The thought of radio jingles may conjure up a very specific sound in your brain – a dated, peppy, “I’d like to give the world a Coke” sound from yesteryear. If that’s the case, I have some great news for you: your radio jingle doesn’t have to sound anything like that in 2018. You’ve got a million options, so what should your modern jingle sound like? Picking the best music genre for your radio jingle is a hugely important process, and here’s what you need to know to get the best end product.

Producers of television commercials know that hours of thought and research go into deciding each visual detail, from the social connotations tied to the outfits of the actors to the color psychology of the background imagery. The same scientific decision making can be applied to radio jingles.

The first step? It’s the first thing to decide when planning any part of an ad: who is this for? Who will be listening? Who needs to be listening? Running into the production process without pinpointing your target demographic could leave you with a final product that gets you the wrong kind of business (or, no business at all).

Before you start compiling the instruments and voice talent that make up your future radio jingle, you have to decide what kinds of those elements your customers want to hear in it. Powerhouse music companies like Live Nation have started to step into the advertising game, offering advertisers data on whose concert tickets their target customers are buying. Advertisers take this data, analyze what their target demos’ preferred music tastes are, and employ that genre of music in their TV spots and radio jingles.

Even if your advertising budget doesn’t quite allot room for one-on-one communications with Live Nation, similar data can be found for free online. Spotify’s Insights blog releases regular posts on who’s listening to what – their “Musical Map of the World” goes a step further by generating playlists of the most popular music in the biggest cities around the world. This is invaluable information: wherever you are, you know what your community is listening to right now.

Selecting the right music genre for your radio jingle can make or break the ad. No other medium of advertising is so dependent on music choice – it’s a radio jingle. You’re writing music to go alongside today’s hits and compete with them for listeners’ attention. There’s a lot of work that goes into picking the right genre for your radio jingle, but it’s worth the energy.