The Potential Loss of BBC 6 Music

[Jah Womble]

If Uptown Top Ranking, Back to Life and Good Life aren’t in the Top Five then there’s no way that list can be deemed as ‘fact’.

They play those tracks at least 2-3 times a week. Computerised playlists really are not the way forward…

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

I can't vouch for the accuracy of last.fm's data, but it is a fact that that's what their list says.

Uptown Top Ranking is 56, Good Life is 90, can't immediately see Back to Life. Land of 1000 Dances is 75.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Equivalent list for the last 365 days:

1 Chaise Longue - Wet Leg
2 Woman (feat. Cleo Sol) - Little Simz
3 I Do This All the Time - Self Esteem
4 Queen Of The Underground - Goat
5 I Love You, I Hate You - Little Simz
6 Jackie - Yves Tumor
7 Take Me To Your Leader - Joan As Police Woman, Tony Allen & Dave Okumu
8 The First Day - Villagers
9 London Gangs - Sault
10 Fatso - Warmduscher
11 By Your Side - Sofia Kourtesis
12 Boy from Michigan - John Grant
13 Wild Flowers - Warmduscher
14 Talk About It - Jungle
15 Point and Kill (feat. Obongjayar) - Little Simz
16 Like I Used To - Sharon Van Etten & Angel Olsen
17 Too Late Now - Wet Leg
18 I'm Alright In The World - BC Camplight
19 Wake Me Up - Foals
20 Keep Moving - Jungle
21 More Pressure (feat. Kevin Abstract) - Kae Tempest
22 Get Sun (feat. Arthur Verocai) - Hiatus Kaiyote
23 Prioritise Pleasure - Self Esteem
24 In My Head - The Mysterines
25 That Life - Unknown Mortal Orchestra
26 Jackie Down The Line - Fontaines D.C.
27 3am (feat. Thundercat) - HAIM
28 Electricity - Ibibio Sound Machine
29 The Overload - Yard Act
30 Black Gold (feat. Thundercat) - Flying Lotus
31 (There Is) No Logic - LoneLady
32 Fear Colours - LoneLady
33 The Darkness That You Fear - The Chemical Brothers
34 This Fractured Mind - Nation of Language
35 People, Let's Dance (feat. EERA) - Public Service Broadcasting
36 If You Say the Word - Radiohead
37 Cut Me Down - She Drew the Gun
38 Lover Undiscovered - The Coral
39 Last Day on Earth - beabadoobee
40 So Simpatico - Villagers
41 Blame - gabriels
42 The Beachland Ballroom - IDLES
43 All of the Time - Jungle
44 B-Side (feat. Leon Bridges) - Khruangbin
45 Big Skies, Silly Faces - Orlando Weeks
46 Nabi (feat. 오혁) - Peggy Gou
47 CLEO - Shygirl
48 Paddling - Squid
49 X - Working Men’s Club
50 el cielo no es de nadie - Ela Minus

[Jah Womble]

That looks to be purely 'new' releases.

[Sean of the Shed]

I would have thought over the course of a year a new release getting played 4-5 times a day for 6-8 weeks will get far more plays than LWTUA would over 12 months, so it's probably all airplay.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

I would have thought over the course of a year a new release getting played 4-5 times a day for 6-8 weeks will get far more plays than LWTUA would over 12 months, so it's probably all airplay.

Quite.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

There is a series of shows / curated playlists looking at each of the 20 years in turn available here:

20 memorable moments from 20 years of 6 Music - Canvas (bbcrewind.co.uk)

[longeared]

Brave of them to classify that period where the schedule got flooded by comedians (who IIRC were all represented by the same agency) as a "memorable moment".

(Edit; and just as I submit that post on comes Up Town Top Ranking)

[Satchmo Distel]

I would have thought over the course of a year a new release getting played 4-5 times a day for 6-8 weeks will get far more plays than LWTUA would over 12 months, so it's probably all airplay.

As in, it's just measuring how long a track stays in the playlist? Similar to how a Spotify chart is essentially a self-fulfilling prophecy.

LWTUA has probably benefitted from a big promo push that JD had around the 40th anniversary of their brief peak. The single went No. 1 on the vinyl chart and there have been 'Control' and retrospectives. No other 80s act is comparable; Nirvana would be closest since 1990.

Police and Thieves and Move On Up have had white patronage over the years (The Clash, Paul Weller).

[Jah Womble]

Some 'current' tracks seem to stay longer on the playlist than others - not 100% sure how that's determined.

I'd personally expand the current playlist, though, and cut down a shade of the somewhat repetitious oldies. The BBC has blanket rights over music, which is why I don't understand why they can't diversify a little: if you'd heard nothing but 6Music since birth, then you'd likely assume that Violent Femmes only ever released Blister in the Sun, Rush's one recording was Spirit of Radio, and that L7 broke up after Pretend We're Dead.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Playing around on the website reveals that the "all time" list I posted above only goes back to 2005, so misses the first three years. I was attempting to do a "compare and contrast" between the first year and the most recent year, so the best I can manage is to do the most-played list from 2005. Fair to say it has got more diverse since then.

1 Slow Hands - Interpol
2 Girl - Beck
3 Sugar - Ladytron
4 Oh My God - Kaiser Chiefs
5 Debaser - Pixies
6 Please Stand Up - British Sea Power
7 Unconditional - The Bravery
8 Somewhere Else - Razorlight
9 Hard to Beat - Hard-Fi
10 Boulevard of Broken Dreams - Green Day
11 Neighborhood #2 (Laika) - The Arcade Fire
12 Cuts Across The Land - The Duke Spirit
13 The Jupe - Dave Davani
14 DARE - Gorillaz ft. Shaun Ryder
15 Daft Punk Is Playing at My House - LCD Soundsystem
16 Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) - The Arcade Fire
17 Nobody Move Nobody Get Hurt - We Are Scientists
18 C'mere - Interpol
19 When She Smiles She Lights The Sky - Plantlife
20 Heavy Lifting - Ambulance Ltd
21 Eddie's Gun - The Kooks
22 Apply Some Pressure - Maximo Park
23 Loneliness Shines - Malcolm Middleton
24 Lovers - Tears
25 Lost in the Plot - The Dears
26 Meantime - The Futureheads
27 Killamangiro - Babyshambles
28 Sky Starts Falling - Doves
29 Everyday I Love You Less and Less - Kaiser Chiefs
30 My Doorbell - The White Stripes
31 I Ain't Saying My Goodbyes - Tom Vek
32 Y Control - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
33 D.O.A. - Foo Fighters
34 Krafty - New Order
35 Love in a Trashcan - The Raveonettes
36 Evil - Interpol
37 They - Jem
38 Bullets - Editors
39 In My Head - Queens of the Stone Age
40 All Mapped Out - The Departure
41 Bastardo - Charlotte Hatherley
42 Love Steals Us From Loneliness - Idlewild
43 An Honest Mistake - The Bravery
44 Forever Lost - The Magic Numbers
45 I Burn Today - Frank Black
46 Finding Out True Love Is Blind - Louis XIV
47 Refugees - Tears
48 Hounds Of Love - The Futureheads
49 Love Me Like You - The Magic Numbers
50 Boys Will Be Boys - The Ordinary Boys

[BallochSonsFan]

Listened to the station on my drive home from Sunderland today. Not quite as bad as the daytime schedule usually is, but certainly didnt do anything to change my view that despite being supposedly diverse, the 6 Music morning schedule is diverse in name only. Guitar music still poorly represented on the breakfast and morning shows. I doubt they'll play a single Americana track this weekend. The station has gone from being guitar indie heavy to not really playing much in it's morning schedule. It needs a better balance of music genres on the station.

As for it's 20th birthday, I'm still happy that we've got a station like 6 in the UK. It serves an important purpose. I was in Sunderland for This Is The Kit (they were very good, as usual) but they're a band I only heard thanks to Guy Garvey having played their song "Earthquake" so often. Its a great example of what 6 Music should be really good at - a brilliant band who have benefited from exposure on6 Music. Talking to the guys who sit beside me at the football, the reaction of one fellow fan when I told him who I was going to see was "is that the Earthquake band? I heard them on 6 Music". I'm not clued up on the kind of music that Huey plays but its to his credit that whilst I find his shows challenging and forcing me out of my comfort zone, he does so without ever making the listener feel stupid or excluded. If I go to the hockey tomorrow night then it'll be Blessed Madonna on the way home for exactly the same reasons. Not my usual thing but she makes her show really accessible. A huge contrast to Gilles Petersen and the sometimes self-indulgent Cerys. At times 6 does a brilliant job at giving exposure to bands who just wouldn't be touched by commercial radio or even by other BBC stations and yet other times they seem to be particularly obscurist and elitist.

It frustrates me that for all that the station is diverse, it's diverse in a sometimes very limited way. You've got the whole of recorded music to draw from and that, for me, makes a mockery of the idea that the station needs a playlist. I think that over the past 5 or 6 years it's moving in a direction that doesnt really serve the correct purpose. Suggest that on the unofficial 6 Music facebook group and the stock reply seems to be that it's you, not 6 Music, and that you should basically bugger off to Radio 2 or Fab FM. I think KEXP's music output, along with KCRW, is just a little bit more genuinely diverse. You're as likely to hear The Decemberists on either of those 2 stations as you are the latest Afrobeat or gypsy folk. 6 Music excludes too many bands and treats certain genres of music a little too poorly for me. I think the next decade really has to see the station re-balance a little.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

It has certainly swung a long way from guitars (in the daytime at least), from the 2005 list I posted. I agree there is a lot of room in a 24/7 schedule, and it could be allocated up more evenly between interests. My bugbear is that has never played metal, or any of its variants, to any great degree (it will do it for the lolz, like Lamacq's Wheels of Steel feature, or play Primark-friendly bands like AC/DC).

It does swing behind rising British acts - you can see from the last-year list that they gave the sustained push to e.g. Little Simz, Self Esteem, The Mysterines; this is generally to its credit but occasionally starts to work against them through over-familarity evolving into looking too much like favoritism.

I'm not sure we need to spend too much time considering what its next decade will bring, because if Nadine Dorries sticks around for any length of time she'll eventually notice it and try to get rid of it.

[BallochSonsFan]

Speaking of metal, MAH played Deftones this morning. She's probably the only DJ on the station who'd play them or anybody like them and she takes a ton of stick for it.

I've reached the point some time ago where 6 Music's morning schedule just isnt for me. At 42 years old and as a guy who goes to 35-45 gigs a year in normal times, and who has a decent record collection, the supposed champion of quality music just isnt for me. Afternoons? OK. Weekday evenings? Absolutely. Some of the stuff over the weekend? Sure. Its just that a big chunk of the daytime and weekend programming isnt just not for me, it's deliberately and specifically not for me. Not even a mix of stuff I like and stuff I don't. Thats not great.

[Jah Womble]

What would you want to hear instead?

I get the impression that Deftones are one of MAH’s favourite - she tends to crowbar them in at least twice a week. Which is okay by me. (Not sure I really see them as ‘metal’, however.)

Listened to the station on my drive home from Sunderland today. Not quite as bad as the daytime schedule usually is, but certainly didnt do anything to change my view that despite being supposedly diverse, the 6 Music morning schedule is diverse in name only. Guitar music still poorly represented on the breakfast and morning shows. I doubt they'll play a single Americana track this weekend. The station has gone from being guitar indie heavy to not really playing much in it's morning schedule. It needs a better balance of music genres on the station.

As for it's 20th birthday, I'm still happy that we've got a station like 6 in the UK. It serves an important purpose. I was in Sunderland for This Is The Kit (they were very good, as usual) but they're a band I only heard thanks to Guy Garvey having played their song "Earthquake" so often. Its a great example of what 6 Music should be really good at - a brilliant band who have benefited from exposure on6 Music. Talking to the guys who sit beside me at the football, the reaction of one fellow fan when I told him who I was going to see was "is that the Earthquake band? I heard them on 6 Music". I'm not clued up on the kind of music that Huey plays but its to his credit that whilst I find his shows challenging and forcing me out of my comfort zone, he does so without ever making the listener feel stupid or excluded. If I go to the hockey tomorrow night then it'll be Blessed Madonna on the way home for exactly the same reasons. Not my usual thing but she makes her show really accessible. A huge contrast to Gilles Petersen and the sometimes self-indulgent Cerys. At times 6 does a brilliant job at giving exposure to bands who just wouldn't be touched by commercial radio or even by other BBC stations and yet other times they seem to be particularly obscurist and elitist.

It frustrates me that for all that the station is diverse, it's diverse in a sometimes very limited way. You've got the whole of recorded music to draw from and that, for me, makes a mockery of the idea that the station needs a playlist. I think that over the past 5 or 6 years it's moving in a direction that doesnt really serve the correct purpose. Suggest that on the unofficial 6 Music facebook group and the stock reply seems to be that it's you, not 6 Music, and that you should basically bugger off to Radio 2 or Fab FM. I think KEXP's music output, along with KCRW, is just a little bit more genuinely diverse. You're as likely to hear The Decemberists on either of those 2 stations as you are the latest Afrobeat or gypsy folk. 6 Music excludes too many bands and treats certain genres of music a little too poorly for me. I think the next decade really has to see the station re-balance a little.

Agree with your broader point about 6 limiting itself a little more than it might, but I’m not sure to which kind of ‘guitar music’ you’re referring. Chris Hawkins plays plenty of what some would call ‘indie’ on his early breakfast show - and he often gives a showcase to brand new guitar acts as well. Lauren Laverne and especially MAH (easily the best daytime show on 6) tend to diversify a bit more from this, which particularly in the latter case, is fine by me. I’d rather listen to a mix of guitar/electronica/rap than just the one genre. Tom Ravenscroft, Mark Riley and Gideon Coe also play plenty of guitar bands among other stuff in their mixes.

The direction in which the station has been moving of late appears to be more embracing of dance - which I don’t especially mind, although is an area that I feel is already well-enough represented elsewhere on the dial.

Viz the playlist, I don’t fully understand how one expects new bands/tracks to be ‘birthed’ and introduced properly without one, tbh. There’d be hundreds of recent acts about whom I’d have no clue if it weren’t for the 6 playlist - and, let’s face it, no other station is showing any signs of covering similar stuff on anything like as regular a basis.

[Sean of the Shed]

Mary-Ann Hobbs' is the worst of the daytime shows. She's a niche dance DJ who should be be doing a niche dance show in yhe evening or weekend, not being indulged on the daytime schedule. There's just way too much drum and bass and shit that people have made on a computer in their bedroom on her show. It's the least diverse daytime show on there.

[Jah Womble]

That’s too inaccurate for words. (But I’ll find some.) MAH is far from being a ‘niche dance DJ’. She previously hosted alternative/hardcore shows on both R1 and Xfm - genres about which she remains very knowledgeable, and plays on her daytime show. ‘Least diverse’, my ass - she’s easily the best of the daytime brigade for the sheer breadth and eclecticism of what she plays.

If you listen, you know.

[diggedy derek]

Not a big listener but MAH has always played a wild range of stuff and lived a helluva life. If there’s one DJ who deserves to be on there…

[Jah Womble]

Yep, opinion is one thing, but it’s hard to know what Sean’s on about there.

[Sean of the Shed]

I've been listening to a lot of the daytime schedule recently. Every show of hers I've heard seems to be dominated by dance music, including quite a lot of 30 minutes or so of mixes by guest djs.
I guess we just have different ideas of what diverse is.

[Jah Womble]

MAH ‘does’ air mixes - which is fine by me, since they’re generally pretty diverse and new (to me) - but to say that the show isn’t varied is simply inaccurate. She plays a lot of alternative, electronica and rap, as well as the playlisted tracks.

She knows her stuff and is just a lot braver than anyone else on daytime. (Apart from when Ravenscroft Jr is subbing in for somebody.)

[danielmak]

I didn't see this posted already but perhaps it was. A short oral history in the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/20...e-of-new-music