Despite having around 7,000 songs on my ipod, I am one of the ever increasingly rare type of person that stills listens to the radio now and then. Though, I find myself doing it less and less and only turn it on because of force of habit from my youth or morbid curiosity. This morning, I put on Jam'n 94.5  and found it funny that they kept promoting that they are giving away tickets to the Rock The Bells Tour  which they said has a great line up; indeed the tour's line up is great, partly because it features a bunch of acts that Jam'n barely plays on their station. Lets go through some of the acts in the Rock The Bells Line Up: The Roots, has Jam'n ever played The Roots? Maybe they played "You Got Me" a few times 10 years ago but thats about it. Wu Tang members Gza, Rza, and Raekwon are on the tour. Even if you got back to the 90s Jam'n hardly played any Wu Tang and I am sure that they never play any of Gza, Rza, or Raekwon's solo stuff. From Common, Big Boi, Ice Cube, Cypress Hill, House of Pain, and Damian Marley they pretty much have played about one song each from the entire careers of all of those artists. They never play stuff like K'naan, Tech N9ne, Necro, Sage Francis. I will say that they have played a ton of Busta over the years and he is on the tour. The biggest name on the tour is Nas and Jam'n has played some Nas over the years. They played "Hero" a little bit last summer off of his last album and they still play some of his old stuff now and then, mostly "If I Ruled The World" That being said any Nas fan (or Stan) would tell you that Jam'n is not know for playing Nas despite him being top 5 dead or alive. So, in a way, when promoting the Rock The Bells tour Jam'n is saying "hey go to this show and hear a ton of hip hop we don't actually play." 
        Radio playlists sucking is not a problem that Jam'n alone has. It is pervasive in the entire radio industry. The problem they are still using an archaic system to decide what to play. Music Labels which are also dieing still pay independent promoters who act as a middle man to "work" a song for radio which usually means that they do some borderline form of payola to get a station to play a song. This practice is not new and has been part of  the music industry for years. Read the book Hitmen for more info about it. This process used to work pretty well for everyone involved. The problem now is that this process is so damn slow. 
        Lets look at 2 case studies. Kid Cudi and Asher Roth who are also on tour together in a show Jam'n is promoting. The 2 big hits of those artists are Kid Cudi's Day n Night  and Asher Roth's I Love College. Jam'n started playing those songs this past spring after their labels officially "went for adds." The problem is that those songs where already a year old and completely played out to anyone who had an internet connection and had been listening to them since the previous summer. Thus, you have a situation where people who are currently in high school and college barely listen to the radio if at all. Part of the reason I still listen to the radio is force of habit from my youth, but people who are younger then me are never building those habits. Because I am interested in the music industry I used to read the magazine Radio and Records or at least their website which was a radio insiders magazine. This was a magazines that kept detailed track of every song that was played on the radio, which stations played it, how many increased or decreased plays it had from week to week, and which songs the labels where officially pushing on radio by "going for adds." Last month this magazine folded which is evidence that the people who are supposed to give a shit about radio, don't even give a shit anymore.