Jottings of note:
Podcast rankers have informed the industry for years. Now we find a song ranker, no less ambitous than listing “The 10 catchiest songs of all time.” It comes from a team of science researchers at the School of Philosophical, Anthropological and Film Studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. (Put that on a business card.) We learn this from culture news publication NME, which divulges a scientific earworm formula which involves qualities of receptiveness, melodic potency, and rhythmic repetition. This research delivers a top-20 list of earworm songs. “We Will Rock You“ (Queen) is #1, and Queen also takes the #3 spot with “We Are The Champions.” See the entire list, and more details about the science HERE. (HT: Alan Cross.)
Laura Fisher, entertainment analyst at MIDiA Research, observes: “Radio’s planned trajectory appears to be one of imitation, not innovation.” AI-curated playlists the main the hinge point of her statement, along with AI-driven music sequencing on the creative side, and algorithmically personalized station streams. She calls the automation “a profound misstep. Radio, in fact, should partiularly avoid automation since its core stremgth is “its profound lack of algorithmic intermediation.” (She has written about that HERE.) Personality, local connection, trust, companionship — those key values are the building blocks of radio’s strategic advantage. In this light, she observes, “deploying AI for core music curation and playlist generation is a strategic misstep.” Even with all that, Fisher identifies three ways in which AI can be strategically integrated to empower radio. READ.
Calm down; we’re joking. The mega-ultra pop superstar released her latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, and tallied 250 million Spotify streams in its first 24 hours according to this reporting. And that does come in second to her previous colletion, The Tortured Poets Department which was stream-accessed 314 million times on release day. Various special editions of both albums toss the numbers around. More detail: Four tracks on the new album each topped 20-million single-day streams. And Swift ocupies the top 12 spots on Spotify Global and U.S. charts.
October 6, 2025
