Mark Ramsey: The End Of New Music Formats

Mark Ramsey

In a boldly titled blog post, MARK RAMSEY MEDIA Pres. MARK RAMSEY declared, "There Will Be No More New Music Formats." His reason: The music tastes of AMERICAN listeners -- especially Millennials --  are more fragmented and diverse, marginalizing niche formats.

"There has been no new youth-based format blasting onto the radio dial in generations, and I submit there never will be," he wrote. "And not just because broadcasters are reluctant to focus their attention on under-25 consumers (although that too), but because the tastes are so fractured among Millennials that there is no popular thread of music that isn’t already absorbed sufficiently well by an existing format. One of the consequences of infinite choice is that 'hits' become more important while niches splinter into an infinite variety of tiny slivers. And the more slivers you have, the less valuable any one becomes for a potential radio format.

"So music will go in and out of style," he concluded. "And adventurous programmers will pluck forgotten genres from the dustbin of radio history and wrap a tagline around it. Listeners will react -– for a while. Then the broader-based competitors will add in that missing element, whatever it was, to their variety-based mix, and the upstart specialist will begin to fizzle. Every radio station is a buffet, and you need plenty of variety to keep listeners coming back for extra helpings." Read the entire column here.

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