Albright & O’Malley’s just-released second quarter gold sort included four collaborations among the top 25 testers (the Zac Brown Band/Jimmy Buffet “Knee Deep” was the top tester this quarter).  Others in the top 25 were Zac Brown Band/Alan Jackson, “Walking Away,” Blake Shelton/Trace Adkins, “Hillbilly Bone,” and Brad Paisley/Carrie Underwood, “Remind Me.”  Jason Aldean/Kelly Clarkson,

Tastes, opinions and alternatives are anything but static. So if you haven’t had a conversation with your listeners recently, you should.  Here are three fertile and actionable talking points for your next listener panel or focus group: Music Satisfaction.  “Playing the best music” is always a top reason for picking one country station over another. How

With “Alpha Boomer” now one of Arbitron’s standard Tapscan demos, I revisited Albright & O’Malley’s Roadmap 2011 (our annual online perceptual of 10,000+ country listeners) to see how the appeal of the various Music Clusters broke out across 25-54 and the 55-64 leading edge Alpha Boomer demo. The bars below represent the percent of ‘Like

Every year has music cycles where the currents are be too “something” – too fast/slow, male/female, poppy/twangy, etc. We’re now in a cycle of down-tempo current music. More than half our currents are down-tempo and we’ve been ballad-heavy since at least the first of the year. Still, there’s no reason for your station to take

The end of the year always brings lists and quizzes. Here’s one of interest: Gen-Y’s Top 77 singers/bands/musicians. Anderson Analytics polled 1000 college students (survey limits noted) asking, “Who is your favorite musician/band currently?” Want to guess how many country artists are on the list? How many are in the top 20? Who they might