4FM Music Playlist

airman737

Just thought i'd open a post about the music playlist on 4fm. I'm 32 years old, and normally listen to 98FM, FM104, but recently I've found myself tuning to 4fm (Just to change from the usual Rihanna, Maroon 5, etc. etc. being overplayed). Now my point is this:

In My Opinion, 4FM have a huge advantage in the radio market if they would just nail down their playlist. For example. I listened to Jim McCabe this morning. He played some fantastic songs, really good 80s and 90s stuff, then in the middle of them he played the scripts new single, and some chronically old song from the 60s.

I Had 4fm on at home today, and my 69 year old mother said she loved "Waiting for a star to fall" from boy meets girl from the 80s. I think if they stuck to good 70s, 80s, 90s music, and give up on the 2013 pop songs and the 50+ year old songs from the 60s, they could win over a lot more listeners.

Anyone Agree/Disagree.

heybaby

airman737 wrote: »

Just thought i'd open a post about the music playlist on 4fm. I'm 32 years old, and normally listen to 98FM, FM104, but recently I've found myself tuning to 4fm (Just to change from the usual Rihanna, Maroon 5, etc. etc. being overplayed). Now my point is this:

In My Opinion, 4FM have a huge advantage in the radio market if they would just nail down their playlist. For example. I listened to Jim McCabe this morning. He played some fantastic songs, really good 80s and 90s stuff, then in the middle of them he played the scripts new single, and some chronically old song from the 60s.

I Had 4fm on at home today, and my 69 year old mother said she loved "Waiting for a star to fall" from boy meets girl from the 80s. I think if they stuck to good 70s, 80s, 90s music, and give up on the 2013 pop songs and the 50+ year old songs from the 60s, they could win over a lot more listeners.

Anyone Agree/Disagree.

4FM have a very interesting playlist, as youve said they play a broad range of tunes spanning the decades from the 60's to now. Its incredibly refreshing to hear such a wide playlist and even the odd obscure number from yesteryear that you just wouldnt hear anywhere else, however this is a double-edged sword. Successful stations tend to reduce their playlist right down in an effort to find their own sound, its essentially a form of branding. A smaller playlist means increased rotation of songs and means listeners equating a particular song or songs with that station and by extension the hope is that the listener will tune into the station in the hope they'll hear 'that' song they like at a given moment in time.

While what 4FM are doing is different from the mainstream and on the surface looks and sounds great the problem is their playlist is far too broad, their rotation is too low on anything other than the 'newest' of classic hits . Repetition is central to reinforcement of a stations message but this is diluted if you have a broad playlist peppered with brand new music and very obscure 60's songs. FM104 have been a success becasue they have a core playlist of a couple of hundred songs at the most between 7am - 7pm, and a listener is guaranteed to hear a couple of the biggest current hits in the space of any given 15 minutes. The same could be said of spin and Q102 which also has a small playlist and a very particular sound.

4FM would need to consolidate their playlist and their sound.

Trebor176

I'm only 26, and I loved the music that 4fm played when it first started. I do like the older music mainly, I admit, so I was excited when the station began because of the music. It was nice to hear a station with a different sound, rather than the usual mix on other stations. Even then, there were certain songs I had never heard before, and grew to love.

In recent times, though, I have felt that it was more or less a clone of, let's say, Q102 with very similar music. I was disappointed, but I guess it's not as repetitive. The repetition is one reason why I went off Q102, a station which I liked when it first started. And, it was the same with Lite FM too.

I guess they are just trying to cater for everybody, hence the mix of old and newer stuff, but personally, I would have liked if 4fm could have stayed as it originally was. Sadly, it seems that the format didn't quite work. I do like the music on Club Classics, though. There's a nice mix there.

Bard

I'm 10 years older than you, Trebor, and while I agree with a lot of what you say, I don't completely that they're trying to cater to "everybody". They've got their target market (over 35's, I believe) and I reckon they cater to them really well. The fact that they do play some new/modern stuff doesn't mean they're aiming at a young audience, it just shows that they consider some of them to be "modern classic hits"... catering to an older market doesn't mean just playing older music... "older" people do like newer music too, y'know!

I really liked the way 4FM was when it started too - it was like a proper music enthusiast's station and had a much wider playlist and some good specialist shows. You were unlikely to hear a song repeated in a whole week, never mind a single day!... but I can understand, from a commercial viewpoint, why they made the changes to the sound and I still think that in both its imaging and its playlist, it's one of the better sounding stations on the Irish market. They still have a "no repeats between 7am and 7pm" policy - which is pretty good.

JoeA3

I think their imaging is excellent - the jingles package, etc is very slick. The powers that be at 2FM should tune in and try learning a few things.