A&O&B’s Year End Music Rewind: 2019 Ends with Cautious Optimism

Each December for the past 26 years, A&O&B has released our Year End Music Rewind which includes music trends, our list of the Best Testing Songs of the Year and advice going forward.

In last year’s report we predicted that 2019 would be the “set up” year for a musically stronger 2020.  Our Year End Music Rewind for 2019 suggests that our prediction has indeed started to happen.

However there’s a lot more to the story.

 

How The Top Songs of 2019 (December 12, 2018 – December 11, 2019) were determined:

Before we get to the highlights, it’s important to review the scoring process for our Top 10 list.

All songs must have played and been tested for at least 6 weeks between 01/01/19 to 12/11/19 to be included this year’s list.

Our rankings were generated using a formula that incorporated weighted final Like A Lot and Total Positive scores, Weeks in Power, Weeks as a Number One, Two or Three Tester, and Weeks On. 

This year we have 72 songs on our list.

 

The Big Picture

For the first time in a number of years, 2019 saw improved Like A Lot Scores for our three year-end lists: the Total Songs Tested, the Top 1/3 Testers, and the Bottom 1/3 Testers.

Unfortunately the Total Positive Scores didn’t follow suit as only the Top 1/3 improved. Still, the Total Positive Scores for the Top 1/3 were the highest since 2011.

Meanwhile the number of songs that averaged below a 2.0 Like A Lot score during their final six weeks as a current nearly doubled from last year. Remember our LAL score is an average test rank not a percent thus a lower score is better than a higher one.

Granted a big gap still exists between the top 1/3 and everything else. But still, seeing Like A Lot scores improve is highly encouraging.

 

Year End Music Rewind: The Top Songs of 2019

After crunching the data, here is our Top 10 list – the best testers for 2019

#	Title	Artist	LAL Avg	T-Pos	Points
1	Beautiful Crazy	Luke Combs	1.0	87	250
2	Beer Never Broke My Heart	Luke Combs	1.1	83	240
3	I Don’t Know About You	Chris Lane	1.0	83	239
4	Whiskey Glasses	Morgan Wallen	1.3	84	234
5	One Man Band	Old Dominion	1.2	83	223
6	Speechless	Dan + Shay	1.2	81	219
7	Eyes On You	Chase Rice	1.3	84	203
8	God’s Country	Blake Shelton	1.5	79	196
9	Knockin’ Boots	Luke Bryan	1.8	74	195
10	Even Though I’m Leaving	Luke Combs	2.5	82	197

  

Love Ya – Mean It

Here are the Like A Lot trends (remember, since the numbers here represent average ranks not scores, lower is better).

For the first time since 2015, Like A Lot scores improved for all three divisions: Total Songs Tested, Top 1/3 Testers and Bottom 2/3 Testers. The Top 1/3 average (red) improved by 0.1 for the second consecutive year.

While the gap between the Top 1/3 and the rest of the songs narrowed slightly, the difference is still significant. This underscores the importance of a tightly curated list where the best songs receive significantly more airplay.

 

Something Positive is Going On with the Total Positives

Now here are the Total Positive trends since 2011 for the Top 1/3rd Testers (red), Total Songs Tested (blue), and the Bottom 1/3 Testers (green):

The Total Positive scores for the Top 1/3 Testers improved for the third consecutive year breaking the 80% mark for the first time since 2012. 

While it’s true that the Total Positive trend for all songs declined for the second year in a row, it was the bottom 1/3 that dragged the average down.

 

The Top Artists

Based on the number of songs and their year-end song positions, Luke Combs was A&O&B’s top artist of 2019 (he was also last year’s top artist).  A considerable gap separated Luke Combs from the rest of the Top Five Artists: Luke Bryan, Old Dominion, Chris Lane and Morgan Wallen.

Three artists put at least two songs into the Top 1/3: Luke Combs (3), Luke Bryan (2) and Thomas Rhett (2). No Historical Superstars (artists with multiple hits prior to 1998) appeared in the Top 1/3.

 

New Artists

The 2019 New Artist (first time on the charts) footprint is similar to the past several years. Six new artists appeared on our on year-end chart, however only two had songs reach the Top 1/3. 

 

Tempo

2019 was another good year for ballads. 54% of the titles in the Top 1/3 Testers were ballads. That number is second only to last year’s 64% and marks the second time in a row that the percent of ballads in the top 1/3 was higher than the percent of tempos songs.

This is also the fifth time in the last six years that a ballad was the year’s top song.

 

Year End Music Rewind: Four Recommendations for 2020 

So what does all this mean for country going forward?

Cautious optimism on the one hand and discipline on the other.

We’ve distilled our 2020 recommendations down to four actions you should take.

 

1. We remind everyone of this each year because the data continues to support this strategy: apply the maximum number of spins to the biggest hits, regardless of when a song appears to have hit its peak chart position. Track your spins to insure you are getting the most out of the “real” hits. True hit songs have a very high spin tolerance. Putting additional spins on the biggest hits contributed to 2019’s better overall scores.

 

2. Be highly selective on the music give your precious air time to. This goes for new as well as established artists. Of course we want to develop our next group of superstars. However over the past five years, only 12% of all songs by new artists have reached the Top 1/3.

 

3. Test your music. As we have seen for several years, many songs experience a lack of consensus market-to-market. We can’t recommend local testing strongly enough. (Disclosure: A&O&B clients have free access to use our online music testing platform Hey Rate This).

 

4. Continue to use passion scores to drive rotations. “Must Hear Songs” are critical to any format’s success. A&O&B’s Roadmap reminds us that country listeners’ number one reason for picking one country station over another is “plays the best music.” Thus every music decision should begin with the question, “Is the best song for my station to play right now?”

 

As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts on our Year End Music Rewind – or anything else for that matter.

In the meantime, here’s to a strong 2020.

 

Related:

Status Update: Country’s Currents Halfway to 2020

A&O&B’s Year End Music Rewind: Was Music in 2018 a Bit Squirrelly?

 

_{Image by Arturo Torres from Pixabay}