Moneyball National Chart

Chart Explain 1/4/2021

It’s always at the top of the year that, when programming, I’d take some shots I wouldn’t normally take as I played things safe and sensible musically most of the time through the year.  Coming back into your music from the holiday, there will be a natural freshness to your sound and the charts will be all over the road, but there are smart ways to meet the expectation of your audience without having to play chart games, programming stale music while you wait for things to sort out, or without having to take high risks with no data.

With 2021’s debut Moneyball chart, there are a couple of surprises not to be ignored, like the late blooming arrival of Hillsong United’s “Another In The Fire,” which debuts at #15 after many weeks in 2020 attempting to break onto this chart.  A high debut into this year is not only driven by airplay of radio stations playing this song, looking for some safe bets while resetting, but from the proof of research and consumption of sales and streaming in the markets that have chosen to make this song a current or continue to play it in recurrent.

TobyMac’s “21 Years,” would be the other song that I’d recommend to stations as they reset into the new year.  While it was never a worked single, you can tell from the strong traction in Minneapolis, Atlanta and Visalia that stations who played it due to extremely high consumption from one year ago when this song was released, translated quickly into research.  The aforementioned stations all have 800+ spins so far.

Because I am privy to the research from more than a few stations who are playing this song, I can say with great confidence that the year that has gone by since its release does not diminish the impact, but instead the results are as powerful as they were in early 2020.

Now for the Songs on the Move.  If you didn’t embrace Graves Into Gardens last year, there is good news, your audience hasn’t moved on from it.  Still researching powerfully for stations, Elevation Worship starts the new year with a Number One Moneyball song.  Keep in mind that this similar phenomenon happened to Michael W. Smith’s “Waymaker,” which sat at number one on Moneyball for 7 weeks before achieving the same results at Mediabase and BDS.

Tasha Layton’s “Into The Sea,” is another from last year that realtime data suggests is still performing powerfully with great airplay to consumption ratios.  The Moneyball move this week is 12 to 7*.

In the top 15, notice the great upward surge from We Are Messengers and Casting Crowns.  Keep in mind that, regardless of momentum arrow, all songs in the Top 15 show suggest value in airplay support, and a down arrow only indicates the move on Moneyball, not the momentum of the song in the format.  

Ask lots of questions as they come up, and continue to dialogue with me about consumption.

Thank you.  Happy New Year to you all.  

The Moneyball Chart Methodology

Instead of one chart that focuses specifically on airplay, the Moneyball Chart combines airplay with sales, streaming and research for the purpose of finding the Momentum in Music, which is most times the differentiator on songs that stall and the ones that continue to chug along.

The Moneyball Chart is created based on a points system, where each column of information can add a maximum of up to 10 points for that column, with the points from each column adding to the overall totals.

The Moneyball Chart is an indicator of songs that are working; songs that are bearing fruit and therefore the Moneyball Chart, may have drastic differences from the charts you have become accustom to, revealing some artists and titles in a higher position much earlier than they show up on the airplay charts, and also, often songs that have moved to recurrent on most of our playlists continue to show fruit indicating that we may have retired those titles too early.

The Moneyball system works Nationally, or locally, so if you are interested in seeing what this information looks like specific to your station, specific to your market and your competitive situation, let us create a custom sample for your station specifically.  Email Rob Wagman StraightPathMandE@gmail.com