Music Based Programming Techniques

Music Based Programming – Techniques

 

·         ‘Start bright, finish strong’ – This term is used to explain the order in which music should be played (in order to create an effect)

Start bright is talking about the morning, you would want to play bright ‘buzzy’ music in the morning that’ll wake people up, and more importantly impart feelings of happiness and energy to the listeners.

Finish strong is talking about the evening, you want to aim to please listeners in the evening with a strong playlist, popular songs and ones they enjoy that they can listen to – this is especially important on Friday/weekends for when people are preparing to go out.

 

·         Limiting new material is important – if a radio station consists of constantly playing new material, people will become uneasy with it. There is a high chance quite a few people will dislike the new music you’re playing; and if that’s all your radio station is playing, they won’t come back and you’ll lose listeners. It’s important to have a steady flow of ‘concreted’ music that people have heard of or is popular. It is fine to add new music in there, but it’s important to balance it.

 

·         Provide variation and contrast – for example, don’t play club music all day, people like to listen to a variety of music throughout the day. If one genre or type of music is overplayed all day, people will become bored or irritated by this and you will lose listeners.

 

·         Scatter very popular items – much like providing variation and contrast, too many very popular mainstream songs played one after the other will cause listeners to become slightly annoyed at the fact no new, or different music is played – radio is a great way to find new songs you love that you haven’t heard before.

 

·         A ‘segue’ is used to break up clumps of dialog, it’s a term to explain the instant transitioning between conversation/music/film.