Woeful. Considering they did an interview with her in the lead up to this single being released. Mimi only did a handful of radio interviews in Australia. Great talent, great music. Again, Nova missed the mark - again.
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She must have been on a very tight schedule in Australia, doing only three shows on the East Coast (Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne) as well as one over in New Zealand before flying over to the United States for three weeks of gigs.
Her music has not charted well here; her highest charting song is “Dumb Love” which peaked at #43 in the week beginning 23 August 2021.
Nonetheless her music gets some good streaming numbers here; Dumb Love has received over 36M streams on Spotify.
It’s also typical of some countries to delay debuting a new song by any artist until some two or three months after it was actually released. For example, “Sweet but Psycho” by Ava Max didn’t hit the airwaves in Australia until mid-November 2018 - some three months after it was released.
Speaking of Ava Max - her second-most recent song “Million Dollar Baby” has been played twice on Smallzy’s Surgery this week, more than ten weeks after it was released. She dropped a new song called “Weapons” on November 11.
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Does that strategy work anymore? It may have worked before TikTok, Apple Music etc when the only way to get the song was by the record company releasing the single.
Now we can get access to new music so easily without the record companies even releasing the song into our market.
For example the song Messy in Heaven is already #13 on the Australian Shazam chart before getting any airplay on Australian radio.
Nova will only jump on a song like this if goes top 10 in Australia and stays there for a few weeks.
That is sad state of Australian radio when it comes to adding new music.
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I think these days Australian radio will only play hits that have charted very well in (say) the UK, US or that artist’s native country (for example, Benee’s “Supalonely”), or has potential to chart well here.
What I also know was that Topic and Becky Hill’s 2021 collaboration “My Heart Goes (La Di Da)” didn’t even crack the ARIA Top 50 yet it got regular airplay on Nova during summer last/this year, and even today it’s still played.
The recently released Mimi Webb song in question has only peaked at #23 on the UK charts. There, her highest peaking song is “House on Fire” (#6); that song got some airplay here in Australia in March/April.
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Another song Fine Line by Mabel was her breakout hit, top 5 in the UK, but got completely ignored in Australia. IMO it actually is one of her best songs. If Australian radio picked this song up it probably would have done well here too.
Don’t call me up, got played to death by Australian radio.
I think stations like Nova have gone ultra safe as they are now targeting an audience up to 54 years of age. 18-39 use to be their target market. When they use to target younger more new music was added, and 50% old songs did not make up the playlist like they do now.
In the UK CHR stations still target 18-39 in Australia they don’t anymore.
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At the time she had yet to break the Australian market but later did so with “Don’t Call Me Up” which you mentioned. It’s her only charting song here; peaking at 14 on the ARIA charts in the first half of 2019.
A recent song of hers (“I Wish” with Joel Corry) also got some decent airplay on radio in Australia but never charted.
But that’s what I like about Nova - is that they play certain songs and artists others don’t, and also play some of the best charting songs from overseas.
And here’s a case of reverse psychology. This song did quite well in Australia but not so in its native Ireland.
Still on The Script - their latest song “Dare You to Doubt Me” has not yet been played on Australian radio but I will try to make sure of it when I ring up during Smallzy’s Surgery at some point!
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But not nearly enough.
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Nova has become Vega for an audience that don’t like to admit it!
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I wonder how long it will be until Michael Buble becomes their core artist?
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That’s typical Kyle style, claim a conspiracy and hope news.com or Daily Mail pick it up.
And as for Shawn Mullins, that’s the ballad rubbish that should be purged from Kiis Syd & Melb, claim the format gap left by Nova & SCA.
There is most definitely a commercially viable market available to support the format. More than Cada/Edge ever had (who should chase local, direct clients yet ARN have lost this capacity & experience).
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@Ant5476 another thing worth noting is that five years ago Nova frequently played “Rain” by The Script, though the song eventually never charted in Australia. In fact, they haven’t had a song chart in the top 50 since “Superheroes” in 2014/15.
But I would like to think they are still popular here as evidenced by the 9,000 strong crowd at their Sydney show ten weeks ago.
These days their songs rarely get played on the radio, and if so it would be “Superheroes”, “Hall of Fame” and “Breakeven” as these are their three most successful songs.
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She eventually delayed the release of that single to October 7 (from September 16) due to the Queen’s death.
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Wow. Finish on a Monday?
That’s different.
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No, that’s the day of their last OB, which will be held at the Corner Hotel in Richmond.
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Nova has been giving away free tickets to the Big Goodbye Show to listeners all this week. I think the last chance is today.
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Yes I know, my mate interviewed her.
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As modern Aus radio (1990’s to today) have no idea how to remain relevant in facilitating music to chart.
Hence a whole bunch of irrelevant talk shows achieving nothing else but a bottom line drain paying so called celebrities who know nothing about real radio communication.
@Avatar5991’s mention of good streaming numbers show that CHR format radio has already reached irrelevancy.
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With Spotify (and to a lesser extent Apple Music) you can pretty much listen to any song you want, anytime, anywhere.
While there are people who would stream the same song for hours on end, I’m not that type of person; I prefer to listen to a wide variety of music.
Just briefly going back to the topic of Mimi Webb - she’s not yet reached that “global” level as, for example, Ava Max or Dua Lipa has. Of the three, Max achieved the instant success with her 2018 song “Sweet but Psycho” (even four years on, I never get sick of that song lol), which peaked at number two on the ARIA Charts and reached number one in a number of other countries, including New Zealand.
Hey, how about keeping the Mimi Webb discussion to the Music thread rather than spilling over to every other thread?
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