Nampula Radio: All hits, all the time?

One of the highlights of listening to the radio, aside from the ones I’ve talked about before, is getting to hear the weekly hits chart. The weekly hits chart is described as being “the ten songs most popular coming from and by America”. It comes on every Friday morning starting at 8am. It’s the can’t miss half hour program of the week.

It starts with number ten. The DJ even tells you how many weeks its been on the chart, where it peaked, and where its heading. The song starts playing in the background as the DJ introduces all the information. He finally says the name and artist and then cranks the volume up. The problem is sometimes he gets sidetracked and will talk so long he needs to restart the song. He plays the song for as long as he wants, cuts the volume, and then puts on the next tune.

What’s more is that the DJ has the discretion to play as much or a little of the song he likes. About a month ago for some reason known only to teen girls Taylor Swift was fairly popular, notching 4 songs on the countdown one particular week (you’ll see why later). The DJ was not a fan of hers, apparently, because he played her song only long enough to get through saying its chart information and then when right on to something by some rapper (who’s probably from Senegal or West Afria) and played the song twice.

The most confusing thing is that often, the DJ will announce the song over the end of the previous song, and then never play it. He then puts on the next songs and announces it just the same. At first, this was not a problem I cared about because it usually meant skipping at least two Taylor Swift songs. But then one week they announced they skipped a song that was, “making its premier on the countdown at position 6. Let it Be, by the Beatles”.

After doing enough sleuthing to put the Hardy Boys to shame (about 2 minutes) I finally figured out what was happeing. I kept track of the tip ten chart for the next two weeks to compare notes, and sure enough I was right. The Nampula Radio Top Ten is actually the iTunes Music Store Top Ten. And it is each and every single week. It turns out that while I (and everybody else here) were thinking we had our hands on the pulse of America, what we really had our hands on was the pulses of the people in America that for some reason actually buy music instead of downloading or just listening to it on YouTube all day long. Several weekends ago, this theory was further confirmed by skipping two songs by hip brand new artist “Glee Christmas Episode Special”.