Here are BBC Radio 1’s most-played artists this year. Are there enough UK acts?

October 7, 2016

A few months back, MBW posted an article called ‘Is Radio 1 Doing Enough To Support New British Artists’?

The analysis delved into the most-played tracks on the station in the first half of 2016, showing that its Top 4 songs in the six months were all by non-British artists.

The feature – based on rock solid data from the trusted folks at Radiomonitor – got a lot of people talking, and we received a fair amount of feedback.

One exec in the know asked whether, instead of showing just the most popular tracks on Radio 1, we could also reveal the most popular artists on the station.

Good question. It’s taken a bit of an effort and a big calculator, but we’re finally there.

Warning: the UK music industry might not be completely delighted with what we’ve found.

First, though, here’s how we did it.

Thanks to the excellent database over at RadioMonitor, we’ve been able to ascertain Radio 1’s Top 1,000 most-played tracks since the first ‘radio week’ of 2016 up until the latest.

To be exact, that’s the 278 days between Sunday, January 3 and Thursday, October 6.

To be less exact, it’s the first three quarters of 2016.

From this Top 1,000 list, we’ve then boiled down how many total plays each artist achieved within it.

The big conclusion: Radio 1 really, really, really likes Drake.

The Canadian rapper was played 883 times on Radio 1 in the period as a lead artist – not counting the additional 226 plays received by his turn as a featured artist on Rihanna’s Work.

The only other artist to receive more than 600 plays in Q1-Q3 was Coldplay, who clocked up 697 plays in total – including 208 plays with single Hymn For The Weekend.

The complete Top 15 looks as follows:

Drake: 883 plays
Coldplay: 697 plays
The 1975: 587 plays
Shawn Mendes: 575 plays
Sigala: 535 plays
Major Lazer: 531 plays
Catfish & The Bottlemen: 528 plays
Calvin Harris: 515 plays
Biffy Clyro: 512 plays
DNCE: 502 plays
Justin Bieber: 498 plays
Kanye West: 490 plays
Ellie Goulding: 460 plays
The Weeknd: 458 plays
The Chainsmokers: 443 plays

The support from Radio 1 for The 1975, Sigala and Catfish & The Bottlemen will certainly please those who believe the station should be closely following its ‘in new music we trust’ mantra.

In addition, the fact that six of the Top 10 are British artists will not go amiss.

What may not go down so well in UK A&R circles is the heavy rotation of North American superstars – with Drake, Shawn Mendes (pictured), Major Lazer, DNCE, Justin Bieber, Kanye West, The Weeknd and The Chainsmokers sharing 4,380 spins between them.

In fact, non-UK artists make up the majority of the Top 15, with eight slots.

(You can see the full list of Radio 1’s most-played artists this year at the end of this article.)

In addition, according to RadioMonitor, BBC Radio 1‘s most-played tracks in the first nine months of 2016 lent very heavily on non-UK repertoire.

Ready for the stat of the day?

The entire Top 6 of the network’s most-played songs this year so far are not from the UK, and not one track in the station’s Top 20 list can really be defined as a breaking British performer. (Although you could perhaps make the argument for platinum-selling Sony signing Snakehips.)

Food for thought.