We Can Do Better: Promoting Classical Music On Your Air

Below you’ll find the first in a series of articles by professionals involved with classical public radio. These articles were originally posted on the Listserv of the Association of Music Personnel in Public Radio, and are being reprinted here with the permission of the authors.

The first article is by Peter Dominowski, a public radio researcher and consultant. He started his company Market Trends Research, Inc., in 1985. Here’s his full bio. Without further ado, his article:

We all love classical music and want other people to enjoy it as much as we do. Unfortunately, our aspirations for increasing listening to classical music on the radio are often not matched by the effectiveness of our promotion of the music on air.

I listen to a lot of classical radio, and in my opinion, most of us do very little to encourage listeners to either continue listening or to tune in at a later time.

What’s the most frequent type of promotion on nearly every classical station? It’s a recitation of one or more composers, and/or the names of the pieces, that will be heard in the next hour, with little or no information that generates interest or provides an inducement for continued listening (aka the “Laundry List” approach to forward promotion). We hear this so often that it has become the de facto standard for promoting classical music, but several things about this approach make it ineffective.

Even if you know the composers well — and not all listeners do — most of them wrote very diverse-sounding music. So even if a listener knows that music of Bach is coming up, and they have heard of Bach or have a conception of what Bach sounds like, how does that encourage them to keep listening? Will they hear the Bach B-minor Mass, solo harpsichord with the Goldberg Variations, or a chamber orchestra playing a Brandenburg Concerto? Each sounds very different and has vastly different appeal. So just hearing the name of the composer does little to encourage continued listening.

Mentioning the names of the pieces doesn’t help much either. I’d contend that few of even our most serious listeners could whistle the main themes to most of the selections we promote. Less knowledgeable listeners clearly are not helped much by piece names, either. So, most of the time, just mentioning the name of pieces doesn’t provide much inducement to continue listening.

Simply mentioning the name of a composer and/or a piece does not provide a listener benefit, nor a sufficient inducement for most listeners to continue listening — and it does nothing to address the core values of listeners, such as the desire for lifelong learning and their innate intellectual curiosity.

If we agree that these are not effective means of forward promoting, what would be more effective? What kind of promotion might add value for the listener? Consider adopting a “points of information” style of forward promotion.

Most listeners enjoy learning something about the music but do not want lengthy recitations. A few sentences that promote the music with points of information about the composer, performer, the time in which the music was written, or how the music might make listeners feel provides value without being boring. This can usually be done in 20 seconds or less.

These ‘points of information’ accomplish a number of worthwhile goals:

• Because they provide interesting information all listeners can understand, they are more likely to increase time spent listening and loyalty to classical music
• They are educational, therefore compatible with and appropriate for our mission
• They position announcers as prominent sources of entertaining and interesting information about classical music
• They are in service to both the music and to the audience, as it encourages continued listening to music that we feel is valuable and worthwhile
• They match the inherent curiosity of most public radio listeners

Rather than listing multiple composers or thoughts in a forward promo, why not mention one piece, composer or thought in a compelling way? A few examples:

Coming up this hour, “music that nearly got Mozart in trouble with the Pope.” (courtesy of Cheryl Dring)

Guitarist Sharon Isbin plays from her new CD next hour — and we’ll hear the four tracks she says provided “a delightful schizophrenic experience” in the recording studio.

Lang Lang’s favorite composer for melodies is also the composer he says makes his and all pianists’ jobs a little easier. Lang Lang and the pianist’s best friend coming up at 2:30.

It’s one of Gershwin’s best known and most popular pieces, but it’s also a masterpiece of procrastination — you’ll hear it right after the news from NPR.

You’ll hear one of the standards from the guitar repertoire coming up but with a twist. Guitarist David Russell plays it slower than most guitar players — with excellent results. (This and the preceding three examples are courtesy of David Srebnik.)

Some other reminders about effective forward promotion:

• Be strategic in placement.
• Don’t promote music that will be heard in less than a minute.
• Encourage listening into the next quarter-hour by promoting a piece to be heard in 10, 20 or 30 minutes.
• Be specific about the time when the music is on.
• Tell listeners the time at which they can hear the piece you are promoting.

I believe that if we consistently did a more compelling job of forward promotion, we’d stand a better chance of increasing average-quarter-hour listening, Time Spent Listening, and loyalty. And we’d create a more compelling, colorful, substantial, entertaining sound for listeners to enjoy!

These comments will hopefully begin a discussion about how to more effectively promote the music we all love. What are your thoughts?