An easier way to program music for radio

For the last year, Whisper Speak Roar Media has been doing interviews with leaders in public media about how they want their station to grow and what holds them back.

Here’s what we’ve learned: Staffing is a challenge everywhere, but these stations in particular are struggling to hire, or keep, music directors on their payroll. Music directors develop a music library and then “program” (choose pieces based on duration, musical taste and relevance) music for local broadcast. Without a music director, this work either a) falls on an on-air host whose work hours should be spent on preparing on-air messages that connect with their audience and develop station loyalty; or b) the station relies on syndicated national content, which is excellent but limits a station’s audience loyalty and frankly limits their ability to raise money to support the station. 

It’s a chicken-or-the-egg conundrum: a station can’t grow without more local programming that’s relevant to their community, but stations don’t have either the staff or the funds to create that local programming that would help them to grow. 

This is a disconnect between a station’s musical content and their mission and it’s a huge problem.

What to do? 

Well, many of these station leaders have been engaged in conversations about this problem, led by Stephen Steigman at Classical KC and Abby Goldstein from PRPD. We had a terrific conversation with Stephen many months ago and we decided to figure out a solution.

Whisper Speak Roar Media is developing a centralized music programming service that we plan to make available as a subscription service to stations by the end of 2023. We are developing a music library from which to program eight hours of music programming for local broadcast, five days each week. 

Our primary goals are:

• Offer stations a low-cost way to add more local music programming.

• Make this programming available far enough in advance that these hours of local programming could be tracked in advance (especially important for stations that have few part-time or volunteer on-air hosts). 

• Ensure that this music programming content matches the station’s mission in terms of musical excellence, relevance to the audience and diverse representation of artists and composers.

To demonstrate how WSRM will achieve these goals, Elena and I thought it would be helpful if we lift the veil on our music programming philosophy. Each hour of music programming Elena and I create will contain a piece from each of the following categories and values:

Classical Core

Think of the Classical Core as the top 100 Billboard chart of classical music hits (though we’re not limiting our library to 100 titles). These are pieces that classical music fans love to hear over and over again and that new listeners to classical music will enjoy the very first time they hear it. For WSRM, these pieces span the historical range of Baroque music (Johann Pachelbel’s Canon) to contemporary favorite works (Jennifer Higdon’s blue cathedral).

Next Level Classical Music

These are classical compositions that are lesser-known, but still monumental works. These pieces help expand listeners’ awareness of the range of classical music beyond the best-known works like Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Examples from this category include Francis Poulenc’s Flute Sonata, variations on La Folia and Alberto Ginastera’s Estancia.  

Surprise and Delight

When an average person hears the term “classical music,” they tend to think about violins, musicians in tuxedos and dead, white composers.

But professionals working in classical music know that the sound of this music is infinitely variable.

The sound of pieces in the “Surprise and Delight” category will stretch what listeners may think is possible for classical music, while still being enjoyable to listen to on the radio. Here is where WSRM’s many decades of experience in music media is valuable!

We recognize that what may be a Pulitzer Prize-worthy composition or interesting to watch performed in a concert hall is not the same as a good radio play. WSRM listens for pieces with interesting sonic textures that also have musical ‘hooks’ (grab you within 10 seconds) and compelling melodies.

Some pieces in this category include Michael Abels’ Delights and Dances, He Zhanhao and Chen Gang’s Butterfly Lovers’ Concerto, and Gabriela Montero’s Latin Concerto.

Artists from historically marginalized groups

This is an expectation from audiences that many stations struggle to meet because it requires adding new recordings to existing music libraries and tracking the gender and racial identity of musicians, conductors and composers in order to intentionally include these artists on the playlist.

WSRM has ample experience in diversifying classical music playlists and they have the time and curiosity to continue seeking out and learning about the artists we ALL should know.

For instance, it is excellent when a station includes Florence Price’s Symphony No. 3 in regular rotation, but why not include guitarist Ernie Jackson’s recording of Justin Holland’s Rochester Schottische?

New, Relevant Recordings

When a station does not have enough people or work hours, it can be very difficult to add new recordings to their music library because it’s simply time consuming. You have to download the audio file (or rip in the audio track from a CD recording) and then type in all of the metadata including composer, musician, duration, album title, etc.

It’s a pain. We get it.

However, continuing to add to your music library is essential to keeping your content relevant to your audience. We have listened to many classical stations, have audited months worth of playlists from a handful of stations across the United States,  and discussed that very few of the featured performers are still living. Frankly, that’s a disservice to the art form and the audience.

WSRM has personal contacts with many music record labels throughout the world. We have committed to adding 100 tracks (roughly 10 albums) that are new releases to our music library every month. 

Our Experience

Elena and Suzanne each have more than 20 years of experience in classical music public radio, working with MusicMaster and its integration with many play-to-air systems. They have programmed thousands of hours of music for programs such as Performance Today from American Public Media and many other nationally-distributed shows. 

Where do we stand now?
WSRM is currently building its base music library, which is, of course, taking longer than we anticipated. We found it was relatively easy to curate our list of titles for each category, but then sourcing the recordings which are both outstanding performances and whose copyright is cleared for national broadcast has taken a bit longer.

However, this is a problem with an easy solution: more time!

We have a collaborative relationship with MusicMaster and are currently experimenting to ensure that it will be easy for stations that already use MusicMaster to import a WSRM playlist into their schedule (and that all the metadata will accompany the audio file for each piece).

Finally, we’re putting the finishing touches on how audio files will be easily delivered to stations for easy integration with existing play to air systems. A potential benefit to using WSRM programming is that once the audio files and metadata for each piece has been ingested to a play-to-air system and a station’s own MusicMaster library, it’s available for programming at any time, not just during WSRM programming.

Our goal is to make WSRM programming as easy as possible: our expectation is that station managers will import a playlist to a schedule, import any music files that a station does not yet own, and then let local hosts do what they do best: Connect with the audience. Find meaningful relevance in music for our everyday lives. Build loyalty with listeners that this station is where they can find moments of peace, beauty and inspiration.

Okay. That was a lot of information at once. What, in your opinion, have we missed?