Released by Warner Music Nashville Cody Johnsoncooperation Carrie UnderwoodExcited programmers took notice, and the ballad gained enough spins in its first week that it landed at No. 21 on the country airplay chart on October 12.
parmali The orchestra noticed this, too, but with far less enthusiasm. guitarist Josh McSwain The lead singer sends a text message Matt Thomas About what appears to be a potential threat. Johnson’s single “I’m Gonna Love You” was nearly identical to the Parmalee ballad “Gonna Love You,” which reached the top 10 on the same chart, just 11 spots ahead of Johnson and Underwood. Thomas felt a little stressed about this until he could listen.
“I think if we hadn’t been in the top 10 and the song was well researched and performed, I would have been more worried,” Thomas said. “If we heard before our product dropped that it was coming, then we’d be like, ‘Damn.'”
There were no legal issues – songwriters abide by the general rule that titles cannot be copyrighted – but the impact on the show was significant. Country radio stations strive to keep the sound of their stations constantly changing while staying within the perceived confines of the format. Playing the same game back-to-back is the opposite of variety. Programmers have faced this problem on a regular basis for years, although many outside the broadcast world may not have considered it before.
A grim scene from 1982 illustrates the potential consequences. Music scheduling software is located in Wang Jianlin new york inserted a Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson duet, “Everything is Beautiful (In Its Own Way),” next to Ray Stevens“Everything is beautiful.” The programmer looked at a similar title and inserted a line into Stevens’ single, which gave it a spin.
“It’s just heartbreaking,” Thomas said.
However, this situation is somewhat different from that of Parmalee. The Parton/Nelson single was released in ’82, while Stevens’ record was 12 years old. Losing a hit single won’t hurt anyone’s chart position, nor will it have much of an impact on Stevens’ royalties as a songwriter. In fact, programmers often strive to keep the rotation of the current single in a designated rotation position, even if the similarity of the individual singles creates a separation barrier.
“A good example of what is perhaps more important than title separation is artist separation,” WWF Farmingdale, NY, PD Patrick Shea explain. “When you have 14 Morgan Wallen songs and 14 Post Malone Songs, how do you make them work? You don’t want to lose the spin because they’re all so good and they’re all so well researched, so you want to do the best you can to make sure those songs are all heard.
This problem occurs more often than one might expect. jelly roll‘I’m Not Okay’ is sharing space with many current playlists Megan Moroney‘s “Am I OK?” Meanwhile, Johnson’s “Cheap” and Justin Moore’s “This Is My Dirt,” the two songs, which were even more similar in plot and emotion than their titles, were rising on the charts at the same time. Kurtz Cal Bakersfield has both titles in seven singles that are heavily rotated at the same time.
“If these are two of the seven best songs we can play,” KUZZ PD Brent Michaels Said, “We’re going to do this, even though thematically – even sonically, a little bit – they’re kind of the same.”
Record labels pay attention to these details, especially if the titles are from the same company. Sanhu posted Jordan Fletcher Spotlight single “Fall in the Summer” was released to digital service providers in July, just two months after its release McCreery“Summer Autumn” on the radio. The brass considered the question and then shrugged.
“‘Gone’ has been written how many times by how many different artists?” Fletcher asked rhetorically. “Or ‘A waste of time?’ Or, you know, ‘Love me tomorrow’?” How many times have these names been rewritten and associated with different people in different ways without anyone giving it a second thought?
Likewise, Warner Music Nashville releases Tyler Braden‘s “The Devil You Know” has started playing Ashley McBrideThe Devil I Know earlier this year. This wasn’t the original game plan — consumption prompted WMN to send Brayden’s “The Devil” to radio stations — but programming partners didn’t protest the move.
“Honestly, it shocked me,” said WMN Radio Team Vice President Anna Cage explain. “I myself thought there might be something wrong with that. But at the end of the day, they are two completely different songs. Apparently one has a female voice and one has a male voice, even though they have the same anecdote of ‘you know the devil, I know the devil’.
She acknowledged that this could create some branding issues if consumers search for a song online by title but don’t know the artist’s name. That’s not a concern for Brayden and McBride.
“It doesn’t take long for them to realize, ‘This is not the person I’m looking for,'” she said.
If the titles appear in the same window, the programmer is prepared to create the separation manually. Shay wanted them to do it in separate quarter-hour chunks, though with two singles, “Gonna Love You,” their pacing had taken care of that: his rotation only allowed for one ballad every fifteen minutes. Michaels has less of a problem – both songs are among the 11 songs in KUZZ’s moderate rotation, and they’re played in order. One of them is ranked first in the level, while the other is ranked sixth; they appear automatically, approximately four hours apart.
“We immediately tried to separate them,” Michaels said, “so they weren’t too close to each other.”
So even though these recurring titles attract attention at Music Row and radio music conferences, they may not be the roadblocks one expects.
“I don’t think it’s a radio show issue,” Shea said. “I think it’s a radio fan thing because I don’t think the average listener will notice anything at all.”
Still, one music fan immediately understood the conundrum. When asked about “I’m Gonna Love You” echoing Parmalee’s title, Johnson was immediately sympathetic.
“That wasn’t intentional,” he said. “If you know those people, tell them, ‘I was wrong.'”
Subscribe to Billboard Country Update, the industry’s essential source of news, charts, analysis and features. Sign up for free delivery every weekend.
