We produced The Spinitron Chart as a marketing tool to attract attention of radio stations to Spinitron's playlist management service. As such, the chart was always peripheral to that core business. But things have changed since we introduced the Spinitron Top-25 in late 2011.The number of college and community radio stations using Spinitron has grown steadily in recent years. At present we have nearly 200 stations and we process roughly one new spin every five seconds.
Interest from the music industry in our aggregate spin data has grown at the same time. To address this interest, we have been building tools to analyze the raw data. The tools allow users to produce custom analytic results. A simple example of such a tool is Spinitron-wide search. An example of an analytic result is a Top-N chart.
In recent months we have received many inquiries about The Spinitron Chart from stations, labels, promoters and artists, often citing the uncertainty about CMJ's future. We faced the question: Do we plan to grow the chart into something more significant to the music business? We decided no. Instead we found a partner to publish a chart powered by Spinitron data and tools.
We felt it was better for all involved if Spinitron focuses on playlists, data and analytic tools while a separate organization takes responsibility for a chart based on Spinitron data. Medium Rotation's independence, history, and reputation makes them the ideal partner to publish the chart.
Medium Rotation have the background and skills to publish a legitimate music chart that they can explain and defend to all. This frees Spinitron from potential pressures and conflicts of being a chart publisher at the same time as serving stations and providing data tools.
Medium Rotation's relaunch and reinvigoration is exciting and comes at an opportune moment when our community of radio and music people need it. We are pleased to support Tenni and Omar and their cohort in this project.
