The term is sometimes incorrectly used as a synonym for the adult hits format, which uses a slightly newer music library stretching from all decades to the present with a major focus on 1990s and 2000s pop, rock and alternative songs.
The classic hits format as it is known today began to take shape in the mid 2000s when oldies radio stations started having audience and ratings issues.
[10] They believed that they could not be successful with the oldies format and needed to update the music and presentation to stay relevant in the 25-54 demographic on which advertising agencies base ad purchases.
[11] Most of the current classic hits stations were simply slow evolutions from oldies, including WOGL in Philadelphia, WRBQ-FM in Tampa, KSPF in Dallas, and WOCL in Orlando, among many others.
Rock: Alternative and new wave: Pop: R&B and dance: Songs from the mid- to late 1970s which had an influence on the MTV generation from artists such as Queen, Foreigner, Elton John, and the Bee Gees are still featured on many of these stations as the oldest part of the library.
Additionally, stations have started to play songs from the 1990s and 2000s that have appeal to this audience such as "Linger" by The Cranberries and Uncle Kracker's version of "Drift Away", along with later releases by artists that were successful in the 1980s, such as U2 and Michael Jackson.
[19] Examples include Netflix's popular series Stranger Things (whose soundtrack features songs from Cyndi Lauper and Toto), Wet Hot American Summer, Glow, and The Goldbergs on ABC.
Movies with box office success that are set in the 1980s have also been contributed to the popularity of the music of that era, including Guardians of the Galaxy, The Wedding Singer, Hot Tub Time Machine, and Ready Player One.
Millennials also grew up in an era when music radio formats featuring older music were becoming widespread, something that was not necessarily true for Generation X; much of the classic hits library was included in adult-contemporary stations of the era, while classic rock was only beginning to split from more modern rock stations in the late 1980s, around the same time oldies emerged as a standalone format.