Radio Songs Are Sped Up (Played Faster)

Have you ever noticed that a song on the radio seems to be playing a bit faster than seems right? It's usually only slightly played faster and it almost not noticeable. I'm pretty sure that it's only a few songs that are played fast, however that's not what the radio station admitted to me today. This morning I was streaming a local radio station online at work and Depeche Mode's Policy of Truth came on and it sounded fast to me. So I found my mp3 copy of the song and played it at the same time. I was lucky enough to get the mp3 version just ahead of the radio and sure enough, the radio version caught up and passed the mp3 version. I have noticed this kind of thing for a few years now and decided to ask about it. So I emailed the radio station about it and they told me that in fact they do "pitch" their songs at 3%, meaning the songs are played 3% faster. This means that the pitch is about half of a semitone sharp. So halfway from A to A#. That is a noticeable difference in pitch. I was told that it comes from corporate that way and that the DJ's have the option to keep it, slow it down or speed it up even more. The reason for doing it is to gain the time to play one extra song every 2 hours. I figured it out that for every hour of 3% pitched music, that they gain about a minute and 40 seconds, thus twice that is a typical song length. They told me that ALL songs are played that way on their station, but I can't accept that as I know too many songs too well and it's easy for me to tell when they're "pitched." They also claimed that older songs are more noticeable since they aren't recorded as cleanly, but I know that's not true either. In fact most of the time when I notice it is on newer songs. Just thought I'd share this info I learned. So listen for it and complain. I'd rather have fewer songs played correctly than one extra every 2 hours with music that sounds off pitch, wouldn't you?