Since day one of GothVille, and more specified, from day one in 2005 with the Radio Station, our internal discussions are about what and how to play the music we have in our catalog. Because we are music enthusiast of Goth related music, we collect music from this Gothic Scene and all the sub-related genres. Sometimes it is dark, but not really Goth, but because of the sound, the surrounding mood, we select artists or tracks to give it a shot at the radio.
When visiting a festival, you see the public moving from stage one to stage two, or three if it exists. When bands performing at that festival are a wide range within the Goth scene, you could conclude that all people love the Industrial sound, and 40 minutes later they enjoy themselves at a Goth Rock band. But when you are at a festival like WGT in Leipzig (yes we know, it is a Treffen...), we noticed that people stick around within one or two sub-genres. You can count, in other words, the number of EBM fans visiting a metal performance.
We have always stated that we play the wide range of all Goth related sub-genres. This means there is a lot of variation on our stream. Some prefer a schedule of one or two hours of one sub-genre, followed by a new block with another. Last year we noticed that during the change of one to another genre, the number of listeners were dropping. After that statistical conclusion, we decided to play the genres in a rotation, mixed randomly, and with more airplay for the most voted genres in our survey, compared to one with the lowest fan base at GothVille Radio.
The result was not what we expected. The average number of listeners dropped with 20%. The variation seems to be drastic. Jumping from a Dark Folk track to an Industrial Noise band could be considered as drastic change. So the preparation is started to go back to sub-genre blocks of one to two hours.
But now the most difficult questions pop-ups again. How many songs do we keep in rotation for airplay? What about all those starting new bands and new releases. Not always the songs we all are waiting for, but here and there a nice, good track. What about all the classic tracks we all know for decades. If we play Sisters of Mercy, Siouxsie, Joy Division, Bauhaus 30 times in a week? Will you get bored? The problem is we will be most likely.
So we make a selection with a good mix. The needed classics, and more selective recent music. A collection of how many songs would be correct for this approach? So we start digging the internet. We find a lot of opinions. Opinions of people that are professionally working with radio. Somehow we manage to find a kind of opinion that seems to be used by many successful stations. Here is just one quote, but many are alike...
Quote from a radio maker;
I’ve been in commercial radio broadcasting for 45 years. Most stations have a playlist of about 250 songs. Very often, when station ratings go down, they hire consultants to come in to improve ratings. They almost always decrease the number of songs in the library to fix poor ratings. And it usually works. The reason is that people will change the channel if they hear a song they don’t like. So the goal is to eliminate the songs that make people “tune out.”
Another thing to consider, however, is that most all commercial radio stations program first and foremost to people listening in cars. And the average ride in a car is about 20 minutes. So short playlists are very conducive to people that only listen to the radio 20 minutes at a time anyway. Internet radio listeners might be less likely to be listening in a vehicle, so that might call for a slightly larger playlist to help avoid so much repetition to the primary listeners. But I would think a playlist probably should have less than 1000 titles in any case.
Firstly, GothVille is of course not a commercial radio. At GothVille Radio we currently have a rotating catalog of about 6200 tracks. And a total catalog of almost 60.000 tracks (and to be honest, with some duplicates in it).
So how do we make sure we can get your ears stuck to our station? A bit longer then a couple of minutes per day :)
The number of unique listeners is still high. We reach every month about 5.000 unique listeners. But the average listening time is about 30 minutes. There are, in what we see in the statistics, a lot of radio hoppers.
We can only assume that people hop away when the stream is drastically switching to a sub-genre they do not like.
Another thing we noticed, the audience is pretty silent in giving feedback. While our scene is known for the debates on music styles, heck even social discussions. The comments on music, or posts like these, are almost not existing. While our inbox is every day filled with compliments, and seldom disapproval on our music selection. It feels like people are affraid to state their opinion in public. Yet, possible another problem of being Goth, do not make a mistake about the music, you'll burn in Goth Hell...
