The Infinite Dial

It used to be a big deal when an artist had two current, official singles growing simultaneously at Top 40 radio. Think back to Linda Ronstadt's "Blue Bayou" and "It's So Easy" in fall 1977 or Michael Jackson with "Billie Jean" and "Beat It" in spring 1983 and you have two superstar artists at the peak of their radio careers.

Now consider the Mainstream Top 40 charts in recent months where two current singles from an artist has become an increasingly regular part of the label strategy as evidenced by:

* T.I. with "Whatever You Like" and "Live Your Life"; and at Rhythmic last week, with three songs in the Top 10 including "Dead And Gone";

* Kanye West with "Love Lockdown" and "Heartless";

* Britney Spears with "Womanizer" and "Circus";

* Beyoncé with "If I Were A Boy" and "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)", with another possible double, "Halo" and "Diva" in the wings.

Doubling up had been an increasing part of the label strategy for a while at Rhythmic Top 40 and Urban (where PDs used to routinely find multiple songs off an album anyway), but it's a relatively recent development at Mainstream Top 40. The practice is picking up steam because:

1) As entire albums become an increasingly discretionary purchase in bad times, labels are (smartly) trying to create the perception that there's more than one good song. It doesn't quite get you to the much-discussed "magic three songs," but it's better than one. For a while, the strategy was to hit the second single simultaneously with the album release. But the second single has been getting earlier and earlier -- even when there's no sign of weakness in the first single.

2) It's been a pretty soft CHR chart for several years now. So it's easier to push a second superstar song into the top 10, and that's been helped by ...

3) The rhythmic-leaning, reaction-driven stations where T.I., Beyonce, and Britney are core artists are the ones with the fastest rotations;

4) CHR has pretty much given up on artist separation -- something made nearly impossible by the number of guest appearances these days. I recently had one programmer tell me his artist separation parameters were under 10 minutes when the artist in question was the guest on a song and 20 minutes when they were the main artist.

It's interesting that this has happened in an era when stations are less willing to go to the album and find their own hit from Britney or Beyoncé than ever. Besides the much hyped third single "If You Seek Amy," there's no CHR reporter playing anything else from Spears in significant rotation. Only two stations have gone to the second Taylor Swift country single, "White Horse." Nickelback's uptempo "Gotta Be Somebody" was not a CHR home run, but nobody has yet gone to the album to play one of the ballads.

To be fair, with labels moving faster on second singles, most stations don't have as long to go "off the menu." And at some point, you probably have to give some Mainstream PD credit for deciding that "Single Ladies" would not be only the Rhythmic and Urban single. (Same for those playing "Diva" now.) But it's almost as if the label willingness to work two singles means that programmers don't have to work as hard to own their core artists anymore.