CHRIS MUCKLEY, DIRECTOR OF MUSIC PROGRAMMING AT SIRIUSXM, 10,000 HOURS
Well the truth may need some re-arranging
I have always loved music, even as a little kid. When I was in school, I was always making mix tapes for people. I would literally ditch class to go and look for out-of-print records I wanted to add to my collection. I took 6 years of piano lessons, and I was ok at it, but realized I am not a musician, I am a curator. As much as I love music, listening to it and discovering it, it’s the act of sharing music that I love best.
In college I was on air at KCPR (91.3 FM, California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo). I remember the first time I was on the mic and running the board by myself, I thought “this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.” The station was operated by students, and in the early 90s the directive was to play very obscure music. The PDs didn’t want us playing the hits. Thankfully, I also got to do a show called New Wave Mania, an 80s flashback show that was modeled after the music I loved growing up. I was made Promotion Director for a year and the best thing about that experience was it made me realize I didn’t want to do that at all.
At the end of my freshman year, I worked as a DJ at KZOZ on Saturdays and Sundays and hosted a free-form alternative music show called The Inner Edge on Sunday nights. I paid attention to other DJs everywhere, and began identifying what I liked about how one person did this, and another person did that…I incorporated the best parts and developed my own unique delivery. I was a student in the craft of broadcasting.
And once in a moment/It all comes to you
I got hired on air at 91X in San Diego a month before I graduated college, which was pretty much my dream job; about 6 months later I was made the music coordinator and within a few more months I became the music director. That station launched me; I was 23 years old and the MD of a heritage radio station.
In 2003, I got interested in real estate and got my license. Even though I still did some on-air fill-in work at 91X, I was focused on this new career, which I did for about 8 years. In 2009 I moved to Los Angeles and began to wind down my real estate business. I was missing working with music, so starting DJing at KCRW and doing music supervision for film, TV and ads, plus some voiceover work.
Message received loud and clear
In 2015, I was hired on air, part time at SiriusXM while still at KCRW. In 2017, SiriusXM hired me full time to do afternoons on The Spectrum as well as program SiriusXMU and The Loft. June 2020 I started programming The Spectrum, and in 2023 I took over programming for 1st Wave. Also in 2020 I was tasked with creating The GRAMMY Channel, which has now run as a pop-up channel for two weeks each of the past six years leading up to the awards telecast.
I get up really early in the morning, log on by 6am/7am (sometimes before my East Coast staff!) and I go through emails. I look at my task list then listen to music. That includes what is being sent to me, but I also look around at what’s going on elsewhere, what music people are talking about. I spend a few hours doing the music logs for both channels and writing copy for what you hear between the songs. I work closely with our talent department to figure out who we want to book for interviews and performances. This involves a fair amount of correspondence with record labels and artist managers.
I use Play MPE all the time and think it’s a great tool. SiriusXM encourages us to be creative in what we’re playing. We want to play hits but also give first chances to new artists who we think are great. I’ve played lots of songs from Play MPE blasts regardless of the strength of the promotion campaign behind them.
Right now I am listening to Cardinals, who I’ve loved for a while, Tyler Ballgame and ellur.
What’s in your heart will never change
When I first started in radio, we were still manually running our boards – CDs, carts and records. The implementation of robust automation systems is probably the biggest change. Now, you can pre-set things ahead of time and it runs really well. Social media is another change. It’s so omnipresent. Everyone has a public voice, whereas before, only people in traditional media did. Even now, well-known people feel like they have to augment everything they do with social media.
We used to put a lot of Callers on the air when I first started in radio. People would phone-in to stations and that doesn’t happen much anymore. I used to record everyone that called and would use a lot of that content on the air. There was a real sense of community in that.
Radio is still really important for recording artists. Many musicians tell me the first time they heard their song on the radio is something they will never forget. Radio is one to many. When a song is on the radio, everyone listening hears it at the same time, in the same order. A streaming service doesn’t give you that.
One piece of advice I can give to musicians is not to hesitate to put your art out there. Put it in front of people. But musicians have to be patient. Often the first few songs a band releases won’t connect. But keep going. Don’t be discouraged if a particular song doesn’t land. And really concentrate on your songwriting – you can be the tightest band in the world, but if you don’t have good song writing, you don’t have a foundation.
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