A Canadian station which recently introduced QuickHitz – a format that cuts songs in half to play more music, has dropped it after a backlash from artists.

90.3 AMP in Calgary, which is a part of Newscap group in Canada, had adopted the format to offer 24 songs per hour, compared to the 12 it used to play earlier.

But it attracted a lot of criticism from Canadian artists and musicians, particularly Jann Arden – a popluar singer-songwriter.

Arden, who has also won numerous awards, called the station’s format an insult to musicians on twitter and asked her followers on social media to boycott the station.

On Tuesday, 90.3 AMP Radio dropped QuickHitz and went back to playing full songs in the face of potential lawsuits from musicians.

Steve Jones, Vice-President of Programming for Newcap told The Canadian Press: “We made the decision to go back to the old strategy because to do this successfully would involve far too many lawyers getting far too rich. It was greeted with a lot of curiosity and it was also greeted with numerous legal threats.”

Speaking about their future plans, Jones said they will go back to the drawing board, work with various stakeholders in the industry and try to bring it back later.