Bad Bunny, Joe Rogan, and AI: 2025 Music and Audio Recap

Wrapped results are in! From Bad Bunny's streams to iHeart's 'Guaranteed Human' campaign, we dissect 2025's clash between music superstars, Joe Rogan's podcast repeat, and the fast-rising threat of AI tech.

The Broadcasters Podcast's 2025 Year of Music is here! We dive into the biggest stories that defined the airwaves and streaming landscape, starting with the year-end dominance of Spotify Wrapped and Apple Music Replay. Bad Bunny reigned supreme globally, while Rosé & Bruno Mars topped the song charts, and Joe Rogan once again led the podcast rankings, cementing the year's biggest stars.

But beneath the charts, a major conflict raged: the battle against AI music. We discuss iHeartRadio's firm “Guaranteed Human” stance and outright ban on AI-generated content, contrasting it with Warner Music Group’s landmark deal and settlement with AI music generator Suno, which now produces a shocking volume of music. This tension played out against our year-long discussions on the ‘New Music Drought,’ the ‘Superstar Slump,’ and the ongoing issues exposed by Billboard’s controversial Hot 100 chart rules.

Plus, we explore how traditional broadcasting is adapting, from the resurgence of rock radio (KROQ) to the launch of the BBC’s U.S. emerging-artist program. Tune in as we dissect a chaotic, chart-driven, and creativity-challenged 2025, and ask: Is there a future for human connection and creativity on the airwaves?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Podcasting since two thousand and five. This is the King
of Podcasts Radio Network, King of Podcasts dot Com.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
The Year of Music twenty twenty five, wrapped, recapped, and replayed.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
The King of Podcasts Radio Network proudly presents The Broadcasters Podcast.
Here is the King of Podcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Welcome to episode one four one five of The Broadcasters Podcast.
It's Thursday as a record here from Southmore, USA. We
have podcasts here with you, and we're gonna go ahead
and do a retrospective on music. But we're gonna talk
about it through the route of all the various streaming
services that are providing their year end review of listening

(00:51):
habits for everyone out there. So we'll look at what
the global, national American perspective is. But I want to
start off with my because I had a very interesting
list of music I listened to. Number one, I listened
on Spotify to one hundred and sixty four thousand, two
hundred and twenty eight minutes. The top five artists on

(01:13):
my list are all Denbo artists Dominican Denbo, because I
just it's a fascinating music and I listened to a
lot of it. But my top songs this year are
in this order. Number five, Black Black Paint with jump
Tona saying disco A Lignes with Nobrook Boys number four,

(01:33):
number three, Hear in Your Arms by Nathan dah and
Abby Flynn, Gabriella at number two, and Gnar Only by
Katsie take up the one in two spots on my
top songs list. Yes, I guess I'm a Cat's Eye fan,
not a you know, super fan or anything like that,
but I listened to a lot of their songs. I
enjoy the EP and I enjoy the videos on TikTok.

(01:55):
They're entertaining. What can I say, and let's put it
to you like this across the board, Spotify does a
great job of the rap stuff, and I look at
somebody that they had on here that is interesting to
go and look at for my own sake. I also
even like the fact that they now have what they
set up with their top songs. You're listening stats now

(02:18):
every week, so you know what songs you have been
listening to, even for this week. I mean, it's always
a new list that comes on, and I'm actually very
fascinated by what songs getting brought up here, Like even
right now, the top five songs I'm listening to right
now are all new songs. It's pretty fascinating. The week
before I was listening to all out of Lovis Dean

(02:39):
and most of her songs made it up on that
list as well, so like, yeah, there you go, that's
interesting and all that. So among the top artists that
reigned supreme on Spotify, Rap or Apple Music Replay, you
would have Bad Bunny, Bruno, Mars and Rose among the
artists who reigned supreme. So always the part where you
have the earlier chart run of artists from earlier in

(03:02):
the year, they had the longest run possible, so they
can also get a lot that happens. So Spotify presented
Wrapped and then Apple Music Replay also came out. I
mean even it was on Music Has their own service.
Noway did that their top Songs of the year for
the four time in his career. Bad Bunny is a

(03:23):
Spotify Global Top Artist for twenty twenty five, almost twenty
billion streams this year. And so we look at the
other artists that are on here top ten artists globally
on Spotify, you start off at number Tenda are heat
sing nine, are on a Grand de eight run an

(03:43):
album earlier this year, right or was it last year?
Bruno Mars seven, Kendrick Lamar six, falling over from his
album from last year, Billieve be Alish from her album
last year, Drake because He's always up there Weekend from
his album Hurry Up Tomorrow, among other music that's put
out in the last few years, and this bad catalog.
Taylor Swift is two with Life of the show Girl

(04:08):
and among her other catalogs as well. And Bad Bunny
his number one with his album that came out at
the start of the year. DeWitt dow Mas Photos DTMF
the top albums of the Global Era in Spotify, you
have Bad Bunny, umbaranot Oh, that's right, that's the name

(04:29):
of the album.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
That's what it was.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
So Kenneth Glamar was gen X I'm the Problem, Morgan
Walls eight, Alex Warren You'll be all right Kids seven, Mayhem,
Lady Go Got six, Sebody Carpenter Short and Sweet Is five,
Scissors s X Deluxelana for Billy Bolish says up Billy Olish,
excuse me, hit Me Hard and Soft three, K Pop
Demon Hunters two, Oh.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
There we go.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Wit dow Mas photos number one Bad Bunny, so Bad
Bunny actually had for his previous album Forgot that's what
it was, Okay, kind of confused me there.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
On the global.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
End of the Spotify chart for in terms of singles, Wildflower,
Billie Eilish ten, Gracie Abams, That's so True, nine, Kenny Lamar,
Luther eight, Golden Bond came up, Hunters Cast seven, Somber
Back to Friends six DTMF Bad Bunny five, number four,
Alex Warden, Ordinary three Rose Brundomars. I have Pitie and

(05:28):
billi Olish person a feather two dial with a smile
on number one across the board. But if you look
at the global two hundred that actually comes out. Yeah,
that with the smile was up there for a long time,
and Ordinary was also up there for a long time.
Just make it that point on the Apple Music chart.
You can tell that the audience plays a little bit

(05:49):
to their music where they're not so current in their list.
That's why there's so many songs that came from last
year that are still charting. So thirty for thirty says
at Kennered Glamar ten last year, Billy Oilish, Wildflower last year,
Weekend played by Cardi Timeless, Alex Warden ordinary that was

(06:10):
this year. That's what true, Gracie Abams last year, Birds
of a Feather, Billy Olish last year, Kennic Glamarre a
lot like us last year. That with a Smile last year,
Luther last year. Apitae was October last year, right, So,
and that caused some people to gun and stir up
the fact that oh, there's not a lot of new
music coming out. No, there's just a lot of new

(06:31):
music that might be disposable. And there might have been
some artists that made swaying wins with their music this year,
but you look at the year review, You're not gonna
get to those songs. That's just not gonna happen. Not
the way you would think about. Apple does some other

(06:53):
lists they have for their top one hundred songs identified
by the Shazam app, their Global Chart app, among other
things things.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
So that's.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
What they have, but it doesn't represent what music is
out there. And you have to understand that those lists
they have that is the global sense, that's the sense
of what people are listening to an Apple Music or Spotify,
but it doesn't represent the real public and the large
spectrum of music that they're listening to. Plus you have
to think about the fact of how much of that

(07:23):
percentage of music is new music. The listening age that
I was given to on Spotify this year was sixteen.
Because I am an avid new music listener, I listen
to a lot of new music. Even though I have
quite a few catalogs of a playlist of music that
goes back, you know, to the start of the rock
and roll era, doesn't matter. I listen to a lot

(07:45):
of music, a lot of new music, and I give
a lot of new music a new chance, and I
feel like I like to be the taste maker, So
I like to put my play lists up there, and
you know, see if people resconate and I see that
I get a few followers here and there on my
playlist on Spotify. If want to look at it yourself,
you can find me at King of Podcasts on Spotify,
or just find me on the website and you can

(08:06):
link to any of my playlists there Kingopodcasts dot com.
Now it goes for the podcast realm music and audio
come into the same category as we speak here, and
Joe Rogan is the number one podcaster once again and

(08:28):
still one of the most listening to podcasts in the
US on the app. For the podcast rankings, the criteria
they have is that users need to have listened at
least to one podcast or a minimum of sixty minutes
across three or more episodes or on three or more
different days, ranking based on total minutes listened. So this
past week, going view what theovon was second Mel Robbins podcast, third,

(08:51):
Call Her Daddy, four, Crime Junkie five, and one podcast
that made its way into the top ten this year
was Good Hang with Amy Poehler celebrity podcasts. When it
came to audiobooks, Spotify says that really the romance the
romance fantasy boom was undeniable in twenty twenty five, athors

(09:14):
like Rebecca Yarros, Sara Jay Moss dominating the global top
list and a lot of backlist titles also getting a
whole lot of reads or listens, and that Spotify says
users are embracing modern retellings of classic tales. And one

(09:34):
of the new features I talked about earlier, listening age,
which says almost sixteen compares your musical tastes to those
of your others and a user's age group looking at
the release years of the tracks you listened to most.
And they also gave top album results and their active
quiz about their top songs and visualization of how the
top five artists and someone else's ringing shifted from month
to month, which is really cool. You also have their

(09:58):
collaboration with rap parties you can go and you know,
enjoy the music together with friends and collaborated on those.
And there were a certain number of things that the
Spotify wrapped calculations gaged the Spotify in terms of music trends,
so let's go into those. They said that music fans

(10:20):
made bold choices. That's a pretty cliche kind of thing
to say, but in twenty twenty five, pushing the familiar
names and new heights, they went to pop, K pop
and country which surged cross genre collaborations, flourish and a
booming live landscape with a touch of social momentum shape
what broke through. They talked to three different people in

(10:42):
their department's Ronnie Hoe Hosts, a head of dance electronic Development,
James Foley, lead of Global auditorial strategy, both through on
the music editorial team. So they were talking about the
fact that first off, the globalization of K pop this year.
The impact of kpop Hunters put in groups like Hunters

(11:02):
and Soga Boys at the forefront of pop music culture.
Kat's Eye another group that became popular from a TV show,
Skyrocket at the stardom and recently kicked off the headline tour.
James here fully would say that the afrobeats movement is
not surprising, but it's continuing to grow, perhaps in the
ways that it which now permeates global music, has caught
many unawar and it's morphing out of its West African

(11:25):
roots into a stable of mainstream culture. The sonics are
also being adopted by certain genres and places for their
accelerating against reach. Yes, in Latin music, you hear a
lot of afrobeats Cappo Biel that are also interpreting afrobeats
of their own lens while collaborating with some of the
main stages of the genre. And they also mentioned there's
an Afrobatma playlist they also have which spot really spotlights

(11:47):
Latin American fusion or Latin African fusions and global afrobeats
to give you the full shift. Because afrobeats it's like
the new R and B as I said that before,
and I go back and look at what they did
this year and what changed. I want to play a
couple of clips about what I talked about when it
came to the music that's coming out, because it is

(12:09):
fascinating of K pop and afrobeats becoming very much in
the forefront of music more than ever. It's a wonderful
sight to see. It's really great to go and see
that this is happening.

Speaker 1 (12:25):
Now.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
I actually thought I talked about afrobeats very specifically earlier
this year, but it was actually last year I talked
about it. But I wanted you just give a few
points about what I said about afrobeats and the change
of music, the landscape of it last year when I
talked about this. So Aria Starr, Talin Tims each feel
like the Shurfower hits in the time when famous difficult

(12:46):
to quantify. And so these three artists releasing pivotal career
albums in the span of three months is a good
science crack along African music's class ceiling. Because this is
this is I mean the country of course taking over
the charts. Yes, that's important. Absolutely, Beyonce coming out, other
country record Zach Bryan coming into like superstar prominence right

(13:06):
now from his country career, Noah Kahn, you know, among others.
And then post Blonaw is going to have his new
album Against All Country, and f one Trollion is a
new album called and let Me tell You Yeah. Country
is the one of the big headlines right now in
mainstream music. But afrobeats, these three albums are some of

(13:26):
the best. That was June twenty twenty four. I said that,
and I think that afrobeats from that initial run that
people really got paying attention to afrobeats in America because
by that point Tyler, tams Ariastar, Berna Boy, among others,

(13:48):
you really started to feel that presence. Obviously Latin America
felt the presence, but you feel like the music per
me eating and breaking through the barrier outside of the
African continent and making its way around made a big difference. Now,
I'm not super deep into what's going on with afrobeats.
I just know what's in the in the purview right

(14:10):
now that's charting, that is getting significant airplay and just
getting significant noticeability across everything going on right now. I mean,
especially when I listen to all the music in the
UK when I hear the chart shows over there and
I hear the music coming into the forefront now and
then following along with somebody's artists because you know, you
fall them on social media, you say what they're doing,
and then you hear new songs and all of a sudden, Hey,

(14:32):
Spotify or Apple Music, they might might just go and
suggest something to a year and you listen and I'm like,
and so what happened this year? After those albums, we
started hearing collaborations because in the UK there's the song
the song Rated Dance from Dave featuring Thames that has

(14:53):
made a big deal. Tyler has been featured on a
number of songs right now, including her own EP that
she had earlier this year, which maybe didn't chart as
a lot, but it did make a big difference when
it comes to her streaming numbers. Chill Me Love was
a big song that we had this year and that
really did permeate it across. That's definitely an afrobeasts field

(15:16):
with the mc bees and Honey You had Shaken to
the Max, which was more of a reggae kind of
filter it, but still an afrobeats filter with Molly coming
in and being brought forefront and it just felt like
it opened the door where other stars are just working
together and what are we going to see from it?
And Toler got featured on so many different songs this

(15:38):
year and made a big difference. Now, just because the
audience in America has not accepted the cross stream crossover
appeal that she's gotten in every other country and every
other continent, that's a different story. Just because America is

(15:58):
not completely attached to it, that doesn't make a difference
at all. Dance music had a great year, a lot
of great music coming out as a result. The K
pop stuff. Yeah, certain audiences are not going to get
attached to it yet, but they Cassie with Air tour
right now, they're doing pretty well. They're getting people to
go watch, they got a lot of followers on social media,
their songs are doing really well. And continues to keep

(16:21):
putting out new music as well. And for Golden Hunterricks Mell,
They've been featured on Saturday Night Live, they were featured,
They're gonna be in the New Year's Rock and Eve
for Ryan Seacrest coming up at the end of the year.
So much more. And I think that this kind of
music will end up moving a little bit forward into

(16:45):
the forefront because we need new music to come in
and maybe some new genres breaking through will help out
country habits here last year big time, and this year
Morgan Wallen controlled it all for the most part, thirty
seven songs on an album, and he really just broke
through the mold. That's what it came down to for him. Now,

(17:11):
you talk about rock having its moment influencing country music,
and you remember I talked to Dave Pratt a while
back about all the songs that were coming out at
that time, how country is a new rock and it's
amazing where on this program I've had things like that
come up and it comes to life. It's almost like

(17:33):
we hear about it and it's the truth and here
you go. But we can also say that globally, we
had a lot of new artists that came into play
that really gave us a lot of pop and a
lot of different feels to things. So you have Olivia
Dean that is now seven songs on the Spotify Global Chart,

(17:54):
Alex Warren Somber also making big, really just being discovered
and being brought to mainstream stardom overnight success just like
that UK garage crossing over into the US. We had
a lot of things where Sammy Virgie girls don't sink

(18:15):
being noticed here, a lot of emerging artists coming from
the UK. And when they asked about how social platforms
helped in music trends, they said that subsidarian Africa continues
to showcase its cultural impact with afrobeats merging with Latin
sounds after house instrumentation, weaving into pop and dance production.

(18:38):
Afrobeats is all over the places, so many different artists
out there that they're really putting into that Hugal big
time into it zerb among others. And when looking at
the upcoming year, we've been giving predictions. They said that

(19:04):
there's a new generation of truly borderedist listeners that who
do not care about long held boundaries of language, lo location,
that we might see more Asian artists breaking through globally
through a broader mix of styles and sounds, and that
there are certain aggressive sounds we've been listening to now
that are gonna infultate manustream even more. That's the predicutas

(19:26):
they have off of that. Actually, US put a story
out about how the real attention for music industry is
really encompassing in Spotify. Rap raps is not a cultural
holity that is now doubling as a window into a
music ecosystem over overwhelmed by volume. Through my algorithms are

(19:48):
reshaped by AI. So one of the people they speak
to here is Jeremy Morris, a media and cultural studies
professor at the University of Watched, Wisconsin, Madison, saying that
streaming is a new record store shelf and algorithms now
determine which artists get the best placement. Some of the
points that he makes here is that people like to

(20:09):
hear the industry is failing, but the truth it's more complicated.
Technology reshapes distribution, not demand. Streaming is simply the latest
retail model, a place where Spotify's interface operates like shelf
space in a record store, determining which artists are discovered
and which disappeared. Clubs, leaderboards, listening age being designed to

(20:33):
gimify fandom keep Spotify es central to how people identify
their musical identities. He says, the industry is not collapsing,
but it's evolving. Every era feels like crisis, but the
tension is always the same. How do artists get heart well,
what did I read the other day? The music industry
is still banking in seventeen point one million, one point

(20:54):
seventeen point one billion dollars. Now, that's as a stat
that I pulled out from an article that I used
for an interview that I recorded earlier today with Raffy Gomez.
He hosts dance Ateria on Twitch Live every night or

(21:15):
week night rather and also did a show called The
Groove Boutique, which was featured on up to forty radio
stations around the country syndicated, And he did that in
early mid two thousands, and now the Dance a Teria
show he continues to do now today and it's a
big deal. So it's a great interview. I'm gonna be
playing right around Christmas time. Just make sure to go

(21:36):
and listen to it here. Just like I did the
interview with Ralph Sutton during Thanksgiving, I wanted to do
some extra interviews just to get and fil for some time,
because we know that the end of the year gets
a little bit tougher to start finding new stuff to
talk about because there's not much else going on. Hollywood
basically takes time off, and everybody else in media takes
time off for the most part except for yours truly.

(21:57):
So Spotify Wrapped show that personalization is winning. Platforms are
setting the rules and creators are forced to reverse engineer
the algorithms to survive. Now, I'll talk about this already
with other guests, about the fact that content creators are
beholden to the algorithm. But it's a matter of that
if you're able to go and be a content creator
and find yourself.

Speaker 1 (22:17):
To break.

Speaker 2 (22:22):
That mold of being in the algorithm. It might be
the algorithm that brings you to virality, but that is
what you do with it, to diversify yourself to be
more around an entertainer, singer, whatever. That's got to be
something you gotta do. Just sex celebrities now they have
to go and find a way to go ahead and
do something else. They're not getting booked or auditioning or

(22:44):
testing out for movies. And they go on to say
here that the truth of the modern music economy, the
most challenging part of the job isn't making songs, it's
being seen. It's true because I can find new songs
regularly on TikTok every Thursday night as we lead up

(23:04):
to new music Friday and everybody looking to see what
songs are out there. You see the teasers out there regularly,
and then you hope to go and find those songs
in your algorithm that are going to be found to you.
Because there's the algorithms that are played for the artists,
hoping that that will resonate to the fans that are
going to find them. But then there's the algorithm that
us as consumers that go through and here in order

(23:25):
to go and find meus that we're going to enjoy. Now,
I want to go ahead and look back at the
year that was music and what I talked about here
on the program and just get into that part. First
part was my ongoing subject, and at this point at
the end of the year, I feel like that radio
is just not doing the job that its supposed to

(23:46):
do to be that takes Baker and I talked about that,
and you know, I'd like to go and hear back
what I said and see if anything that I came
across with might have been a prediction or might have
held up over the year. I want to go and
talk about the fact that we're about the rap of
the month of January and we are pretty well behind

(24:08):
on music. Of course, there's new songs that come out
of your week. I mean I look forward to Thursday
nights where I get to go ahead and go to
my Spotify and I get the download music or right
not download a new music to my playlists right, and
I do it, and it's one of my favorite things
to do all week. Great way to start the weekend.
But man, there's just not anything that really stands out.

(24:30):
There are new songs that are just thinking. There's so
many songs that lingered around from last year after the holidays.
You see the song's reset. We're not a full reset now.
And the only thing that's really stood out that has
made a real dent into any of the charts at
all is a new Bad Bunny album. And that's where

(24:51):
we were at that point last year because there wasn't
much else to go with. That was like the one
album that came out was like the first album bomb
that really took across and it stayed on there for
a good four months. Like I saw, it was really
clear in that. So this year, for whatever reason, there

(25:12):
weren't a lot of major label drops, not until the
end of the year, and those didn't do well. We'll
talk about that in a moment. But one of the
things that did not help matters at all was the
Billboard Hot one hundred because I had talked about it
so many times. They were losing the pulls to people,
and one of the things we were all competing about

(25:33):
was the recurrency rules, and that was going on in
the spring. Radio doesn't take care of itself. Corporate radio
is irresponsible. They're not doing anything right now to serve
the public. If you look at the radio stations at
what they're playing right now, it's saturated. Where certain new

(25:53):
music is out there on a regular basis. Look at
how many songs we get on Spotify on a regular basis,
or Apple Music, how much new music Doul we get regularly.
Those are the new songs. You have to ask yourself,
why in this current age are we having an issue
where Billboard and the radio mythology that comes with it
that is so weighed heavily on the Why is control

(26:15):
so much is simply go to keep certain songs at
the very top of the top ten while the songs
never getting close. Of course, it took a while for
the recurrency rules to change, which was a good thing,
but we were like a stagnationian and partially radio airplay
was a culprit, but we didn't see much change going

(26:37):
on that the reflection of what people were listening to.
We see what Spotify raps and Apple Music replay. Obviously
some of the tastes of music that's out there wasn't
just what everybody thought. It was like there was certain
artists that you see where they were at the top
of the charts, but it's like, look when you look

(26:57):
at some of the artists that were still on the
they're not in the Spotify rap We're talking about Benson Boone, Schaboozie,
Teddy Swims, Chapel Rowan that was all last year, and
Serena Carpenter. There was some rollover because of what happened
from the year before, but Short and Sweet or A
Man's Best Friend came out only into what March or April,

(27:21):
and then we got to that. But like other than that,
we were stagnant. We had so many songs that were four, six,
eight months on the charts and did not change. It's
either radio changes or Billboard has to make the change,

(27:42):
and I don't know if they want to make the change.
I think the one they need to do if they
can make any changes right now, is the recurrence rule
needs to change. There needs to be room for the
songs that have been on the charts for so long.
You know what you want to put into a different
chart and current and put it out there so it
can be no you got the Global two hundred, use that.

(28:03):
So that was April fifth when I did that episode,
and look, six months later, I got my wish and
we talked about that, and that was a wonderful thing.
I'm glad that they finally got to that part because
then you can see other songs finally make their way
up to charts, and then the algorithm. You know, it's
not just the algorithm that people need to be worried about.

(28:24):
I like the idea that if people are still trying
to fight to get onto Billboard and get on that chart.
I think that's important and I hope they figure out
what to do with that. But nevertheless, we know that
radio just wasn't paying attention, and I talked about that
as well in the summertime. We talked about it. When

(28:47):
it comes to the top ten songs of all time
on the Billboard Hot one hundred chart at this moment.
Four of those songs come from the period of twenty
nineteen to twenty twenty four. According to the new the
current methodology of the charts. Number one is blinding lights
in all of the top ten songs of all time,

(29:11):
the longest running songs of all time. A bar song
Tipsy by Shaboozie is number three on that chart, Stay
is number eight, and Luke Control is now number nine,
and a Kitler run just to be by the way
as a song Stay if you want to remember what
it was, thank you yes when those songs and lose
control right now is at ninety one weeks. That songs

(29:33):
are allowed to be on the chart for more than
two years, it's ridiculous. So that was May sixteenth. I
talked about that, and that was the part where we
should only have to go and see a song make
its run on the hot one hundred, maybe up to
a calendar year at the most. But to see a

(29:53):
song just transition and just keep being added on there
for longer than that.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
I mean.

Speaker 2 (29:58):
Of course, there are some songs that if you wanted
to have them recurring, they would still on there, stay
on there forever. But the rules didn't have to go
and create that so much. But streaming caused it to
happen that way because streaming will still weigh in certain points,
and then radio thinks, well, streaming is still having all
these songs played, so radio should do the same thing.
That was their thought process. It didn't really work that way.

(30:23):
So radio and its control and the power graph, they
want to have these corporate radio companies that they want
to be able to have the ownership caps drop so
they can get more stations and more property and to
own more of everything. They just don't care what they're
doing to leave awaken the track. They just want to
leave everything just damaged, and corporate just wants to own

(30:44):
more to make more. But we know the corporate system
will not do anything to actually maximize these stations for creativity,
for the purpose of serving the radio audience, not just
the audience existing, but about the audience that could be listening. Yeah,
they're not gonna worry about the younger audience. I'm basically

(31:06):
just relegated, and I'm just going to accept the fact
that you're just not going to change that. There are
no enterprise stations that are going to go ahead and
do anything to help build that route. Maybe a serious XM.
They do the TikTok radio. Otherwise, no nobody else is
going to do that. Radio is not going to have
that opportunity, and I think the ship is selled now.

(31:26):
I did try to go ahead and you know, call
it out throughout the year and throughout the years, but
at this point it's just not going to make any changes.
We can't say much about it at all. That's okay,
We'll live with it. Among other things, we talked about
Morgan Wallen and the chart busting work that he did
on the Hot one hundred because of the fact that

(31:48):
we had all the stagnation on the chart. So Morgan
Wallen was able to make a big impact in twenty
twenty five with some of the songs that are coming
out that some of these artists that are becoming very
popular getting major label or just some major mainstream success.

(32:11):
That pop radio is trying to go ahead and engage
the listeners of these competition shows thinking they could still
go that that's a twenty year old format. This is
where pop radio just can't be alone by itself because
it really needs to have something more, Which is why
I've always said for years that pop radio just can't
be pop radio alone anymore because it doesn't have enough

(32:33):
juice to withstand a format. I talk about this on
my Wrestling Is Real podcast that now WWE is not
really creating storylines for their characters, their superstars. That's something
they don't want to do. They want to just let
the fans determine how things are being presitioned. They would

(32:56):
rather have the fan feedback. They rather have social media
do the motion the hype for certain artists. So when
an artist gets very popular in music, the fans for
the artist will make as many videos as they want
and do whatever they can to help position that artists
to get noticed more. Katsi is a great example because
when their songs came out, it wasn't even so much

(33:19):
that you had a couple of songs that came out
from last year that didn't make a big dent, but
people were kind of paying attention to it. And then
this year they put out their EP and they put
up the song Gnarly and that just like shook everybody
out because they were kind of traditional kpop to start

(33:41):
off with, and then here we go, now they're trying
to change up their sound and really throw something out
that it's going to say like, well, that's not what we expected.
It was an earworm. People might have not liked it,
but you can't control it. You can only help to
contain it. And people realize, oh, this song made it.
People were still listening to it, obviously I did, and
the Gabriella came out, which is much more of an

(34:03):
appealing song. And right now that song Katia is to
go ahead and do very well on the Spotify chartists
in the top twenty and still holding in just outside
the top forty right now Billboard. So it's getting its
run and Cat's I think, is gonna get even more
presents because I think that's just an appealing pop group
that you're gonna see more of. It's gonna break them

(34:26):
all to what a Fifth Harmony's done. I wouldn't be
surprised because K pop doesn't have that doesn't need to
have its moment. Beatus might have been the one that
really got the mainstream up for it, but like there's
room and I think the female artists can bring a
lot of space into it, like just there's a handful

(34:46):
of artists out there that they're really doing it. Then
there was something about recession pop. I talked about that
came out of all of a sudden, And the fact
is that there were a lot artists that they get
re recognized once again, and you can see it in
the Spotify Global two hundred that there are certain artists

(35:07):
that will be out there and all of a sudden,
Oh look, you're hearing songs from ten years ago, and
all of a sudden, like there's a renaissance for Rihanna
music from her early part of their career, and then
songs start going viral once again. It just kind of happens.
Radiohead gets that feel to it, they're getting some of that,
cold Play gets some of that. It's very interesting and

(35:29):
there's a concept to it. And I talked about that
also in the summertime. It was twenty years ago. We
all were buying CDs. If you wanted to buy them
at full price, and you wanted to buy a new
album with twelve fourteen fifteen songs on it, you're paying
sixteen ninety nine seventeen dollars for a new album. And

(35:51):
we paid for it, and it wasn't a bad price
for us. I mean, it was a little pricey, but
we're like, yeah, we're gonna buy it, and I can
tell you I went to spect your peaches, and I
definitely would spend I remember spending hundreds of dollars on
music to the point of every month roughly, because when
there was new music that came out, we would find
what was gonna play on our CD players and we
did it. And that was what a lot of younger

(36:15):
listeners now and younger consumers, they don't know what it's
like to be on that because it was what twenty
years ago that we started getting into napster and peer
sharing and all the downloadable MP threes that can get.
The thing is too, is that people will go back
to previous music as well, because when they learn about

(36:35):
the fact that we all used to buy this music.
Straight up, we did not have subscription service like Spotify
or Apple Podcasts to do this with, or YouTube music
for that matter, Amazon Music. We were all buying individual
albums or singles, singles a couple of dollars a pop
albums up to seventeen bucks or more for box sets

(36:57):
or whatever else they're gonna do. We all bought into
it and that was a big deal and there's quality
behind the music because it was also like when you
have music that was being generated for the purpose of
sales as opposed to streaming. Big difference. So here's what
I said about recession pop. Recession pop is referred to

(37:20):
the Great Sity recession of twenty eight to twenty twelve.
It's a distinctive genre characterist right by U fok, high
energy and escape as qualities, which was pretty big when
times are tough. So the escape is the music. The
late seventies, when disco music became very popular, that was
one of those things where people really got into you know,

(37:43):
going into out of the clubs, getting out there, shaking
it all out and just trying to get, you know,
shake the stress and anxiety away. In the eighties we
had more into house music and eighty and the start
of em safety goes into the really into the early
two thousands also, you know, right around nine to eleven
all and then we had another recession, and then we

(38:04):
had again twenty eight twenty twelve. It was one of
those things where consumer behaviors are evolving, economic anxieties were
in place, and it's just the way that pop music
changes and it so there was that part that we
saw that when you would see artists like Lady Gaga
or Katy Perry and then just like some of the
inspiration of music that's coming out and where artists like

(38:28):
Tate mccrayer's Britecarpenter got their inspiration from and what they
took and where they went with it. It was a
fascinating part. It was just so evan to go back
to previous music because again there was a lack of
new music out there that really resonated with a whole
lot of listeners, not much of it. It was a
big difference, a big deal to that. And then into

(38:53):
the fall we had Kate Pop Demon Hunters that I know.
In the summer, it game became a pretty big deal
on Netflix. But it's continued to be the phenomenon that
is today. And the sequel movie is gonna be coming
on twenty twenty nine. They're already gonna get working on it.
But I talked about that in the fall, and most
interesty reservers would say that by most meacious Golden has
been the most popular song in the country more than

(39:14):
just two weeks. It was held back because the success
was due to streaming and it was getting very little
air radio airplay. But Golden is Dow getting airplay, and
that's where radio has to kind of finally pay attention
and say, oh, we know what, you got to start
playing this song because they have to. And just to
keep in mind, these songs have only been on the
charts for nine weeks. But as we always talk about,

(39:36):
radio is always behind the times. There's the algorithm we've
talked about before where eight to twelve weeks is as
soon as you're going to catch certain songs making it
onto radio. Just how late they run to the game
unless they see if it's an absolutely bonafide song. So
radio and our program directors there were obviously not feeling
it thinking that they could go ahead and take a

(39:57):
chance on Golden being on the radio on a radio
station playing it as part of the rotation. They didn't
think it was possible. They didn't trust it. Nine weeks later,
they have no choice now whether to start putting it in.
So that happened and K Pop, I think, even if
this is an animated series, the music resonated so much

(40:18):
and I think there's going to be now more of
an appetite for that kind of music. I believe that's
really going to happen. Now we go into September October
and we had artists coming out with albums. Doja Cat
came out with an album, Cardi B came out, Lady
Gaga among others, and Lil Wayne came out with an album.

(40:42):
I was like, Wow, look at all this happening here,
and there was a superstar slump and I talked about
that into the fall and not surprised by it. I
can tell you exactly what happened with Dojacat. The problem
with her is that she alienated her audience. Forget that
long ago that she really bashed back of their audience,

(41:02):
because then she decided to go on this other route,
a little more demonic. Stop with the wig, stop with
the glam, because she didn't like the objectification of her. Now,
I'm not saying anything wrong about that, but the thing was,
you know, when we saw how she looked and say
so and we see her in other songs, you know,
planet her was a completely different vibe and for whatever reason,

(41:23):
you know, it all changed for her. Kiss Me Moore
was a great song, was and like and she was
doing just fine. She had a song on the album's
out soundtrack, and then there was just a point before
Scarlett comes out that she was going after the fan
base yep, and it's amazing like that and Cardi B

(41:45):
just alienating and not forgetting. Also at the same time,
we were also looked about the fact that we had
that one moment. It figure it was October November where
we didn't have a rap song chart in the top
forty for the first time since nineteen ninety since bismark.
He's just a friend. Then I said to this about

(42:05):
the record labels, So the market is in disarray overall.
You're looking at the fact that celebrity power remains immense
but still increasingly volatile. Well, Taylor Swift, you know, it
doesn't matter. She can put on a bad album, It's
gonna sell. That's just the power that she has. But
those that were giants in the space, you would think, man,

(42:26):
these are can't miss Little Wayne Doja cat did not work,
could not crack nine year stream counts that define modern
mega hits, poor production choices, inconsistent artistic direction. And so
there's all that going on, and it's all hurting across
the board. And Taylor Swift right now her album, you

(42:48):
would think that most of the catalog will normally go
and stay up in that top one in the Hot
one hundred, but it's starting to go in erode. Only
a couple songs really stood out that people are still streaming,
along with Open Lighte and Fate of Aphilia. Life of
a show Girl did not really hit there. Elizabeth Taylor
did not stay up. Not a lot of staying power

(43:08):
for those songs. Just moves along there, and that's all
we're getting from that. Then we talk about the recurrency
rules and the change it made to that, and it
was an important thing. Radio is probably not going to
change those results of this, but the recurrency has helped
out it. Just also they did it in a short
amount of time. Now we got the holiday songs on

(43:28):
the chart. That's not going to change anything about recurrency
because those songs just come and go for four months
or for four weeks or whatever and they're going away
and that's it. But the recurrency rules did happen. So
I give credit to Billboard. For Billboard they have to
play every industry nice, so streaming radio records, they all

(43:49):
had to play ball with them. So this is a
change that could be mediable, pliable, and makes sense because
they're not going to put priority on stream yet. Over
radio records. You're just not going to do that radio.
I mean for radio, airplay records, for record sales. That's
the metrics by which radio records are their livelihood. You know,

(44:13):
the build are going to have airplay and music. I
mean for them, Yeah, they think the advertisements are important,
but on the music radio stations maybe a little bit
kind of sort of they have to go and worry
about the music they're playing. It's important because the methodology
still holds up for radio records to be conceivably important

(44:33):
metrics right towards the score that's given every week.

Speaker 1 (44:37):
Now.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
I said that, and then I also said this. Even
I have had to go ahead and kind of take
myself back with Bob Pitton because of the fact that,
I mean, he's a CEO that's done things where on
the podcasting side, yes, he has made in runs, but
he was never going to fix the radio side. We

(44:59):
just need to make our So it's clear about that
these cuts and these constant changes down with radio. Even
I have to be a little bit more grounded on
the fact that he can't fix this. And it's amazing
that I've evolved my opinion all this year to finally
get to this point because it's true. Not much else

(45:20):
I can say about it, but it's a fact of
life now and it's unfortunate we got to this point
now in terms of music and what we had. We
also know about Olivia Dean. That was the last thing
I really talked about when it came to music this
year on the program. But it was a fascinating year.

(45:40):
I mean, we know that the music did not make
much of an impact like it could have on a
mainstream perspective or a crossover perspective. It did not happen.
But that's what's gonna happen. But let's look at what
we have for next year. An interesting story BBC Radio
at BBC itself the launching a US version of their

(46:01):
Emerging Artists program called Introducing in America, gonna be presented
to college radio stations. The American program will be launched
in Tennessee starting already this Friday, December fifth. BBC has
partnered with college radio stations the Spotlight emerging musicians from
the state and the UK. A monthly show titled BBC

(46:22):
Introducing in America will the first Friday of each month
and originate from the rock WUTK University of Texas and
Knoxville and two University or University Texas seniors will be
hosting the program and the program is going to highlight
independent artists from Tennessee while introducing one UK artist for

(46:44):
episode of American Listeners. The first who came position to
be feature will be necar Wood, who first was supported
by BBC Introducing in twenty twenty two performed to Glastonsbury
in twenty twenty five. Now keep this in mind that
the Introducing program, starting in two thousand and seven, allles
independent musicians to upload tracks for consideration across the state
of local national programs.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
In the UK.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
It's given their chance to recruit new talent and there's
a lot of artists that you hear about in the
UK that have made their way through this program. Because
in the UK there was a time where you'd have
certain artists that they would be funded for their artistic
creations of what they're doing, they could actually get grants
for themselves to go move forward and then be featured

(47:29):
on the BBC. Other college stations in Tennessee and are
supporting their program include WVCP for Volunteer State College, WUMC
for Milligan University, the Perch at the University of Texas
A Chattanooga, WTTU at Tennessee Tech, the w EETs at

(47:52):
East Tennessee State, the WMTS Middle Tennessee State University, and
WUTM the Hawk for the University of Tennessee Martin. Interesting
they decided to go and put it in Tennessee for
Nashville for Music, Row and BBC doing this right here.
Here's what they say about this. Kelly Betts, who's the
editor of BBC Introducing, says nurturing and spotlighting new music

(48:13):
across the UK has been one of the highlights of
my life. I'm so excited to take Introducing across the
pond to see who we can uncover and support in
the US and what opportunities this brings to the US
artists alike. Well, the most important thing is a chance
for independent American artists that are not going to get
the rub here in America to get their chance to

(48:34):
be noticed in the UK. First, we had a lot
of artists that had more prominence in the UK before
they got popular in the US. There used to be
a thing so often that happened. Blannie is a great
example of an act that really popular over there and
then finally made their way over and crossed over. And

(48:56):
there were other artists that we would hear about and
they would make their way over to the UK, getting
noticed and then make a presence and do something more.
So I can't wait to go and hear what that's
gonna be about. That's gonna be a fascinating story about
the BBC and what they're doing with this. So I'll
keep an eye on that. That's gonna be fun to
go and listen to. I will keep that and check

(49:17):
that out and hopefully get a chance to report about
it later on about this with all of you. There
was a story that came out a couple of weeks
ago before I had the interview with Ralph Sutton that
I aired last week or two weeks, you know, last week,
and it was about k Rock in Los Angeles and

(49:41):
the change they made to go and get that station
back where it was now. Keep done to my station
that is been a perennial, legacy, heritage rock station. They
play older music for the most part, but they also
I guess they features of new artists. But they used
to be a station that was an enterprise. They used
to go break new artists all the time. Variety of

(50:09):
magazine actually talked about the end of the k world
of the four famous k Rock as we know it,
because five years ago they had blown up their morning
show Kevin Eban have been for a long time, but
now there ratings to come back back up. There a
number two station in Los Angeles. They're getting at tremendous

(50:32):
boost of ratings in the morning with their klient Ali
show hitting the best numbers ever. Their VP of programming
is Kevin Brothery s your VPR programming and saying those
dark times in the station, many people thought it would
ever come back, that K Rock was dead, but here
we are five years later. We've come back and we're
bigger in terms of ready success than we have been

(50:53):
in fifteen plus years. And one of the things that
helped with listenership was the fact that Kevin Ryder returned
to the station. Now he's working afternoon drive, and this

(51:18):
is after he was a go five years ago. And
yet Sugger also rejoined the station once again for regular shifts.
That's her long absence, so bringing some of that familiar
talent back over made a big difference for the station.
So it really was a talent that really brought people
back that a station and that rock stations actually are

(51:47):
getting a little bit of a renaissance, honestly, relaunching Live
one oh five and was this going twenty twenty three,
Kimils Media bringing back that in NX in Atlanta, when's
in Canada. CIMX or eighty X, which is a rock
pioneer in Detroit, returned after five years. So there are
certain stations that are just realizing, well, we need to

(52:07):
bring these rock stations back. What else you gonna do?
Important story from iHeartRadio. iHeart says they're gonna be doing
what's launching what's called the anti AI Guaranteed Human Campaign.

(52:28):
They're gonna promise that iHeart and all of this radio
stations will not feature any AI generator music, any iter
AI generated content as well. There was a study released
by the company last month that indicated eighty two percent
of customers worry about AI societal impact. Nine to ten
believe it's important to know that the media they consume
is by a real person. So they plan to go

(52:55):
and do that and make it a big thing. So
they have a trademark registration on the Guaranteed Human term,
and the company will not allow any AI usage over
the in the radio stations. It will continue to use
artificial services for backend purposes, though that's the plan. I

(53:21):
didn't talk about the fact that Orner Music Group stroke
a deal with the AA company Suno for the video content,
and the copyright lawsuit that was being set against that
AA music generator has been dismissed. There was another story
that came up about Suno creating an entire Spotify catalog's
worth of music every two weeks according to a pitch

(53:46):
deck that's being used for Suno to raise two hundred
and fifty million dollars of CAP money. Of course, a
couple of other stories want to bring to as well.
It was a story that came out from Neneman Lab
that talk about AI transcription and translation and journalism really

(54:06):
reveals a low resource language gap. The Center for News,
Technology and Information. They did fit divis studies review the
Divice studies to better understand the state of AID translation
and transcription and journalism. The top line findings they had
was there's a major divide between acuccessibility and accuracy of

(54:27):
AI transcription and translation tools when they're used for English
and other dominant languages and when they're used for languages
that AI researchers have termed low resource. Low resource languages
referred to those that have been comparatively little digitized text
on the web able to train models. So even some

(54:48):
of the most spoken languages in the world, like Urdu,
are considered low resource. So language barriers gonna be a
problem with all that's going on as well. Interesting Now,
we'll keep an eye on this as well, But there's
also the talks where Warner Brothers Discovery is now taking

(55:11):
bids to be acquired paramount as offered several deals. Now
Netflix is getting a real push on this, but there
are people in Hollywood that do not want to see
Netflix go ahead and pick up Warner Brothers Discovery, which
would be the streaming and the linear services of the
offer and the movie studio, to the point that a
consortium top industry players setting an open letter full of

(55:33):
alarm to Congress about a potential economic and institutional shut
melt down in Hollywood if Netflix succeeds in this effort
to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery. And apparently Netflix has put
out a cash deal to buy it out. A number
of prominent filmmakers are part of this group that are

(55:53):
trying to go ahead and stop Netflix from buying because
Netflix could stand to destroy the theatrical film marketplace by
escalating or eliminating the amount of times Warner Brothers films
could play in theaters before hitting and combined Netflix HBO
streaming platform the new Netflix. Current proposal if this were

(56:15):
to happen is that Warner Brothers movies would have a
theatrical window as then as two weeks of exclusivity before
moving in the streaming. We don't even know how many
mo theaters would even carry it right now, Knives Out
three is about the going come out, and I think
it's going out into a thousand theaters. I think it is.
I can't find a theater close to me to watch it.
On December twelfth, The Stranger Things Finale is being put

(56:39):
out in five hundred theaters around the country on like
one night, and that's it. I can't find any mood
theater nearby to watch it there either, And I would
go and buy tickets for both of those, but they're
not going to do that. That sucks. Found us started to
bring up here before we wrap things up as I'm

(57:00):
going to play the music. You take us out of
this right now. They study coming out from Global Markets
Global Market Intelligence Cake and Survey says that social media
is growing dominance among younger users, with gen Z adults
averages five hours per day on social platforms.

Speaker 1 (57:19):
It's used to go up.

Speaker 2 (57:21):
Gen Z spends nearly twice as much time on social
media as millennials. How about that, huh? Anyway, come back
next week with the broadcasters. Podcast content is gaing and
the control of your content is in your hands.