What's the name of that song?

When I was in the radio industry, focus group research would always tell us that something listeners HATE is not having the DJ announce the title of the song and who the singer/group was. Now this used to be a way for the live/local stations I used to work for to super-serve the local audience as a competitive move against the voice-tracked competitors coming from a far away city and unaware/unable to back-announce the songs.

After I left the industry I was always surprised at how little local stations took advantage of this easy way to please your audience. And now, technology has stepped up once again to fill the gap that radio leaves.

Check out www.yes.com

Heard a song on a local station and don't know what it is...go to the website and type in the call letters of the station. Don't know the call letters...type in the zip code and the stations show up. Just choose the one that you heard the song on.

Up comes the song...and the ones that played an hour before it.
Loved the song enough..if you have an itunes then you can click on the song and download it to your computer. Oh, and that reminds me, that's another way that radio becomes irrelevant.

I haven't figured out how they do it...althoughI know that stations have to be "member stations" in order to be included... I think that the stations simply submit their playlist --and the yes.com site doesn't use some sort of monitoring of "song signatures" in the way that Broadcast Data System or similar systems do.

The stations do get something out of the deal--a kickback on $$ paid for itunes downloads aggregate research data on who buys them.

If you're anything like me, you'll find it fun to type in call letters of former favorite stations.