Changes to KB Country

As we move into February of 2023 a trend has developed for KBC that I need to address be it short term or long term. If we go back to October of last year the number of Country music submissions to the station has declined. The reason for this, well who knows. As the holidays approached its normal for some slow down with everyone. But this began before that period and has now continued into the new year where other submissions for KB Radio continue to rise in numbers.

there is no need for me to try and speculate on the reasons, it could be any number of things, from maybe just a coincidence to that fact that somebody had been promoting that i had shut the stations down. The bottom line is it has made me make some moves, that first and foremost will not involve shutting down the station. The stations listener numbers have not declined and in fact continue to rise, so whatever the reason for the other, we have the listeners.

So the first thing that has already happened is I have had to redesign the programming rotation for all music on the station. the music plays in a pattern designed by myself, and an important part of making that rotation work is the balance of songs in designated categories. Both stations I operate perform in a similar manner, although there are difference in categories and patterns. With the reduction in music submissions it becomes difficult and nearly impossible for me to follow the regular pattern of not just rotation but also play time and length of time a song will stay in that rotation.

With all of that in mind I have had to adjust the rotation pattern somewhat to maintain the balance I had previously created. With this in mind it means a reduction in Indie songs in some categories. the overall final result is that it reduces the number of Indie songs that will fit into the system and the rotation. I am sorry to say this has meant a 25% reduction in songs in the playlist/rotation on KBC. While this sounds significant in many ways it isn’t, with the reduced numbers of songs being sent to the station. For those that are concerned and think someone will get shortchanged, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact if numbers go up and maintain, than I will revert back to the previous system. For regular listeners, if you are going to listen for a change, be advised I made that change almost 1 month ago. lol It changed nothing in terms of sound of the station.

The other fallout from the fewer submissions has made the weekly countdown harder to maintain in its current form. I don’t create charts just for the sake of things, and want something that is a true representation and competitive in many aspects. However if there aren’t new tracks to add to the voting, being able to only put 27 or 28 songs on the voting list is useless and takes away from the authenticity of the chart. Its like the new world, nobody loses…. bullshit. As such for the time being I am also reducing the countdown from a weekly Top 25 to Top 20 songs. The same as the rotation if the submissions increase and stay consistent I will move it back to a Top 25.

To me there is no value in a chart with 25 songs if there are only 25 songs to vote on. these changes will not be short term, and if there is a sudden influx of submissions, I will be looking for long term stability. My goal will be to monitor and re-evaluate in 3 months or approximately May. At that time a decision will be considered, and I should state this, if the submission numbers continue to dwindle, things could be reduced again. KB Country Radio is not going anywhere and definitely not going off the air but I will continue as I have done from day one, to do my best to provide solid programming for my listeners. Most Indie Music stations are there for the artists, and that is where the main difference lies. I will continue to provide a platform for Indie Artists to potentially have their music played and aired, be it on KB or KBC. But submitting doesn’t guarantee getting played, however getting played does give you a massive listening audience in 170 plus countries around the world with more listeners, well we wont boast… lol

thanks for the understanding and any questions as always please reach out.

KB & KBC Charts The 2023 ReWrite

both KB Radio and KB Country have their own independent Top 25 chart. It is a weekly fan voted countdown, that is based around the countdown style of the past. In a nutshell, an artist or band releases a song, it enters the chart, possibly, climbs as high as possibly and then drops down and off. I have heard from many artists over the years they don’t like many of the online charts because many are strictly a popularity contest. there is at least one chart where the station owner has said publicly, “how do I make it each week? Oh I just pick 10 songs” This blog isn’t here to rip into any of those, as i always say, run your business the way you want. What i will provide for you here is a basic break down of how the weekly chart is calculated. I haven’t copyrighted anything but to be honest I wont post specifics, because I worked hard to develop and let others create their own process.

The first thing is to be nominated for the charts. Each station is basically the same so I will speak in terms of one, but it represents both KB and KBC. To qualify to be added to the nomination or voting list the song has to be played on that specific station. Not all songs played will make it to the actual voting list, but there is an option for other for voters, so if you favourite is played but not listed, feel free to write it in.

All songs are eligible to enter my charts once. I know many artists are releasing multiple mixes but we don’t get into playing a bunch of alternates nor voting for 5 versions of the same song. Plus what that means is once your song charts, peaks and falls off it is not eligible to re-enter. Many of these rules are based on how the old school charts operated but also the fact that fan groups now can very easily take control of voting if allowed. When you start with a rule like this, there is no question why no mater what a fan-base does why 10 songs from an artist aren’t on the top 25.

So we have the music that is on and eligible for each chart. The chart is built on a multi layered point system that makes the fan vote the biggest contributor but also maintains very tight controls. There are various layers of points given, based on where the song was the previous week on the chart, whether it was moving up or down and items like this. These provide the consistency week to week that makes sure, that a song moves in the direction it should be. As an example if a new song enters the chart and gets to position #20 but the following week, the fan voting dies off etc, there are parts built in to shall we say assist. You will see trends in voting where numbers go up and down, total votes that is, and maybe that song didn’t get the votes to climb. If other criteria work out and it doesn’t drop down to lower than #20 the next week, it has the ability to bounce back, However if it drops, its overall climb is over and it has peaked at #20.

What other criteria you might ask. So I have mentioned a couple layers of points. The main point gaining option for a song is in the voting. Here is where artists tell me they like how my chart works, because it doesn’t matter how big your fan base is. If you finish first in voting for the week you are awarded x amount of points. Every week it is the same value for first. If you finish second or third in the voting, you are awarded y and z in points. How this is a more even and fair evaluation is in any given week there may be 10,000 votes. the first place song in voting may have gotten 1500, as an example and second only 500. A huge difference in vote totals. This is where the imbalance can occur, but I believe in my calculations it is very evenly tracked. It doesn’t matter what the competition is if you finish first, its first, and second is second. In an Olympic race, it doesn’t matter if the winner finishes miles ahead of second and third, they still get the silver and bronze medals.

the last component is the industry insider assistance I get each week. In a group of five categories that will not be released songs are rated or graded on a 1 to 10 basis. From each insider this gives a potential point total of 50 points a song can earn towards their weekly total. Its a lot of work and I appreciate everyone’s help with this process.

The final part of the chart is the calculation of totals from each category. In the two areas that are not fixed numbers, the Insider rating and fan voting, I use 65% of the fan voting points towards the total and 35% of the insider towards the overall total. Thank goodness for spreadsheets and formulas because that makes the final job somewhat simple. I just have to enter the appropriate numbers and let it do its calculations. Then we sort the list to see who has the highest point total for the week, and that is our #1 song for the week.

I use the term old school because i think the current Billboard version of charts is basically crap. No disrespect to the many artists that appear on them, but a song will never debut at #1 on my chart. In the history of Billboard which is supposedly the bible for charts, 64 songs have debuted at #1. NOT 1 of them was before 1995. Not only that 27 different songs did so in the past 3 years. The first 27 debuts at #1 took from from 1995 to 2017. I digress, I think Billboard and their system is messed up, but what i do is based on their historical versions. If you want to see accurate charts look back in the 70s 80s and 90s.

That’s all of it in a nutshell. the voting for each chart goes 6 days a week up to midnight the day of the playback, and starts again for the next week at midnight after the countdown. You may vote for 1 or more song(s) your choice and you can vote once per day. The voting is tightly controlled and strictly enforced. I have used this rule since the beginning and some people don’t like it, but I stand by it. When we look at the voting, and find someone has tried to votes extra for their favourite song, I delete all the votes from that voter. I encourage everyone to understand this because its not just a matter of if I get caught I will still have my main vote. No, if you get caught you actually hurt the chances of your favourite artist. I have heard it all, including one artist who told me he was the only person who had a phone in his entire village of India and everyone in the village lined up every day to use his phone and vote for the song. I shipped him a 24 pack of TP and he chose to no longer appear on my charts or stations. Well it was a mutual decision, he said I was a f’n idiot and I said he was done. LOL

The chart is designed to be fun. When its broadcast on Wednesday nights the chat room is alive with artists having fun listening and talking music. Feel free to join us. the country countdown is moving to Thursday nights effective this year. Don’t miss that change of date if you are a listener.

Your music has been added to KB or KBC, Now what?

Its time for a refresher on what it means to have your music added to one of the stations. First and foremost no matter what any other station or podcast does, I don’t care. LOL Some others like me some others hate me and none of it matters. I program KB Radio and KB Country in very specific and professional manners, probably different than everybody else. In fact i know they are different because the music in some cases may be the same but the rotation patterns and clock are custom designed by me for each station specifically.

When your music is accepted you will receive an email acknowledging it. I try and answer every email, but I stopped answering duplicates, and those that don’t include music etc. I don’t want to be rude but when you get as many emails a month as I do, sometimes you just have to skip some of the less useful ones. Once you receive that email you will see it either says you are being added to the rotation or your music is being added to the playlist for the KB Indie Showcase.

The Indie showcase is basically a show that focuses entirely on Indie music. Now I don’t want to take away from any artist or any song because a lot of variables go into the decision of what songs I play and add. the first part of that is there are a limited number of spots for indie songs in the rotation as such. These rotation spots are different from the Showcase in that the music will play throughout the week mixed with other mainstream tracks new and old that make up the programming for KB Radio and KB Country.

As a kind of explanation one of the categories for rotation has 75 songs. but that doesn’t mean each week I add 75 new songs to that list. We play one song at a time from an artist, aiming for their most recent track ideally. Many indie artists release music like mainstream artists, and have campaigns and try and promote their most recent singles and album. That’s where we fit in programming wise, in that I want the most recent. Those songs that are added will then go into the rotation and stay there for about 60 days. Now its not always that cut and dried, and a number of factors can come into play that may extend it but that is the initial target. After 60 days if the artist has new music we look at adding it to the rotation and from there the previous song depending on how well it has done with listeners, on the station with the chart could move into a permanent fixture with other classics.

What it boils down to is about 10 to 15% of the music is replaced in each category every week with new music. the oldest coming out and newest coming in. Its the exact same as Terrestrial radio. Every song ever played doesn’t stay in their playlist. they will have it in the library, but only so many songs can get played every day. Depending on talk and commercials and other factors a station like mine will average about 370 to 375 songs played each day. They all have a ratio or formula for how much new music they play in rotations the same as I do. Except most terrestrial radio now is prepackaged crap by people with very little radio experience, but I digress.

What the bottom line is for everyone is that its a co-operative operation. I have artists who send me new music every couple weeks. I often will reply that I am adding a song and get another email with the words, here’s another one for you. I don’t want to sound rude, but I don’t want it. lol Not right now. Work with me. Keep an eye on dates, we all have calendars and send me new music in 6 or 7 weeks. Lets look at it and see about adding your next song.

I am going to say something now that I know one other station loves to poke fun at. I work based on demographics and numbers. I know who is listening to the station. I know the age group, I know how long they listen, I know if they listen at home or on the go. I know when there is a song they don’t like and they tune it out. I get that kind of data. I know every city and country where I have listeners, they are all documented and some listeners will tell you I know when they tune in just by a blip on a map appearing. I have said hello to them live on air as they sign in to start listening to the station. I also know that many businesses put on my stations as background music because its consistent and not offensive. I see that because its on and playing all day in their office, dental office, variety store, or their answering machine as background music. That doesn’t tell me who is listening at those locations, but you know what, they are hearing those Indie songs i play. And if another station who chose to block me many years ago and wants to state we don’t care about demographics just good music, wants to program their station that way, be my guest. Drive your car how you want. Cook your meals how you want. program you station how you want. But if they truly gave a damn about promoting Indie music as they say, they would want to work towards the same goals.

I have always believed in the idea I cant make everyone happy and there already isn’t enough hours in the day, so why bother trying. So if I happen to piss a couple people off along the way here, so be it. I had an artist once tell me in an interview one day she hoped to be interviewed by a real radio station in her home town. I cut that interview off and showed her that I have more listeners in one night than her “real” stations get in a month. The world is changing, music and broadcasting is changing, and the ironic part of that is that I am old school and doing it the way it used to be. This isnt Bob’s Podcast with 6 listeners and 5 of them are buddies of his. My stations had more than 1 million listeners last year. When I did the podcast where it all started I had 80,000 listeners in 10 months. Its not arrogant on my part. Trust me, I dont make a dime, and pay for everything out of my pocket. I work 60 hours a week keeping things going, but damn I love the music and the people, and apparently people like how I program the music.

A final thought is that I don’t ask people to retweet my posts or things like that. I get music in from some artists, and that is the last time I hear from them. I will play their song for 60 days, never hear a word and they are gone. So be it. I am programming the best music I can for my listeners. I am not programming for me and I am not doing it for the artists. I started to add up how much music was submitted last year and stopped counting. who cares, its not a contest. But I can tell you this as i write this today I have been working feverishly to catch up on music submission emails. So far I have gone through more than 300 songs today alone,(oh its the 3rd of January 2023) and yes it can be a mind numbing process. Some truly spectacular music was sent in. But of those 300 songs at this point, 33 will make it to the airwaves on one of the two stations. It is about 10% that will make it to air on average and we are a bit higher today. Of that small number only about 20 to 25% of those artists interact online on a regular basis. It doesn’t take a lot, I don’t ask a lot and just hope that people will treat me the way they want me to treat them. I want people to enjoy the music, put on the station and listen. For the artists, read my blog about submitting, and take a few minutes to understand how I operate. You want me to promote your music, know about you, talk about you, maybe interview you? Why is it you dont know anything about my station? Yes I know, lots of stations and podcasts to submit to and get to know. lol Btw if you did know about my stations and the practices maybe it would save you time from sending me the same email 4 times asking if I have had a chance to listen yet.

A final thought if your music doesn’t get added or maybe doesn’t make it to the rotation, it can be for a number of different reason. One of the first is quality, and that is a big one for me. But also it has to fit the formats. When people put on my station they know what to expect. So I don’t criticize peoples music and I have said it before, just because I don’t like something doesn’t mean a million other people wont like it. Who knows, so don’t let me or anybody else tell you your music isn’t good. If they offer advice for production that’s one thing, but truthfully there was a lady who had an internet station who liked to write people who submitted and tell them that they didn’t really have talent and should maybe stop making music. All I will say, is if there is a god, she got hit by a bus. She disappeared a couple years ago, so who knows. If you are making music and enjoying what you do, that’s all that matters. If along the way you pick up a few fans, that’s even better. Just keep doing what you are doing.

I think that’s it.. another rambling blog. but I hope it explains some things. after you read it, come back in a week, I may go back and edit some things…lol comments are always welcome.

The Weekly charts on KB Radio and KB Country Radio:Updated 2023

I have written about this but its time to post an update for the many new listeners and musicians. I operate two weekly countdowns of Top 25 charts one on each station. KB Radio airs on Wednesday nights during the Indie show and KB country will begin airing on Thursday nights beginning this month, January 12th, 2023. I am making the scheduling changes for several reasons, and hopefully in the long run for the better for everyone involved.

Qualifying for voting; To get on the voting list first and foremost you have to be played on the station. there is an option for write ins to add a track, but if we aren’t playing the song it wont be included. Take a look at how to submit and lets see about getting your music played on one of my stations. Songs that are in the rotation on KB Radio or KB Country qualify, though not all songs may be listed. While we program a limited number of songs from indie artists, to list all of them in the voting would to be blunt have too many names on the list for people to reasonably view and decide upon. What this means is that if a song is in the rotation but doesn’t appear on the voting list it can be a write in and make the top 25 on the station.

the chart itself is an old school chart that is calculated through a number of steps using a point or grading system. Songs get various points based on voting from listeners and ratings weekly by reviewers. There are other parts of the equation, but that breaks down into whether a song is new on the chart, where it was the previous week, if its on the way up or down and more. Please note, this chart does not allow for a song to enter and leave and re enter. Its a one shot deal. with the amount of music selected and as previously mentioned based on old school charts, we didn’t see Michael Jackson’s Beat It go to number 1, then drop off and then come back a few weeks later etc etc. What we did see was after that song peaked and worked its way down the label released the next single and it climbed the chart. You will find the same style of history of you review the history of our charts. An artist can have one track on at a time and when it drops off there next release is eligible to be voted on and possibly enter. Once a song has reached its highest mark, be it #1 or #10 or #25 if the listeners or voters don’t continue to give that song an upward push, it will begin to fall back down.

You may ask why all of this is made in this fashion. One of the biggest complaints I get from artists before they even look at my chart is they hate charts with stations because they are popularity contests. Artists with the biggest fan bases can control a chart. Lets be honest, look at Billboard and the shit they call a Hot 100 now. Some artists have 12 songs on the chart. Total, complete nonsense. With a points based grading system if you have a huge fan base and get the most votes in a week it means you get X amount of points. If the song in second place gets considerably less votes, it doesn’t matter, they got 2ND! and they there for get Y points. This is one way to even out and balance things for newer artists or artists without the same huge following. the other thing is that those fan bases could in theory write in 10 of the artists favourite songs and dominate the chart. Believe it or not, I have seen close to that. If that works for someone else’s station, its none of my business but its not our practice.

There also isn’t the ability for one song to climb and dominate for 10 or 20 weeks. I believe I have taken all circumstances of manipulation into account and under consideration. Voting is tightly controlled and cheating at voting is disqualified immediately. I don’t even comment anymore because cheaters will cheat no matter what you say, but it doesn’t get past our control system, and thank you for that awesome work.

You can go online and direct your fans to vote daily for their favourite song. Go to www.kbradio.online and click on the voting link. On that page they will find the links to everything they need. One final item we no longer post the voting totals, because it was found that it only encouraged the cheaters more. they would look and see their song was in second so go vote and do their thing to push up the vote total. Then the other fans would do the same. What you ended up with was what appeared to be a couple songs running away with totals and the race and to be honest it left many people wondering why bother voting for their favourites. Please vote, and know we do our best every week to keep it honest and fair and present 25 amazing songs on each show.

Any questions feel free to ask as always.

Who opened the doors to the nut house, and why are they coming here.

I originally wrote this a couple years ago. As you will see if you read it Sunny is included in it, so it isnt new. But I was going through my drafts in my blog file and wondered why I never posted it. Likely she said I shouldn’t. She always was the voice of reason of the two of us.

Is it a full moon?  Everyone knows that I have my way of doing things, that I think and attempt to be as professional as I can.  So when some of you finish laughing at that, I do work hard and try and maintain set standards for operations.  Than you have a week, or just a couple days like the past few and you scratch your head about what in the world is going on.

We are as busy as ever getting music submissions from artists, averaging 75 to 100 songs every day of the week.   We love the amount of music, but early on set out a simple method for submitting to the station.  We really only have one restriction, and that is if you want to send in an album or EP,  please indicate which song you want to promote and we encourage a second track in case we aren’t able to use the first track.  It is in the blog about music submissions which you can find here as well.  I explain it like this, and I wrote that before we were getting so many submissions, the time it takes to go through each song and the processes with that is the issue.  Each song that comes in has to be entered onto a list of music received, listened to, and than depending on what is happening set up with proper tags etc for broadcast, plus an email in reply to the sender.  Without listening to the entire song, giving it anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds, it still takes 6 minutes per song, or more.

A few weeks ago I was floored when an artist sent in an album, and I asked if they could let us know which song they wanted to promote.  I explained the time issue, and they responded about their lifes work into this album, and ripping me a new one because I couldn’t take 42 minutes to listen to his album.  I laughed and laughed and blocked his email and he can promote his music wherever he wants, but I have no use for him.  I grant you it may have been an amazing album, but I never listened at all.  I have talked about the way we handle music submissions with our weekly meetings before so I won’t bore you with that again.  But I will tell you that this weeks music meetings, over 4 days of work, I processed 182 emails and there were more than 500 songs in those emails.  Now every song didn’t take 6 minutes, because if an artist sent in 2 tracks in the email, than it was 8 to 10 minutes for that email.  But even at only 6 minutes for every email that is 900 minutes, or 15 hours.  I started keeping track of how long each email took, and discovered it just scared me.  LOL  I sat down at noon one day, and except for a couple breaks to grab a drink or snack, all of which I consumed while working, I spent 11 hours going through emails.

Now where am I going, this is all old news, but I had a good email this week, which i haven’t included in these numbers.  This artist said very few words in the actual email, but included a drop box link and the suggestion I could pick one I liked.  The drop box link was to their entire library which consisted of 180 songs.  LMAO   I am sorry to say this, but who in their right mind thinks this is a good idea?  The answer to the question is no, I didn’t listen to any of them.  I also didn’t reply to the email.

I than open an email from an artist who blocked me a couple months ago on Twitter.  He not only blocked me but also Sunny and one of the other KB Stations twitter account.  I did reply, and told him I wasn’t interested in someone who thinks its okay to work in this manner.  He had unblocked us to submit the music.  So he reached out to Sunny saying it was all a terrible mistake.  He meant to block another station that must have been beside us on the list.   I guess it was 3 times we were next to someone else.   He finally sent her a message saying, I went on a blocking spree.  Sorry.   Sunny is much nicer than me.   I sent his emails to the junk file, and don’t even read them anymore.  If I did reply it would probably be to ask him if it was the word OFF he didn’t understand.

My other favorite thing is someone tagging their music onto one of my Tweets.  I mean if you are going to post a Youtube link hoping we will listen, which we won’t by the way, don’t attach it to a Tweet that promotes another artist.  I asked for it to be deleted, and 12 hours later, they have tweeted 40 more times, and ignored my request.  The funny thing is any time in the past someone has done this, and I have gone to one of their accounts and attached something to promote someone else, they always get really pissed off at me.  Its a crazy double standard that i don’t understand.  But it is a good way to get blocked by us, because it is such a simple little thing, and if you are too ignorant to work with us on something as simple as that, than we have no interest in working with you on anything.

I don’t even know at this point if I will publish this.  I guess if you are reading I did, but it just seems crazy how everything happens all at once.  Its never just one crazy, its like someone opened the sanatorium doors and let everyone out.