TORONTO — From October 1973 through August 8, 2006, Radio & Records fiercely competed against Billboard in many ways — including its music charts. In its latter years, R&R partnered with Mediabase 24/7, shifting its top song listings from weekly phone calls each Tuesday to Los Angeles to digitized monitoring of what each reporting station played across the last seven days.
Mediabase’s main competitor in the chart world for decades has been BDS, which powered the Billboard charts through December 2022, when it shifted its airplay monitoring to the iHeartMedia-owned Mediabase. Now, a new choice for radio monitoring has emerged for radio stations in the U.S. that’s already making noise in Canada.
Play MPE‘s radio monitoring tool, MTR, has gone live throughout North America.
“It’s tracking radio spins made easy and we’re adding radio stations daily!,” a post on X, formerly Twitter, heralds.
For recording industry music promoters and those who still rely on airplay via free broadcast radio to drive the careers of musicians, the arrival of MTR in the U.S. could be highly impactful. It comes after a beta test involving a wide array of commercial stations including tastemaker CIND “Indie 88” in Toronto, the iHeartRadio Canada-programmed “Virgin Radio” network, and Corus-owned CFNY “102.1 The Edge” in Toronto.
In the U.S., iHeartMedia’s WHTZ “Z100” in New York, Audacy’s KROQ-FM in Los Angeles, and Saul Levine’s KKGO “Go Country 105.1” in L.A. are already signed on with MTR use.
The pitch is clearly to radio promotion pros.
MTR tracks airplay across 5000+ radio stations in North America. Track promoted releases to see when and where your songs are getting spins. Promoting your music with Caster? Get 30% off tracking plans until July 5th.
“Affordable pricing plans” are also being pitched by Play MPE, which is launching MTR in the U.S. just days after Radiodays North America – Canadian Music Week events conclude in Toronto.
