In recent years, some of Internet radio's biggest pureplays have been, frustratingly, more musically conservative than their FM radio peers. At a time when it’s harder to find distinctive Mainstream Top 40 stations on FM,, one wonders why nobody has positioned themselves immediately to the left of the national charts, as Sirius XM Hits 1 has done on satellite.

Goom Radio’s Just Hits, now defunct as a U.S.-based channel, was close. So was Tom Leykis’ Your Office Companion, which has now evolved its mix of hits and indie rock to a more traditional CHR blend as Pure Pop Hits. When I wrote about Slacker last spring, prompted by their following among industry people, the Today’s Hits channel indeed had a little more gold than you would hear on the typical major-market CHR.

So I love the concept of Slacker’s “New 40” channel, one of three recently launched new stations (the others being ’90s Country Radio and Spa Radio). The service’s press release calls New 40 “an alternative to the Top 40 for people that want 100 percent music discovery every week… the best new music from a range of genres.” The songs change every Wednesday at Midnight.

There’s a lot that’s right about this concept—the idea of new music discovery as something that might intrigue listeners who like hits, not just pure exotica, as well as the unveiling of new songs every Wednesday, kind of like the Top 40 stations of old. FM broadcasters have been counting on the curator function to give them a franchise amid the new competition, and I always hoped it would manifest itself in something like this.

As heard on Sunday night, “New 40” did have representation from multiple genres, but still leaned heavily to the indie side of Alternative. Until there’s a sea change in the fist-pumping 120 b.p.m. “Turbo-Pop” throb of today’s Mainstream Top 40 radio, most of the hour of “New 40” I heard isn’t headed for Top 40 in three months’ time. A progressive hits station would be rhythm and pop plus indie, this was sort of the inverse.
About half of the music was known to me—that part was about right. Most was music that had at least been serviced to radio (although worked with various degrees of vigor and effectiveness), judging from what was available on Play MPE—it was new, but it was still music that was “on the menu” for PDs in some way.

I would have liked a proven hit from the international charts or another song from a major artist’s current album—the things that pro-active music directors used to bring us all the time. (The closest thing to playing the should-be-next single from a superstar was hearing the Rihanna single from the Urban charts.)

All that said, I’m eager to listen again. “New 40” has reinvigorated my interest in Slacker, and I’m intrigued by the Spa Radio concept as well. Here’s the hour I heard on Sunday:

• Moby, “The Day”
• The Dig, “You’re Already Gone”
• David Guetta f/Flo Rida & Nicki Minaj, “Where Them Girls At”
• Warren G., “This Is Dedicated To You”
• Lady Antebellum, “Just A Kiss”
• UNKLE, “Money And Run”
• Kings Of Leon, “Back Down South”
• Grouplove, “Colours”
• Arctic Monkeys, “Don’t Sit Down ’Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair”
• Frank Turner, “Peggy Sang The Blues”
• Stone Foxes, “I’m A King Bee”
• Rihanna, “Man Down”
• My Chemical Romance, “Bulletproof Heart”
• Cage The Elephant, “Around My Heart”
• Craft Spell, “From The Morning Heart”

PD MAT BATES RESPONDS

When this First Listen ran in Radio-Info's Ross On Radio column recently, it prompted the following response from Slacker Senior Radio Program Manager Mat Bates:

"Thanks for the ink on our “New 40” station. Glad you enjoyed it!

"I’d like to give you some additional definition. This station was created solely to facilitate music discovery and showcase our catalog of new releases. It's not a response to the homogeneity of current terrestrial formats—it's just a way for us to super-serve our most active listeners.

"The seed for this station was planted after a conversation I had with one of our power users. He’s a professional, married with kids, lives in Cleveland. He stopped using terrestrial radio many years ago, and he uses Slacker primarily for music discovery via our curated genre stations. Beyond that, he has a meticulously curated iTunes library of his own. Tens of thousands of songs. His complaint was that he was not getting enough music discovery via our more 'mainstream' stations. He has a voracious appetite for new music, and he doesn’t self-identify with any arbitrary definition of a 'format,' he just loves to consume new music of all genres.

"And that’s actually an important point—this station is not necessarily trying to be an alternative to a Top 40 format- or any current radio format. This varies from station to station, but generally speaking our genre stations are not defined to emulate any existing terrestrial format, but rather to improve upon them.

"I believe that most contemporary terrestrial formats use a strict criteria to define themselves that only makes sense to other radio programmers. Those definitions are meaningless to listeners and do not accurately reflect their personal music consumption habits. That’s why our 'Alternative' station,for example, is about 80% current, and doesn’t play any of the grunge catalog that is twenty-plus years old. With all of our stations we start with traditional radio best practices, but we discard the practices that no longer make sense.

"One of the pleasant surprises about the station since its launch, our listeners are interacting and rating the songs much in the same way as they do across the rest of the service. That gives us tremendous insight into the potential of these songs based on our detailed song-level popularity metrics. When you've got tens of thousands of listeners interacting with forty new songs over a seven day period, you can imagine the accuracy of the early data that we collect about these tracks. As much as I abhor the concept of 'pre-search' when applied to a limited terrestrial radio playlist, this data definitely gives us an indication of how these songs resonate with an audience right off the bat. The difference is—we don't kill any of these songs or penalize them based on their performance on The New 40—we just use that data as another tool moving forward.

"As for the "New 40" definition itself: the way I think about the music that appears on this station is as follows:

"Brand new music from established artists and big 'event records': These are records that will be of great general interest regardless of format or quality. These songs are generally showcased on the first day/week of release, and sometimes earlier as a Slacker Radio exclusive. Songs like Lady Gaga’s 'Judas' or a track from the new Beastie Boys or Incubus record. Even the new Stevie Nicks or Emmylou Harris singles.

"New singles from established artists/albums: Pretty self-explanatory: the new Taylor Swift track, or the new Cake single.

"Buzz Artists: These are songs that are emerging from the new press, blogs, zeitgeist, popularity aggregators, etc. The tastemaker bands. The festival bands. The Slacker community influences this catagory as well. Terrestrial radio will typically start playing some of these bands in the following months. An Odd Future track or the new Craft Spells song. This is where we would have featured Foster the People a year ago.

“Under the Radar/Music Discovery/What You May Have Missed: This is for emerging artists that may not be getting a great deal of exposure yet, but we believe they will. This is also a place to showcase deeper tracks from previous New 40 artists. This is where we can really represent music across many different formats and styles. Some artists that play music that is derived from already popular music and some legacy artists whose stars may have faded a bit and may no longer qualify for event record status. A good example is the new Dynamite Walls song—it is ostensibly being released by Universal, but with little fanfare. Our metrics have shown this song to be a hit.

"It's important to know that we have over sixty professional radio programmers all over the US and Canada that curate our genre stations. They contribute picks to this station as well, which is how you end up with a Del McCoury track next to the new Silverstein single. Recommendations from our roots programmers and teen-based programmers are living next to each other on this station. Both are notable new releases.

"Also, what you didn't hear is a feature that we are adding to this station in the next few weeks- it will be hosted. A DJ, providing context to all of this new music, acting as a weekly guide. That makes for a less fragmented feel on a station like this.

"I should also note that we launch new genre stations all of the time—we just chose to specifically highlight these three in our most recent newsletter. Based on your past articles, I suspect you may enjoy another one of our new stations—Easy Listening. It’s our approximation of the now mostly defunct Easy Listening format of the ’70s and ’80s, with a dash of the Beautiful Music/MOR that preceded it and a bit of the “Soft AC” that followed.

"Thanks again!" – Mat Bates, Sr. Radio Program Manager, Slacker Inc.