How do radio stations like "heart" manage to milk so much play time out of their library of 20 songs?

Time to invest in a decent pair of headphones. And not little earbuds either, big over-the-ear fuckers that really put across your unwillingness to be disturbed.

I agree, it's easy to see how they do it but how they keep getting away with it baffles me.

The "DJs" are employed for their personality. They don't choose which songs are played; this is done by software which generates a playlist following a set of rules e.g. don't play two songs by the same artist in a row or too many female artists in a row.

The "DJ" usually doesn't have to listen to all the tracks as they are played, they can just record the links any time prior to broadcast (could be just a few minutes before the link and even while the show is live) then go off and do other things while the software plays out the link at the right moment. This is called voice tracking.

The playlist is aimed at Heart's target audience of females aged 25-44. If you are not in that target audience, you will probably get sick of it quickly. It is also designed so that people can tune in for half an hour when driving or cooking food and hear their favourites so there's not going to be a lot of obscure tracks. It is not designed to be listened to all day. If it's going to be played in an office all day, the station should be changed every day.

I know. My boss listens to it, i change the radio station a few hours into the shift, usually when that bloody Ace of Base song comes on. It's psychological torture being subject to the same handful of songs, i change it to Amber Sound for the variety of music they play.

Had this when I worked at an office, must have heard Return Of the Mac about a thousand times in 6 months.

I used to work in a small office and we'd flick through various radio stations throughout the day. My favourite was listening to Ronan Keating on Magic, and trying to predict at what time one of his own songs would play

Can I recommend Radio Paradise. No DJs, no adverts, no jingles, just music. You can even choose different genres, rock, mellow, world, etc.

I used to love Real Radio until it was taken over by Heart in 2014, and I stopped listening then as it was constantly Avicii - Wake Me Up, on a loop all day everyday.

In my last job one of the girls used to play it all day and it used to drive me absolutely potty. It seemed like it was the Becky Hill station more than anything. Every second song was just either ‘Remember,’ or ‘My Heart Goes.’ And I just used to have to take my laptop and leave the office it got that bad everyday.

And if it wasn’t Heart she put on, it was Capital. Same Becky Hill show but with Usher’s ‘Yeah!’ Thrown in every half an hour so it seemed

I play it for my dogs when I go out and I almost always come back to the same 3 songs.

Avril Lavigne still lives strong through Heart!

Fun fact, the Heart website has their playlist.

At the time of writing, they've played 41 songs in the space of just over 4 hours - of which 2 songs have been repeated:

• Remember (Becky Hill & David Guetta) - played at 6:55am and 10:06am
• Miracle (Calvin Harris Feat. Ellie Goulding) - played at 7:06am and 10:31am

My theory on it is that you or I aren't their target market. It's for folks that are about nothing but the vibes. Not the lyrics, not perfect fifths, not whether Song X from their catalogue is better. Just serotonin from a pretty love song or that (admittedly properly monstrous) bass line from 24k Magic, or Happy for the twentieth time that day.

I worked at an office that had it on all the time when Shake It Off exploded. In an office with excitable mid-twenties designers and marketers, hearing that song literally every 45 minutes for months did nothing but pep them up and make them dance at their desks. It made me happy for them, the vibes just radiate outwards and stick to everyone in earshot.

At one point I could remember when it was Chiltern radio but not when they weren’t playing spotlight twice a day during my drive in and home. I listened to them because they did the best traffic for my area but stopped when they got rid of all the local presenters

A better question to ask is "Why do people in offices insist on blasting the radio when we've had the technology to pipe any song you can possibly think of directly into your ears for over 2 decades?"

Come and listen to Nation FM, otherwise known as the Lewis Capaldi Appreciation Society.

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