Decline of once popular stations?

[axisdj]

I have noticed many stations that had much bigger audiences one year ago seem to be in steep decline. Stations like ElectricFM, Energy98, Music One, and many others seem to be loosing audience.

 

I have seen a lower listener count the last month or so as well.

 

Anyone have an idea of what is causing this?

 

Thanks

WP

[GKIye]

Hi WP,

 

I have the same behaviour of listeners every year during Summer

Once September starts they come back

 

In fact very strange ... We all should think that people have more spare time during Summer holidays

but it looks that not that many people are using their mobile devices to login to a stream at the time they have holidays

 

My point of view is = The more people have, the less they use it

 

Most common example is facebook ... Everyone is on facebook !

Thats right ... but check your friendslist ...

If you have 200 friends into your list ... How many people are making daily updates ?

Not that much ... it are always the same people who are "sharing" the most stupid video clips etc

and yes ... maybe there are 10 "real" facebook friends into your list who are making updates concerning themself ... and those do like also your posts ... The other remaining "friends" never check their newsfeed, don't bother about your posts etc

 

Well ... thats my experience ... even I have at my privat FB list only people who are known by Me (so no strangers, or friends of friends ...)

[saint]

GKyle is right - Seasons do affect listenership.

 

Another kink that throws a lot of listeners off is content.

 

- Does you station have absolute unique content ?

- Does your station have a warmth or feel of the programming ?

 

A fantastic example of a really popular station that had very unique content and a unique community pull was Radio Nigel - a 80's Retro station from southern California.

 

They specialized in " new wave " / " alternative " 80's music and did very well in listenership. Unfortunately royalty fees got the best of the station and it shuttered.

 

The operator of radio nigel ( Steve West ) resurrected the concept of radio nigel on 91x ( A fm station in southern California ) and streamed the program via the website. Unfortunately 91x had a station personnel shuffle and Steve West parted company with the station. Now I can't listen to my new wave 80's !

[andhow]

... Now I can't listen to my new wave 80's !

 

Check out Marvin Hamster's Music Emporium or The 80s Underground on andHow.FM!

[saint]

Nice thread Hijack, now back to the conversation at hand.

[DrO]

there's also a lot of dilution in what can be found as there's just a lot more stations out there and listed all over the place since the days when those stations were more popular as there was less to find at the time and so it was easier to stand out from the crowd.

 

when you're looking at 50-100k stations to look through, it's no wonder it's hard to find anything and in some ways matches the issue with the recent app store boom which itself makes it so much harder to discover things just due to the sheer volume to look through.

 

sure a lot of what is now out there is crap / generic and probably isn't worth people providing them (like the ~4k i had to drop from the SC directory 2-3years ago due to stations just setup with generic defaults which are of no use to man or beast). but as it's now so much easier to make a station (not a good one, but a station of sorts), like is being mentioned unless you've got something that makes you stand out or a way to ensure you keep / grow your audience (if it can be afforded) then you're going to get lost in the sea of other streams.

 

and really is biggest best anyway? for some cases probably yes but targeting specific styles is probably going to keep a more loyal group of listeners in the long run than being just something that people pass through in the generic collection of stations that otherwise fill the space.

[andhow]

Nice thread Hijack, now back to the conversation at hand.

 

I was not hijacking anything. I was simply offering a reply to your statement. Much like I regularly read in hundreds of other posts in these forums. One problem I have with these forums is the amount of unfriendly responses and bullying that often occurs here.

 

I concur with the fact that listenership is seasonal and was just offering a friendly suggestion. Full stop. I won't make the mistake of trying to be friendly in the future, as I can plainly see that it is not welcome here.

[1073WKCR]

i have had the same issue with my station, listening count has went down lately. now i know why.

[DrO]

not everyone in England likes football

[lazydog]

Perhaps we need dark winter nights sometimes

[DrO]

numbers always fluctuate and maybe sometimes they drop and stay lower overall but with so much choice on the market and a greater number of stations to be chosen from, it's almost not surprising that even with the growth in mobile usage, that it's diluting what is seen for a proportion of stations whist overall numbers generally appear to be increasing.

 

as for the comment specific to SHOUTcast, i would view it as a correction due to the dropping of the AOL provided site player which due to how it was implemented could inflate listener numbers (purely due to the stream connection and the metadata connection it had to make being counted separately instead of just counting the main stream connection - which can plague any flash-like player connection when they also try to get metadata from the steam itself instead of just querying the DNAS or working with a more sane flash policy server setup [which allows Flash to access the stream as native instead so metadata can be pulled from it directly as long as the player is coded to support it]).

 

whatever the final cause of changes, even if some stations decline / die, there always seems to be more that are willing to try to fill the gap that is left (be that a good or bad thing depending on which side of the fence you're looking at things).

[saint]

One thing most people enjoy about radio stations, is the variety. Corporate radio keeps shooting themselves in the foot over their playlists and they have no clue why their numbers decline.

 

Rare, exotic, off the wall, unique and outside of the box programming attracts a crowd. Local radio can get away with forcing their content onto listeners - people using regular radio receivers have no choice. Give a listener an Internet radio station or a satellite radio receiver - and the mix changes. They have the entire world to sift through and find a station of their choosing. Sure there are lots of people that want main stream programming, HOWEVER on a global basis, you can attract a substantial crowd on damn near any type of music. You just have to concentrate on the right presentation and using your audience as a marketing tool.

 

Take a spin on Google - look it up yourself - gregorian chant radio - polka radio - natural sound radio - beach sound radio - old time radio program radio - the list is endless.

 

Why compete with every one else that is playing the same bone head justin beiber crap - be truly independent find your UNIQUE niche and let it rip.

[Gadfly]

@Saint - What you said makes a lot of sense.

 

At the moment I play 70's, 80's & 90's music but that seems to be done-to-death already. Niche radio is the only way to go. It's one of the big attractions of internet radio. I personally enjoy listening to reggae and ska radio.