

You can choose to add more variety or narrow it down even more if you want, providing a more customized experience than what we have typically seen out of streaming radio services. You can choose a song, artist or album and Slacker Premium will play songs that are only from your choice, for as long as its library lasts. Says WEBG Chicago PD Lance Houston, “When we know there’s a coordinated effort for stuff like this, the requests feel less genuine.”Īdds KKBQ operations director Johnny Chiang, “A lot of times these fan club requests do more harm to artists than good.The radio feature of Slacker is an interesting take. Such moves typically don’t sit well with radio programmers, who are both wary and weary of organized campaigns. The Ballerini fan page instructed fans on several ways to disguise where their requests were coming from, including removing location from the fan’s Twitter bio, and noted that stations are “more likely to play the song if you do not put your location if you are requesting somewhere out of your radio range.” The effort does not, however, appear to have had a measurable impact and program directors for stations in four markets spot-checked by Billboard - Chicago, Houston, Detroit and San Diego - reported no noticeable uptick in requests other than some for Underwood at KKBQ.
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1 “Women Request Wednesday” initiative provided fans with detailed information about how to make requests, including links to Twitter pages and request line numbers for more than 150 chart reporting country stations. Promoted through the artists’ Twitter fan pages, the Aug. One other recent action aimed at boosting airplay for female acts was organized by the fan clubs of seven current stars: Lauren Alaina, Kelsea Ballerini, Lindsay Ell, Maddie & Tae, Maren Morris, Carly Pearce and Carrie Underwood.

Stovall says she plans to record intros for the channel and calls #WCE Country “a cool, different way to elevate artists and incorporate so many more people.” She also sees the channel as a way to help combat what she calls “this unfairness, this inequality” seen in terrestrial radio’s heavy favoring of male artists.įor several months, Cox Media’s influential country outlet KKBQ Houston has exclusively featured female artists on the Wednesday edition of its hour-long all-request lunchtime show.

So we thought we could use this station to tell the stories of the artists that are playing here, because nobody else is telling them.” One of the things we pride ourselves on as a way of being different is that we combine music with really great storytelling. “We wanted to be able to do more than that. “Anybody can put together a playlist of female artists and park it somewhere and go, ‘We’re good,’” Wright says. The #WCE crowdsourced programming idea grew from there. When a co-worker suggested that Slacker might try to appeal to more women with a “Man Crush Monday,” initiative, Wright pointed out with a laugh that in country radio right now, “every day is Man Crush Monday.” The channel has been in development for several months, Wright says, with the dual aims of boosting female listenership among Slacker’s more than 9 million registers users and shining more light on female country artists, many of whom struggle for airplay on male-dominated terrestrial radio stations.
