Spinning Hits!

Commercial terrestrial radio stations lie at the center of the popular music industry’s infrastructure in the United States. As the recording industry’s partner in promoting records, they introduce audiences to new sounds and styles, shaping the trajectory of musical genres. As a primary contributor to chart data, their airplay transforms some artists into superstars and leaves others relegated to the second-hand bin at record shops. And as one of the last bastions of local (or at least terrestrial) media, they support musical communities, fostering physical and aural spaces for creators to build their social and musical networks. For listeners, commercial radio broadcasting offers access to music as well as a space where they can make sense of who they, and those in their communities, are. Not just cultural intermediaries, not just gatekeepers: stations are cultural producers, creating media content through which listeners define themselves within communities, local and global alike. 

But the popular conception of the radio industry, for the past twenty years, is that it is becoming more and more obsolete. As consumers turn their attention towards internet-based media platforms like YouTube, Spotify, and TikTok, critics argue that the commercial radio industry has lost some of its relevance: less a gatekeeper or tastemaker, more an echo of popular culture. But listeners continue to tune in; as recently as spring 2024, Nielsen found that terrestrial radio surpassed network television as the most-consumed mass medium in the US. And record companies still rely on the hit-making power of this medium, which continues to offer artists a viable pathway to stardom.

So what can we make of the commercial radio industry’s influence within the US music industries? The Spinning Hits: Radio Programming Practices and the Development of Genre Cultures in the USA symposium and edited collection of essays aims to examine just that, by analyzing the central and enduring role of the commercial radio industry in the production and consumption of popular music in the United States and assessing how this role has shifted in recent years. Scholars and journalists will be invited to develop and present papers and will engage in conversations about the central and enduring role of radio in the industry’s ecosystem. 

Centered around the three “poles” that have structured the industry since the 1920s, this symposium invites researchers specializing in R&B/Hip-Hop music and radio, Country radio, and the pop-oriented Top 40 space to engage with critical questions around radio programming practices, the influence of technology on the evolving industry, and the complex ways in which artists are forced to negotiate relationships with radio’s gatekeepers. While these researchers focus on one of the three poles, another group of researchers will be invited to think about the broader system through papers that explore the racial, legislative, and economic systems that structure and dictate the promotion of music and development of audiences. Staff from both museums (curators, historians, archivists) will attend the symposium and will contribute a presentation as it relates to their exhibits or archival holdings.

Organizers: Jada Watson (University of Ottawa) and Amy Coddington (Amherst College)

This event took play on February 5-6, 2026 and was generously supported by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, the National Museum of African American Music, and Amherst College.