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Music Research at Radio 1

3 Nov 2010 - Nigel Harding (Music Executive) explains how Radio 1 uses music research

Every week Radio 1 asks a panel of listeners what they think of the music they hear on the station. Using an online music research company, the Radio 1 Music Team selects the 25 biggest tracks from the playlist to be rated by 400 listeners between the ages of 12 and 30 from all over the UK (the largest such panel of any radio station in the country).

Each respondent hears a 20 second clip of a track's chorus and then we ask them a series of questions. Their answers tell us how familiar a track has become, how much the listeners like (or hate!) it, and whether they want to hear it more or less often. These responses help us decide which tracks should be played the most and, more importantly, when to stop playing them. The overall results are compiled into a weekly chart of our Top 25 songs.

Research is only ever used for tracks the playlist team has already decided to play - it doesn't influence the decision on whether to add tracks to the playlist in the first place. In fact, we won't research a track until it has been played between 50-100 times on air as we want to make sure our listeners will have heard it several times before we ask them what they think.

So why does Radio 1 use research? The most important reason is because it's the most accurate means of finding out specifically what Radio 1 listeners think about the music we play. The Official Chart is a good indicator of public taste but it doesn't tell the whole story as not every listener is necessarily a regular music buyer (for instance, compare the Radio 1 audience figures of over 11 million with the 157,000 people who bought last Sunday's No.1 single by Cheryl Cole).

An example of how revealing music research can be regards Mumford & Sons. The band reached no higher than No.31 in the Official Singles Chart in 2010 but have been one of the most-played acts on Radio 1 across the year. One of the reasons (other than the fact that we love them!) is because every one of those tracks we played has featured in the Top 10 of our research chart.

Of course, with 50 songs on the playlist we can't research all of them - and we don't want to. Part of Radio 1's mission is to push musical boundaries and whether or not a particular track researches well is irrelevant if the playlist team has chosen to include it simply because we consider it a ground-breaking piece of music that deserves to be heard.

In fact, it is not uncommon for the playlist team to make certain additions in the expectation that they will research poorly - and these are often the most exciting tracks for Radio 1 to play.

These are the 10 songs Radio 1 listeners loved the most this week: