JAM’s Jon Wolfert on NPR Podcast

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Jingles in various forms remained important to almost all radio stations for decades. But by the 1990s, they started to sound old-fashioned. Wolfert still produces jingles at his company, JAM Creative Productions, but he says the business has changed.

“Going from a Beatles song to, you know, a Rolling Stones song with this big-band thing in the middle — that was okay then,” Wolfert says. “But now it would be, kind of, ‘What?’ You know, it would be kind of strange, especially if you were putting it between a Beyonce song and a Taylor Swift song.”

Although some stations still use the classic singing jingles, you’re more likely to hear a kind of scaled-down jingle — without the singing — on today’s radio. It’s called a “sweeper.”

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