Advertisement
Saturday, July 9, 2011

First Listen: AARP Internet Radio

AARP You’re 48 years old. You loved Smooth Jazz, but it doesn’t exist in your market anymore. Or you like the NPR Music site and you wish there was a single audio stream playing the kind of music that it highlights. Or you liked Sirius XM Coffeehouse but maybe not enough to pay $12.95 a month to subscribe to satellite radio. What if those stations and 15 others were available free? Okay, now what if they were on the AARP Website?

AARP’s foray into Internet radio, formally announced last week after a month’s soft launch, drew New York Times coverage and the sort of overall publicity that doesn’t typically go to pureplays, save Pandora. By contrast, the launch of Live 365’s female-targeted Athena 365 stream aggregator site was a story only in the limited trade press that covers Internet radio. Yet, both are an attempt to imbue Web radio with a sense of community.

AARP Internet Radio is a joint venture with the Concord Music Group label. It uses Slacker (another Webcaster with a dramatically higher profile these days) as its platform, but has its own staff of programmer/curators. It should be of interest to terrestrial broadcasters because it covers just enough of those 45-plus formats disenfranchised by commercial radio to be a potentially potent destination. That said, it is sufficiently informed by the “eternally youthful” reimaging of AARP itself that it doesn’t quite capitalize on that opportunity.

Among AARP’s 18 channels are Smooth Jazz, straight-ahead Jazz, a big-band based Adult Standards channel, pre-Beatles Oldies, a more typical Oldies/Greatest Hits service, a channel called “AARP Coffeehouse,” Country, “Modern R&B,” “Modern Rock” (of the more gold-based variety), and Classic Rock. There’s also a music-discovery, indie-rock channel called “Fresh Sounds” that goes into NPR Music/rock press territory. There’s Classical, two Latin channels, and Gospel. There’s a channel for Concord artist Paul Simon, who also figures heavily into the other channels.

So what isn’t offered? There’s no Mainstream AC format as we know it, even as Mainstream AC tries to move away from its 50-plus listeners. There’s not an’80s-based format or gold-based Hot AC format, even though a lot of the potential listeners are moving into the organization’s target range. Today’s pop is represented by one format called “Modern Hits,” actually a combination of all current-based formats, including Alternative and Country. There’s no’50s/’60s-based MOR format, except to the extent that a few of those songs overlap with the “true” Adult Standards format found here.

There is also no news or talk channel—something that would be a natural part of any real attempt to commandeer a 50-plus listener’s time away from AM/FM radio. AARP does some syndicated long- and short-form talk programming, but it’s not represented here. AARP might be at the center of today’s most-important news story, but the opportunity to create News or Talk programming that defends the current Social Security system is, as yet, not utilized here.

In fact, because these are addressable channels and not produced streams, there’s a lot of potential stationality that isn’t here yet. The between-song liners are pretty straightforward (one does reference “the music of our life”), although there are an unusual number of drops explaining how to use the channels—e.g., that you can skip songs. And for an audience that might still find Pandora exotic, there is a very detailed Website page before you can go to the tuner on how to use the player itself. (Disclosure: my other employer, Edison Research, works with Pandora, although I do not.)

In that page of instructions, as in the channel selection and programming, is the whole inherent package of issues. How hip can or should AARP Internet Radio be? Should it target the 50-year-old who immediately winces at their first AARP mailer or the 60-year-old who has truly been disenfranchised by music radio? Will the former even consider listening? There’s a certain amount of deliberate taboo-smashing gratification in hearing the Violent Femmes sing “why can’t I get/just one fuck” on AARP’s Modern Rock channel, but what then? A lot of AARP’s hipper cachet has come from reminding people that George Clooney now qualifies for membership, but it was Betty White to whom AARP turned to deliver its “get over it” message to anybody who still can’t quite come to grips with joining.

That said, one of the things I appreciated about the Fresh Sounds format is that it struck the right balance between hipness and accessibility. You won’t find more than a few radio songs in the monitor below, but you will find the biggest artists of the genre—the ones who should be having hits. And Modern Hits is something that a lot of chart junkies have long sought—a true Top 40 that combines all contemporary genres. Here are monitors of five AARP Internet Radio channels:
"OLDIES" (MOSTLY FIRST-GENERATION)

Carl Perkins, “Blue Suede Shoes”
Lloyd Price, “Personality”
Dion & the Belmonts, “A Teenager In Love”
Bo Diddley, “Who Do You Love”
Mitch Ryder & Detroit Wheels, “Devil With A Blue Dress On & Good Golly Miss Molly”
Flamingos, “I Only Have Eyes For You”
Virtues, “Guitar Boogie Shuffle”
Dion, “The Wanderer”
Screaming Jay Hawkins, “I Put A Spell On You”
Coasters, “Yakety-Yak”
Little Richard, “Long Tall Sally”
“Pop Oldies” (comparable to FM Greatest Hits)

Paul Simon, “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover” (Concord artist Simon is this month’s featured artist with his own dedicated channel as well)
Dave Mason, “We Just Disagree”
Zombies, “She’s Not There”
KC & the Sunshine Band, “Boogie Shoes”
America, “A Horse With No Name”
Supremes, “You Keep Me Hanging On”
Simon & Garfunkel, “The Sounds Of Silence”
Abba, “Take A Chance On Me”
Chicago, “If You Leave Me Now”
Sly & the Family Stone, “Everyday People”
Tom Petty & Heartbreakers, “American Girl”
Pilot, “Magic”
Supremes, “You Can’t Hurry Love”
Sammy Davis, Jr., “The Candy Man”
AARP Modern Hits

Brad Paisley & Alabama, “Old Alabama”
Paul Simon, “The Afterlife” (proves that there's no reluctance here to play a song, literally, about "God's waiting room.")
Skillet, “Awake & Alive”
Usher, “Hey Daddy (Daddy’s Home)”
Carrie Underwood, “Undo It”
Taylor Swift, “Mean”
Craig Campbell, “Family Man”
Taio Cruz, “Dynamite”
Black Eyed Peas, “Meet Me Halfway”
Bruno Mars, “Just The Way You Are”
Sixx:AM, “Lies Of The Beautiful People" (Mr. Sixx, believed to be 52 years old, has already likely received his AARP packet)
The Script, “Breakeven”
Kelly Clarkson, “Already Gone”
Rihanna, “Umbrella”
The Band Perry, “If I Die Young”
Foster The People, “Pumped Up Kicks”
Miguel, “Sure Thing”
Fresh Sounds

LCD Soundsystem, “I Can Change”
Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi, “Two Against One”
Justice, “Civilization”
Panda Bear, “Alsatian Darn”
Vampire Weekend, “Giving Up The Gun” (even on a channel on which Simon wasn't heard, his acolytes were)
Death Cab for Cutie, “You Are A Tourist”
Lykke Li, “I Follow Rivers”
Adele, “Rumour Has It”
Black Keys, “Everlasting Light”
Robbie Robertson, “He Don’t Live Here Anymore”
Classic Soul

Rufus & Carla Thomas, “’Cause I Love You”
Sly & the Family Stone, “Everyday People”
Temptations, “Papa Was A Rolling Stone”
Percy Sledge, “When A Man Loves A Woman”
Jimmy Ruffin, “What Becomes of the Broken Hearted”
Johnny Ace, “Pledging My Love”
Inez & Charlie Foxx, “Mockingbird”
Marvelettes, “Please Mr. Postman”
Debarge, “Time Will Reveal”
Sam & Dave, “Hold On, I’m Coming”
Labelle, “Lady Marmalade”

About the Writer

Display Sean Ross, one of the radio and music industry’s most widely respected writers and programming analysts, is the author of the newsletter Ross On Radio, an extension of his long-running column of the same name.

Comments

0 Comments So Far

Wanna join the discussion?

You must login or register in order to post comments.

Advertisement
Advertisement