Eclectic and ethnic stations at the non-profit end of the FM dial probably play 100,000 different songs by themselves.Īnd these are only the songs that can be heard right now. There are a dozen additional formats including Rock, Jazz, Classical, Easy Listening, Adult Standards, Big Band, Spanish, Gospel, and Religion each with their own music that add tens of thousands of songs that local radio stations play today. That’s 80,000 hit songs in just three formats.
Joel Whitburn says there have been over 40,000 Pop hits since 1955, over 20,000 Country hits since 1944, and 20,000 R&B hits since 1942. First, only a foolish person would pretend to have an accurate count of how many different songs have been played from (say) 1920 when KDKA signed on.
(This may be to counter the criticism that Pandora has too few songs in its library, well under a million.)Ī little common sense ought to be enough to shoot this one down. Yet the factoids were circulated without a single question or doubt raised.ĭuring the meeting Westergren asserted that over the entire history of broadcast radio, less than 100,000 songs have ever been played. Anyone should have been able to realize they were meaningless. Either he got his facts scrambled, or the reporters did. Some of his factoids appear absolute gibberish. These were first reported here, and then repeated on various blogs including here, here, and elsewhere. At a recent Meet Up in New York he offered a long list of radio factoids. Westergren holds Pandora Listener Meet Ups around the country. So we believe it is time to take a closer look at Westergren’s claims. The problem is that Westergren seems to go out of his way to talk down local radio, fabricating false and misleading comparisons to denigrate local radio.
Were he just talking up his service, we could let it pass. Why are so many statistics and factoids Tim Westergren, Pandora’s founder, utters a distortion or lie? Is it because he doesn’t understand? Is it because he is misinformed? Or is it purposeful, a willful effort to distort and mislead?
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