A Former SiriusXM Program Director Defines Hits and the Future of Satellite Radio

After almost eight years in satellite radio, Jackson Bull discusses the difficulty of defining hits and how SiriusXM is carving out its place in the digital music business.

How do you define a hit?

For Jackson Bull, a former SiriusXM Program Director who spent the last 7+ years working with many of the company’s 1K+ satellite radio stations, it’s easier said than done.

According to Bull….

When you start using the word “hit,” that gets so arbitrary, and there are so many different variables, especially nowadays, but ultimately, a hit is defined as, “Is it familiar? What’s the burn rate?”

These days, there are also a ton of data points to consider in this definition, not least of which is: How quickly is a song growing?

How do I know that this song is really sticking? From the moment I put this song into rotation to now, how fast did it grow? Velocity metrics, or how quickly it [the song] grew, that KPI [Key Performance Indicator] is so much more important than total streams. Eventually, if you’re an artist and you release a song, it will get to a million streams. It might take you a million years, but eventually, it will get there. But if you can get to a million streams from zero faster than Artist B, then obviously Artist A is much more influential.

Hear the full interview here or subscribe to the How Music Charts podcast.