Radio Music Research
Music Testing
The most commonly employed method for finding out what songs to play on the radio is to conduct an Auditorium Music Test (AMT) where a precisely recruited group of listeners or potential listeners is assembled in a meeting room.

At the music test, listeners spend about two hours and they hear snippets, generally around 8 to 10 seconds in length, of songs that a station plays or might play. These small samples of songs have been time-proven to be adequate for listeners to identify and give an opinion on each song.

The technology pictured is the same as used on several of the news networks during the 2008 Presidential Election campaign to show the reactions in real time to speeches and advertisements for the candidates. The dial settings of the respondents is instantly shown to the station personnel in attendance; above is a graph of a perceptual question.

Results
 
Here is a graph of a set of 7 song hooks. This is a "warm up" set, purposely built to allow participants to get used to moving the dial up and down for songs they like and do not like.
Once a test is completed, the reports that may be printed or viewable in special software are a guide to station programmers as to which songs to play and how often.

Cornerstone research
Here is where I recommend Analyst, the test data processing tool from Cornerstone research.

        http://www.cstoneresearch.com/analyst_frame.htm

Here you will find an FAQ and demo of how research data processing software takes the raw test data and presents it for each station.
It's up to the station to determine the data that is most important to implement the test. Software permits viewing many, many columns of data, by age groupings, station preferences, and even with cluster analysis applied. This allows the consideration of many factors in programming, all at once, to insure that every hour is balanced for all subsets of the audience.

Want to attend a test?
Here are some pictures from a recent test in one of America's larger Hispanic markets and are an example of fairly standard procedures for this kind of test. 

Here are SIP's Tom Owens and Ricardo Mazanares setting up for a music test. They are preparing the computer gear which will accept listener input from the dials (you can see them on the table) and feed them to a laptop where each score is cross tabulated with the individual who registers it.
A set of dials ready to be placed on the tables in preparation for the test. If the dials look a bit familiar, they are the same ones used by several of the news networks to do those on-air focus groups about elections, candidates and issues.

This view shows the dial which takes individual participant input and feeds it to the computer via a two way transmitter, called a "console".

Almost ready for the participants to arrive. Ismar Santacruz does a final check-up on the equipment, now ready for testing hundreds of songs for the respondents who will soon arrive.

Checking the setup and the song files one last time.

The listeners arrive. Each is checked in outside the test room to make sure the people who were carefully recruited the weeks before the test are the ones who check in. The recruit process generally tries to create a sample that accurately represents the composition of the core audience of a station or a format.

Tom Owens helps the listeners to their seats in the test room.

Looking towards the front of the test room, where a screen will supplement the verbal instructions to the panel taking the test.

Ricardo checks the microphone and starts the music test.  Groups are generally limited to about 60 people, which allows for a personal experience for the participant. Often, after a test is over, a station DJ will give out Tshirts or mugs and thank the participants for helping to create the best radio programming possible.

Ricardo introduces the attendees to the procedures for the test. Questions to be answered with the dial will be displayed on the screen.

Since the test is done with real-time computer processing, an EKG-like graph of listener reaction can be seen on a monitor in a separate room. Station staff can see the instant results for each song so they get a "feel" for the overall music styles. The graph on screen can show listeners by age, sex, station preference and many other criteria.

A group of radio station staffers views the moment to moment readings from the dials of all the participants in real time in the adjoining room.

Above... Tom Owens and Ismar SantaCruz process the data after the test is over.  Below... Ismar checks the test data.

Electronic Testing

The advantage of electronic testing is that the results are ready within a few hours of the test, and ready for the station staff to use to provide the music and programs the listeners just said they wanted!