Jottings of note:
Jacobs Media has opened registration to participate in its Techsurvey 2026, the preeminent appraisal of U.S. radio listening, sponsored by Inside Radio and Quu. Over 500 stations participate by canvassing their listeners, and last year’ s work represented 24,000 respondents. The survey represents commercial stations in the U.S. and Canada. Last year’s key learnings included awareness and usage of AI, smart speakers and the rise of voice technologies, on-demand audio and video entertainment options like podcasts and short-form video, in-dash entertainment, and the surge in YouTube usage. New categories of knowledge are added this year. The survey goes into the field in early January, and Jacobs is asking for participation commitments before year-end holidays.
The 2025 edition of iHeart Rewind, the annual list of artists and songs that were most played on iHeartRadio stations is released. The governing metric of this exercise is TAS — total audience spins. Top artist? Sabrina Carpenter with 2.7 billion TAS. Top song? Die With A Smile (1.1 billion TAS). Beyond those nibbles is a series of lists: Top Artists by Genre, and Top Songs by Genre. Five genres are represented: Pop, Country, Hip-Hop, Alternative, and R&B. See it all HERE.
“Bit of a career watershed moment.” That’s Keith Jopling, Consulting Director of MIDiA Research, founder of The Song Sommelier, and former Global Head of Strategy & Intelligence at Spotify. His recently completed book, Body of Work: How the album outplayed the algorithm and survived playlist culture, is finished and available (as a pre-order) in all the standard places. A review in Financial Times praises the book as “An affectionate and insightful account of the album’s survival in a hostile age of streaming and algorithms.”
November 19, 2025
