Philippe Generali is the President/CEO of RCS worldwide, a role he assumed in January 2000. He helped create Media Monitors, the highly successful market research company that employs RCS fingerprinting technology. Another development under Generali has been the advent of Mscore, an estimate of how much a song can help a radio station retain its listeners. Exclusively available through Mediabase and Media Monitors, Mscore provides insight from a totally new vantage point than traditional airplay measures. We caught up with Generali for a conversation about Mscore.
By Michael Parrish
Philippe Generali
Philippe Generali is the President/CEO of RCS worldwide, a role he assumed in January 2000. He joined RCS USA in 1996 as Product Manager and served as VP of Operations in 1997 until present. In 2003, he created, a new division, Media Monitors, the highly successful market research company that employs RCS fingerprinting technology. In 2007, Philippe became the President/CEO of the RCS/Prophet merged company – RCS.
One development under Generali has been the advent of Mscore. Using minute-by-minute data from PPMs deployed in US markets, Media Monitors created a groundbreaking index: Mscore, an estimate of how much a song can help a radio station retain its listeners. By showing how much the radio audience changes stations while a given song is playing, Mscore creates this performance rating for each song. Exclusively available through Mediabase and Media Monitors, Mscore provides insight from a totally new vantage point than traditional airplay measures. We caught up with Generali for a conversation about Mscore.
What is the clear definition of Mscore and how it is derived?
Mscore is an index which measures the amount of switching to your competitors that’s going on when you play specific songs. We only look at people who are switching to another radio station every time a specific song is played. We measure that for every song played in all the PPM markets and publish an Mscore index which shows exactly that, when compared to what the normal expectation of switching is for your listener.
Can you elaborate? What do you mean “the normal expectation of switching for your listener?”
It’s very easy to measure any effect. You put some form of a meter in and you measure it. What’s interesting is, you want to know how it compares to what’s normal. Is it a lot? Is it small? Is it big? So what Mscore measures is the amount of switching away that a song generates for a radio station, compared to what is normal for that radio station. Station listeners have their own switching habit, it depends on the format, it depends on the market, and it depends on the competition. If you have a market where there’s only one Country station, the switching might be a certain pattern. If you’re in a market where there are three or four CHRs, the switching might be another pattern. People tend to switch from one station to another very often. So we take that into account when we calculate Mscore. We look at what’s above normal or under normal, as a matter or fact. If there is less switching than usual occurring, this is good. This is a positive Mscore. If there is more switching than normal, it’s a negative Mscore.
What role does Arbitron play in generating Mscore?
We have a partnership with Arbitron for Mscore and they have been involved with its development.
Are there limits or requirements on songs in order to generate an Mscore?
The Mscore is the result of thirteen weeks of data. That’s why we manage to have stable numbers, because of the aggregation of data. When we did the research on Mscore, it took us months before we found the right formula and the right way to aggregate the numbers. We will not measure something that doesn’t have at least six spins in a week. We know how the pace of the public evolved with music based on decades of empirical data, so our idea was to try to find an index that would reproduce that over time. We also have a hard rule not to give an Mscore for a song unless it had four weeks of airplay on a radio station.
Does the data allow you to tell the difference between a switch-away and turnoff?
That part is not rocket science. We can see in the Arbitron data when a listener is on one station and then switches to another. That is switch-away. When we don’t see that listener tune to something else, we know they turned it off.
Can you tell the exact point of a song people switched away?
We know if they cut out during the first minute, the second minute, or the third minute, etc. The PPM data is given to us broken down by minutes and songs and rarely starts on an exact Arbitron minute. They may start in the middle of an Arbitron minute and then it will end in the middle of another Arbitron minute. So it’s close but not precise to the second.
Like any other tool that radio has to look at about the things they do on air, this is just a piece of the research pie. How should radio apply Mscore to its music decisions?
It’s probably the best question, and it’s an eternal question. How do you pick the music and judge its performance? Picking music for a PD has to be a gut thing. You think a song has potential for x-reasons: because you like the vocal, because you know the artist, because you have a concert coming up, etc. There are many reasons why you pick a song. After that, you embark on this journey with that song and now there is a metric that can help you find out how much of a walk-in-the-park or of an uphill battle you’re going to have with your listeners as they hear the song. We know Mscore is only a portion of the tools for PDs. They can look at YouTube views, iTunes sales, Facebook likes, and so forth. These are all things like Mscore that will help a PD evaluate whether or not a song is going to be a little easier or more difficult to get your listeners to accept. It’s similar to the ratings for a deejay. When do you decide a person is not good on the air, do you decide to throw in the towel and move on?
How is this information useful to record label promotion people?
Unlike what people believe, it’s not always the case that a song starts with a negative Mscore. Human nature is such that we have a more difficult time with new things. It makes us uncomfortable and makes us think more. It is something we don’t naturally accept. It’s the same thing with music where it’s a little more difficult in the beginning. But, it’s not always the case. In fact, there are many cases where I see songs that have Mscores right-off-the-bat that are completely accepted by the public and generate less switch-aways than any other song. So, it’s a great tool for the record label to know exactly what songs are unusually successful at the beginning, and then to accelerate the airplay very early on.
That’s your best case scenario. But I can see record label promo people sitting there thinking this is just another thing they have to fight in order to get a record exposed.
For starters, as we said, they have four weeks. For the first four weeks we stay out of the ring. It’s between the promo guy and the PD. So we have nothing to do for the first four weeks. We have one full month and there will not be an Mscore. So it’s a fair battle.
Are there formats you have seen that Mscore works best with?
There’s not really a format stigma. The same way, for example, there’s not really an audience stigma. It’s not about the format, and it is not about the audience, believe it or not. It’s really about the songs. A song gets people hooked or it doesn’t. A deejay can present a song and it can get exposure because the artist is more well-known, but as far as Mscore is concerned, it’s all about the song. What I can say though, is that sometimes in the Rhythmic formats, the kids (and I said kids because it’s the younger demo listening to the format) will tend to get hooked with a song much faster than in some other formats.
Mscore has been around for over three years now. Have you picked up any grand scheme trends over that time?
Well, eventually if a radio station plays a song enough, people will like it. Radio has a tremendous amount of power. It’s just a question of how much you want leverage that power. Sometimes it takes a very long time. But I guarantee you that people will remember and speak to a song if it plays enough. At the end of the day, it’s such a massive power that radio has on people’s brains to be able to tattoo a song in the memory of someone, and then that song individually will get associated with good strong memories.
[eQB Content By Michael Parrish]
