Spotify, Pandora, and Apple Music have reshaped how audiences discover music, but data shows listeners haven’t strayed as far from radio as broadcasters may fear. Beating the illusion of choice, though, may take more emphasis on algorithm-beating curation.
Speaking during a CMB webinar, Pillar Media Brand Director Matt Stockman walked through research on digital playlist habits showing the average streaming user maintains roughly 66 titles in active rotation, with five to 15 core artists. The comparison to a typical current-based music radio station, with 40 to 50 currents, up to 250 gold titles, and 15 to 20 core artists, was deliberate.
“It’s a lot more the same than it is different,” Stockman said, arguing that listeners prefer the illusion of choice over actual control, and that radio’s curated experience already mirrors what most people build for themselves on digital platforms.
The more urgent problem, he said, is the research informing those playlists. Stockman cited declining panel sizes in traditional online music testing. Songs charting in radio’s top 10, Stockman noted, sometimes lack any supporting data in streaming numbers; a signal, he argued, that the research methodology is producing distorted results.
He drew a parallel to audience measurement, contrasting Nielsen’s roughly 4,000 to 5,000 meter holders in a market the size of New York City against the more than 250,000 DTS AutoStage-enabled vehicles in the same market. “Which one should we start to be looking towards probably more seriously and more significantly?” Stockman said. “I think it’s the one with the higher number of data points.”
Beyond research, Stockman outlined what he called practical tools for programming against Spotify. Playlist flexibility, particularly in medium and light current categories, lets stations respond in real time to local events, promotions, and artist appearances. He described moving a Josh Baldwin track back into regular rotation weeks after it had cycled out to support video content his discipleship program had produced around it, something he said he would not have considered under older programming orthodoxy.
Stockman also pointed to brand-exclusive experiences as an area where broadcast can distance itself from digital. He described building artist takeover programming by coordinating with record label partners to have artists record content from home, a model he credited to iHeartMedia’s Z100 during COVID, then producing it to sound like a live station takeover. “That was a really simple fix and a really great thing that listeners can’t necessarily get anyplace else,” he said.
At day’s end, the case for community, Stockman said, may be the strongest argument radio has. He cited what he described as a growing backlash among Gen Z against streaming platforms, driven in part by anger over artist royalty structures and in part by a broader resistance to algorithm-based curation. “Person-to-person contact, person-to-person communication and curation will win community.”
Talent development, he argued, remains the final and most durable differentiator. “What happens between the songs is the thing that marks your station more strongly than anything else,” Stockman said. “Spotify gives people songs. We give people stories, surprises, and shared moments. And that’s what makes radio indispensable.”
