Coleman Insights recently introduced the FACT360 Strategic Music Test. FACT360 is online music testing done right through the latest sampling techniques and data collection capabilities, and includes the same benefits that Coleman Insights has provided through its FACT Strategic Music Tests for more than 20 years. These benefits help radio stations build the most appealing and strategically on-target libraries possible.

In the spirit of our launch of FACT360, we present the fourth in a series of five blogs authored by Coleman Insights executives covering important considerations about music testing and music strategy. This blog is written by vice president Sam Milkman and covers the value of cluster analysis and Compatibility scores in a library test.

The previous entries in this blog series shared a theme of using music testing to help implement music strategies established in strategic research, such as the Plan Developer^SM and FLIP^SM studies used by many Coleman Insights clients. With this entry, I’ll get a little more technical and discuss how the addition of advanced statistical tools to the analysis of a music test can help you keep your station’s sound aligned with your strategy and deliver an appropriate level of cohesiveness. (By cohesiveness I mean that while your station delivers sonic variety, its sound has a suitable level of consistency for its format position.)  One of the advanced statistical tools that can help you do this is cluster analysis.

When you have a large sample of listeners evaluating hundreds of songs in a music test you can observe patterns in their responses that reveal a lot about their appetites for specific genres of music. Cluster analysis helps identify these appetites by finding song combinations that objectively represent these appetites. In our FACT360 studies, we not only use cluster analysis to identify the most strategically important appetites that exist within your target audience, we also report Compatibility scores that reveal how correlated the demand for each song you test is with each cluster.

For example, if you are programming a station that—based on your strategic research—focuses on Contemporary Pop and Contemporary Rhythmic Pop as its core sounds, you may occasionally struggle with the selection of Contemporary Pop Rock titles to play. Beyond just looking at how popular these songs are with your target listeners, scores that tell you how compatible they are with the Contemporary Pop and Contemporary Rhythmic Pop clusters that exist in your research can help you make the best selections. Thus, you are not only picking Rock-textured songs your listeners like, you are picking Rock-textured songs that do not undermine the cohesiveness of your station’s Pop- and Rhythmic-centered sound.

This type of insight is especially valuable for stations that mix together music styles from different eras. A Country station, for example, may employ a contemporary approach but once or twice an hour features a Gold title from ten, 15 or 20 years ago. Sometimes such Gold titles “stick out like sore thumbs” and undermine the contemporary feel of such stations. Compatibility data can help stations avoid this problem; if two Gold titles are equally popular with your target audience but one is more compatible with the contemporary clusters in your music test, it is almost always going to be a better title to play.

Similarly, Compatibility scores help stations blend music from different eras appropriately. One 80s-centered Urban AC station may find that more 70s titles enjoy high Compatibility with its 80s core than do newer titles, while the opposite could be true for another station in the format. If you program a Classic Rock station trying to evolve and push the envelope into 90s and 00s music after your strategic research suggests you have some latitude to do so, Compatibility scores can help you determine which 90s and 00s songs blend best with your Classic Rock core.

How rigid should you be in applying Compatibility thresholds? There is no standard answer for that. A good general rule is that if your station enjoys strong well-defined images—which is something you can learn from Fit measurement (the subject of our next blog post) you can relax Compatibility standards and play more songs based on their appeal alone. However, if your station is in need of music image development, Compatibility scores can be helpful in avoiding or minimizing the rotation of songs that make it sound less cohesive and potentially undermine your music image development. Conversely, these scores can encourage you to emphasize the songs—through greater exposure and use in on-air imaging—that will help you build the music images that will benefit your station the most.

Not all library tests come with sophisticated tools like cluster analysis and Compatibility scores. If you have such tools and the guidance of a strategic researcher with the experience to help you take best advantage of these techniques, you may be a big step ahead of your competition.

Coleman Insights recently introduced the FACT360 Strategic Music Test. FACT360 is online music testing done right through the latest sampling techniques and data collection capabilities, and includes the same benefits that Coleman Insights has provided through its FACT Strategic Music Tests for more than 20 years. These benefits help radio stations build the most appealing and strategically on-target libraries possible.

In the spirit of our FACT360 launch, we’d like to present the second in a series of five blogs authored by Coleman Insights executives covering important considerations about music testing and music strategy. This blog is written by vice president Sam Milkman and addresses how to assemble the right sample for your next library test.

There is an old saying about market research, “Garbage in, garbage out.” It means that a study that is not designed correctly—including, among other things, employing a sample that does not represent the population you are trying to measure—will produce results that could lead to the wrong conclusions. One thing I learned when working in programming at Z100/New York, K-Rock/New York and WMMR/Philadelphia that has been reaffirmed since joining Coleman Insights is how vitally important it is to make sure the “right” people participate in your station’s library test. The specifics of who should be in your next test are highly customized for each station, but I will share a few basic rules of thumb that any station conducting library testing should follow.

First, you should test your music with listeners who are randomly recruited to be in your study. In other words, your sample should not be culled from your station’s listener database or from people who respond to a banner on your website inviting them to provide feedback on the music you play. Sure, this approach reduces the cost of acquiring respondents considerably and could have marketing value for your station; unfortunately, it may result in a sample that poorly represents your target audience. Researchers call this a “self-selecting sample,” and anyone who has taken a market research course quickly learns that such an approach is a definite no-no.

The other problem with music testing samples that are built this way is that the respondent knows the station for which the music test is being conducted. This invalidates any effort to objectively measure the perceptions respondents have of your station.

A second major tenet of library music testing sample design is that it should be driven by your strategic research. Strategic studies like Coleman Insights’ Plan Developer^SM and FLIP^SM studies should provide a station with a clear vision of its target audience in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, music tastes and listening habits. These studies should also give a station insights into how strong its position is and how deeply it has penetrated its market’s appetite for what it offers. Those two factors are crucial because library testing for strongly-positioned stations should generally employ samples that are relatively focused on the station’s existing listeners; stations with weak positions that are not deeply penetrating their market’s appetite for the music they play should generally take a broader approach.

Your strategic research should identify where the “true” demand for your music strategy exists. In general, the age range should rarely cover more than 15 years, for most formats the focus should be on one gender over another and—unless a station is very early in the development of its music position—most if not all of the respondents should be existing users of your station.

For our FACT360 Strategic Music Tests, we usually advocate our TSL Max^SM sampling approach for stations with well-developed music positions. TSL Max involves recruiting an appropriate mix of your station’s heavy, medium and light listeners to gain insights into the music that caters to the tastes of your heaviest TSL-generating core listeners versus the music that helps keep your station’s Cume appeal as broad as possible.

Third, and perhaps most important, ensure that you uphold your quotas. Once you determine the “right” sample parameters for your library test, you must stick with them. If you have determined—for example—that 50% of your sample should be 24- to 30-year-olds and the other half should be 31- to 37-year-olds, do not deviate from that if you are having more success recruiting one age cell over the other. If 24-37 truly represents the age target for your station, you should look to that age group to provide you with the data you need to make the right decisions about what songs to play and how often to play them.

Even though I have only scratched the surface of all of the considerations here, sampling for your library test is not rocket science. It does, however, require a scientific and disciplined approach and I hope these rules provide you with some guidance to successfully test your station’s music library.

I was invited to appear on a panel at a state broadcasters’ convention in Oklahoma recently.  The topic—a pretty daunting one—was nothing less than “The Future of Radio.”  What advice could I share to help real broadcasters in the American heartland ensure their place in the complicated, competitive new world of media?

Not an easy topic, but an important one for sure.  A few things ran through my mind as I prepared for this assignment.  First, this convention would take place within walking distance from the site of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the worst act of domestic terrorism in American history.  If you have been to Oklahoma City, you know that this event is still forefront in people’s minds.  The people there are hardy folks—survivors—stronger, kinder and very respectful of their experience.  They have seen the worst and the best of human nature.   Perhaps more importantly, they aren’t the type to run from a problem.  I wasn’t going to be able to scare them with talk of new forms of digital entertainment audio or traffic and weather apps while eating their lunches.  Then again, if I was looking for a group of people who knew something about rebuilding and coming together as a community to make a better world, I’d be in front of the right audience.

I would also be addressing a group of broadcasters in the trenches, duking it out every day with local newspapers, TV, and a host of new media competitors.  This couldn’t be a theoretical or philosophical conversation.  Rather, I needed to offer practical, actionable advice—a roadmap to a stronger future—without overwhelming the audience with discussion of every possible digital threat.

It certainly is easy to become overwhelmed.  Nearly everyday, a new streaming music service hits the market, whether funded by a superstar artist like Jay-Z or a superstar brand like Google or Apple.  Beyond music, hundreds of apps are released every day targeting core radio services like traffic, weather, news and sports.  How does a broadcaster compete with all of that?

Well, before our session we received one last reminder that we weren’t going to scare these Oklahomans with anything our panel had to say:  a tornado blew through as the convention began, toppling a number of local radio towers  Of course, these sturdy Sooners were back on the air within hours.

So what advice did I have for these broadcasters?

Start with the foundation; make sure it continues to be strong.  Your radio brands are your foundation and without them you really don’t have anything to hold on to.  These foundations need support—marketing, branding and focus.  These are the fundamentals of the radio business that we cannot forget.  Before anything else, make sure that you are paying attention to the basics, rather than getting distracted by all of the new competitive offerings.  Don’t ignore the competition and opportunities presented by the new audio entertainment spectrum, but be smart about what threats you can respond to and those you cannot.  While you must compete in the digital world, this cannot be done at the expense of the current product.  Moreover, in a more competitive landscape, first and foremost you must redouble your efforts in the fundamentals of marketing, branding and focus.  That radio brand has to be strong, or it will be blown over in the next storm—or tornado—to come your way.

Stay connected to your community.  Isn’t that what kept Oklahoma City going after the bombing?  Radio nobly rises to the occasion when tragedies befall our communities, but what are we doing on ordinary days?  Stay connected both on the air and behind the scenes.  Make the most of that human connection that radio does so well.

This is what Pandora and many other digital offerings do not do.  A real, local person has the ability to bring things to life in a way that a computer algorithm never will.  Can you imagine what it would be like to be listening to Pandora when a tornado blows through your town—and all you hear is a string of songs chosen by a computer program devoid of any context or connection?

Make a human connection.  That human connection is important on ordinary days as well.  This is where personalities fit in to the new landscape.  Only a person can tell a story, paint a picture, bring something to life.  My iPhone tells me the current temperature and provides an icon that generally represents weather condition.  But only a live person can provide color and context. What does it feel like outside?  Do I need a raincoat?  A human voice makes the facts meaningful, relatable, entertaining and immediate.

When I worked in radio in New York, I scheduled a lunch with the midday anchor on one of the news radio stations.  I walked over to his studio one drizzly morning.  On the way to the elevator heading out to lunch, he turned to me and asked:  “Do I need an umbrella?”  I laughed and responded:  “You just read the weather six times an hour for five straight hours—and you are asking me?”  Problem was, he was just reading, not thinking about how those facts related to real people, walking around in it.  That’s a missed opportunity.

Add your own unique treatment.  It doesn’t matter that the “facts” are available a hundred other places.  Adding your unique take on those facts makes them entertaining and compelling.  Steven Colbert appeared recently on the Slate podcast “Working.”  Colbert related the challenge of creating entertainment today:  everyone has access to the same “raw material”—radio, TV, bloggers, newspapers, Twitterers.  He has no “exclusive” content.  But what he does have is his unique point of view that allows him to filter and distill that same “raw material” and create great entertainment.  And so does every broadcaster!

Get back to your creative roots.  Create one promo, commercial or promotion this week that people will talk about, one that will move them, that will change them, something they will never forget.  This does not need to cost money.  And there’s no need to wait for a disaster to wake you up to do this—there must be a need in your community right now that aligns with what your audience cares about and the essence of your radio station.

In short, get back in touch with the basics of our business—and the reasons why listeners connected with our medium to begin with—and together we can weather the storm of the new audio entertainment choices.