ty Segall

Sia

Ra Ra Riot 

M. Ward

Haim

Beck

I am sure I left some off that you think might have a shot at #1, if so let me know and I will add them. 

Now some of those won't come out this year and it is hard to know what ones will and some unexpected records will show up also.   Looking at the last five years we know the average number of #'1's in a year is 21 ( rounded up from 20.8) 

So we already have 1 down with Grimes taking the first 2 weeks of the year.  I anticipate David Bowie taking over next... so we have 19 more to go. 

Animal Collective seems like a no brainer as does M83 and Ty Segall. Everyone else really depends on what else is out there. 

Can you pick what 21 records will be #'1s this year. Would love to see if anyone could get even 70%. 

I am stuck at 16 for now.  

Thank you for reading. 

Lets talk more on twitter. 

College Radio Recap! CMJ ISSUE 1422

I thought about just skipping this week.  But I got tired of full voicemails and no one being in the office yet so here I am.

Welcome to 2016!

Something I neglected a bit last year was the Promoters Fantasy Football League.

We had Promoters from 11 companies participate this year!
AAM, Team Clermont, A Man A Plan a Canal, Planetary, Pirate, Co-Sign, The Syndicate, Vitriol, Distiller, Secretly Group and Sub-Pop.

Last years champ ( me) did not make the playoffs and last years runner up Jesse was knocked out in the first round. The winner of the regular season was Allan from The Syn with an impressive 12-1 run. He was however upset in the second round by Harlan from Secretly. Harlan would face off vs Oscar from Planetary in the final and in the end... after the smoke cleared Oscar would stand tall as your 2015 Promoter League champion.

Congrats Oscar!

2016 is already off to an interesting start. I had multiple people message me about the Never-Better exodus and the formation of Shine on. So I guess Grimes has 2 indies on it now? To be a fly on the wall!

Every year there are changes at radio the other notable one being John from Terorbird taking his talents to York PA.

Nicole looks to have left CMJ as well.

As far as I can tell those were the major changes over the break, if there are any others let me know. Not that I want to turn this into a college radio gossip column but it is way more interesting than the charts right now.

So lets go over them quickly.

Grimes is still number one.

The number one most added record had 50 adds. ( Oh Wonder)

And records that had been off the charts for 2 months came back.

Normalcy shall return but thats usually after MLK day.

Thanks for reading. Lets talk on twitter. www.twitter.com/theanimalarrg