Playlist

Having defined our target audience we set about the next task of choosing a playlist. Our research told us that while music was the most popular content type among audience members, quizzes, games and chat/banter were also demanded. Because of this we will carefully choose an appropriate number of songs when creating our running order, so as to interest the music lovers and audience members who enjoy dialogue based features.


Because of the similarity in target audience between our show and Radio 1's 'Chris Moyles Show' we decided to first find out how Radio 1 choose their playlist. This was also driven by the feeling the team have; that we should be a cutting edge music show, playing the newest tracks as early as possible.

Radio 1's selection process


While most Radio stations have around 500 or less songs in a core playlist, BBC local stations have as many as 900.

BBC Radio 1's playlist consists of three categories: A list - 25 to 35 plays per week
                                                                                 B list - 10 to 20 plays per week
                                                                                 C list - around 5 plays per week

There is an extensive selection process to decide what makes it into these lists. Promoters try their best to convince Radio 1 into playing their tracks. There is one man in charge of the main selection process, however eventually the entire team of presenters and producers of the station have a meeting to decided which songs make the final list. Here presenters can back songs they like artists they think have a future etc.

Radio 1 then publish their playlist(s) on their website. Here we downloaded a copy and highlighted tracks we liked, enjoyed or thought our audience could enjoy. We came out with a list of 11 songs, as follows:

Katy Perry - Firework
Two Door Cinema Club - I can talk
Biffy Clyro - Boom, Blast and Ruin
The xx - VCR
Chase & Status - Hypest Hype
JLS - I love you more
Kings of Leon - Radioactive
Bruno Mars - Just the way you are
Tinie Tempah - Written in the stars
Cee Lo Green - Forget You
Darwin Deez - Constellations


We then listened to each of these tracks carefully and gave them a rating out of 10 each, based on how much we liked the track and how appropriate it would be to our audience in terms of genre, theme and the whether they suit the morning slot we will be broadcasting in etc. Having done this we added the ratings together to get a total, then chose the 6 highest rated tracks to end with this list.

Katy Perry - Firework
Two Door Cinema Club - I Can Talk
Biffy Cyro - Boom, Blast and Ruin
Kings of Leon - Radioactive
Cee Lo Green - Forget You
Darwin Deez - Constellations


When creating our final running order we may exchange some of these tracks for ones in the original list or remove songs all together depending on the publics view of each track at that time.

Although these tracks are from an existing shows playlist, we will take care when downloading them to make sure they are: released fully (and therefore covered by Stratcasts PRS) and not explicit.