July 5, 2016, Issue 506
Ain’t No Gold Folk’s Home
Country Radio’s Top 100 Power Gold list gets younger each year as a growing crop of artists make their way in. There are 36 new songs this year, and 53 that didn’t appear in our 2014 Top 100. No songs come from earlier than 1997, and only three from pre-2002. In fact, 61% of the list comes from 2011 or later. As always, songs move from Recurrent to Gold categories when they are 18 months old, so by default newer titles often appear or debut high on the list. The full 100 from Mediabase 24/7 and the Country Aircheck/ Mediabase reporting panel (June 19-25) is on page 10. Here are the top 10:
Darius Rucker
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Darius Rucker/Wagon Wheel Kenny Chesney/American Kids Brantley Gilbert/Bottoms Up Sam Hunt/Leave The Night On Blake Shelton/Honey Bee Zac Brown Band/Chicken Fried Jake Owen/Barefoot Blue Jean Night Dustin Lynch/Where It’s At Miranda Lambert/Mama’s Broken Heart Dierks Bentley/Drunk On A Plane
Kenny Chesney
It used to be a rarity, but this is the second year in a row that five songs debuted in the top 10 – hits from Kenny Chesney, Brantley Gilbert and Dierks Bentley, and from Sam Hunt and Dustin Lynch, who have never had any songs in the Top 100 until now. It’s the fourth year “Chicken Fried” has held court in the top 10, Brantley and the third year for the Blake Shelton and Gilbert Jake Owen tunes. Other Top 100 rookies are Brett Eldredge (25, 41), Cole Swindell (52, 59) and Thomas Rhett (57, 63), who each added two songs to the list. Chase Rice (79), David Nail (74) and Eric Paslay (35) also bow their first songs. (continued on page 6)
Nice Burgh: Blue Chair/Columbia’s Kenny Chesney (c) at his Pittsburgh Spread The Love Tour stop with (l-r) WOGI’s Dave Anthony, WPGB’s JD Greene, WOGI’s Jeremy “Dangerfrog” Mulder, WPGB’s Rachel Belke, Columbia’s Cliff Blake, Mulder’s wife Kelly, WDSY’s Mark Anderson and Wookie and wife Amy Kostek, Anthony’s wife Kathie, WPGB’s Carson Blackley and WKLB/Boston’s Ginny Rogers and son Ben.
Happy Media: Nielsen On Audience Radio and television continue to boast the most users in the United States and newer technologies including smartphones and tablets are increasing their footprints. That’s the overriding message of Nielsen’s Total Audience Report released last week. The quarterly study examines penetration, users and usage across all media platforms by demographics including age, ethnicity, income and more. Country Aircheck takes a closer look and discusses what one consultant calls “choice overload.” What It Is: For starters, radio continues to sit at the top of the list when it comes to the number of adult users per month with 240 million, which is actually up by a half percent or so from the same period last year. Zoom out for a 12+ view and that number increases to more than 263 million. By demo, P50-64
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