Do Many Stations Usually Pitch Their Music?

[ocradiofreak]

I work part-time for a Country formatted station and it recently started pitching their music at 3%  I worked at a CHR station before and it was only 2%.  Anyone know if this is the norm? 

[chriscollins]

I can't think of anyone that does this anymore.  When a station does, I delete their preset.

In the past, that tactic was used to make your competitor sound 'slow'.  Now, it just makes you sound stupid, because they hear the regular version on youtube, pandora, spotify, etc...

It's an old tactic that needs to stay in the vault.

[CatFM]

There was another rather practical reason for stations to speed up music in some cases in the time of having music on carts.  It made more sense to put a 3:45 song on a 3.5 minute cart than use a 5.5 minute cart for it.

When I worked for an FM Oldies station in the early 90s, the music we were playing sounded so slow because we were used to hearing it played faster when it was current.  We were using Denon 951s, so we sped them up to give the music the same sound as when it was current.  Some liked it, some didn't.  I loved it because it sounded "correct" to me.  Same with compression and reverb, which we used very liberally to bring back the classic Top 40 sound.  Our listeners must have liked it because we blew off two other Oldies stations in the market within a couple of months.  Neither of those stations did anything out of the ordinary for their Oldies format, so they sounded very ordinary.

[OKCRadioGuy]

2 percent... More than that does sound "stupid".

[frankberry]

Back in the cart days, we would custom-wind the carts to the length of the song plus ten seconds or so.
Running the music 2% fast would drive those with perfect-pitch nuts.

[reelyreal]

Many stations still pitch the music, at least here in CHR world.  I see a lot of 2%, some 2.5%, and I know of one or two 3% pitchers... that's way too much.  I'm not a fan of excessive pitching, but I know why it's done.

[celar]

I've seen MDs will occasionally pitch on a song-by-song basis.  One felt that "AM to PM" by Christina Milian sounded "too slow" and needed a faster tempo.

Another MD said "Next Year" by Kim Norlen was "too depressing" but sounded better when pitched up a bit.

[markbohach]

With today's Digigram and Audio Sciences sound cards, it's so easy to speed up the tempo in playback without altering the pitch.
We do it all the time with spots in Adobe Audition- turn a 31.5 second spot into a perfect 30. It just sounds a tiny tad faster.

[PTBoardOp94]

I find "pitching up" to be less sonicaly bothersome than "time compression."  Time compression almost always leaves artifacts that anyone can hear.  Pitching up leaves artifacts that require something of a musically trained ear to detect.

[WNTIRadio]

Why is this done?  The song was made a certain way, so play it that way.  If you or your PD/MD etc. feel it is "too slow", then don't play it.  It became a hit the way it is, so leave it alone.  This is the stupid assed 1970's approach to radio that is causing it to lose listeners!!  Think they don't know what it sounds like when it's on their iPod?  All they know is it sounds like chipmunks or "too high" when they hear it on your station.

Exciting?  No.  Stupid?  Yes.  Imagine if your local TV station decided to air shows sped up or in black and white because they thought the show "wasn't exciting enough".

While I'm at the Louvre, I'm going to put a goatee on the Mona Lisa, because it isn't very exciting to me.   I'm also going to pain the Washington Monument like a barber pole, because stripes are exciting.

Sorry for the rant, but radio needs to PROGRAM to it's audience, not sit there and waste time playing with the pitch of songs.  This isn't 1977 anymore, get your station on Twitter and Facebook and connect with your audience instead of playing with the pitch of the music.  Put some live bodies in the studio and have them give local content.  People will listen.