Itunes, Billboard, and the marginalization of black music and black audiences in America

So today Billboard changed their policy to allow digital music sales to count on previously airplay-driven genre charts. The problem with this is that there is no way of separating by demographics like there is for radio. The radio listener chooses the station that best fits their tastes, whereas anyone might buy from Itunes. Further compounding the problem is that that isn't even true -- economically privileged listeners, who are more likely to be white, are much more likely to purchase digital music.

The introduction of Itunes data to the Billboard Hot 100 in 2005 has had the effect of slowly but surely pushing music favored by black audiences off the pop charts and top 40 (and even rhythmic) radio, to the point where there are now very few songs that cross over from urban radio to other formats. Over the past year or so, there have been only a few songs popular on the r&b charts that cross over into the top 40 at any given time, usually below the top 10 (even this year's huge rap hits "The Motto" and "Mercy" got stuck in the teens on the big chart), while most of urban radio's big songs get stuck in the 30-100 range of the Hot 100. This has also led to the trend of black music stars like Nicki Minaj and Usher creating entirely different singles for different radio formats, with pop songs for white radio and r&b or rap songs for black radio.

Billboard's new changes potentially strike an even bigger blow to black audiences being able to determine their own hits. On this week's r&b chart, with the changes enacted, Rihanna's decidedly pop (and, it should be noted, terrible) "Diamonds" jumps from #61 to #1, pushing Miguel's decidedly r&b (and brilliant) "Adorn" out of the top spot. Urban radio stations may have lost one of their last impetuses left not to play pop music with white-leaning audiences.

There's even more to this but I don't have time to explain every last factor at work right this second. Here's what's been said on the rolling r&b thread:

um... some dude... wtf is going on with the R&B chart? why is Rihanna's "Diamonds" suddenly #1?

― (whose paintings looked like (pink) vaginas) (The Brainwasher), Thursday, October 11, 2012 9:14 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha i was just about to come to this thread to gripe about that

basically the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart has tradtionally been mostly airplay + physical single sales, so if a nominal R&B song (by, say, Rihanna) did well on iTunes and pop radio but not actual R&B stations, it wouldn't make much of an impact on the R&B chart. but as of this week, iTunes is a factor on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop like it has been on the Hot 100 for years, so now suddenly "Diamonds" is #1, and there's now a R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart which is basically what the main chart used to be, and on that "Adorn" is #1 and "Diamonds is #61.

this is massively fuck up whatever confidence R&B stations and labels had left to not cater to pop crossover imo. horrible move by Billboard.

― some dude, Thursday, October 11, 2012 9:57 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And now Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs is 50 deep instead of 100.

25-deep R&B Songs chart now, too.

― Andy K, Thursday, October 11, 2012 10:20 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

R&B Songs and Rap Songs will serve as 25-position distillations of the overall Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, highlighting the differences between pure R&B and rap titles in the overall, wide-ranging R&B/hip-hop field.

Eleven of the 25 songs on R&B Songs feature rappers, so "pure R&B" must mean songs with an R&B artist as only or lead voice.

― Andy K, Thursday, October 11, 2012 10:34 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Make that 10, not 11.

― Andy K, Thursday, October 11, 2012 10:34 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

― Cap'n Hug-a-Thug (The Reverend), Thursday, October 11, 2012 12:21 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

excuse me while I find a corner to curl up into the fetal position and cry in

― Cap'n Hug-a-Thug (The Reverend), Thursday, October 11, 2012 12:22 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

rev's "Itunes destroyed Black American pop music" rant on twitter a few months ago was so righteous that i saved it in a doc, tempted to just post it right now

― some dude, Thursday, October 11, 2012 12:34 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

post it! i missed it!

― lex pretend, Thursday, October 11, 2012 12:36 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'd have to clean it up and re-order it for it to make sense, but here's the short version he put on tumblr: http://reverenddollars.tumblr.com/post/24446685357/positing-not-claiming

― some dude, Thursday, October 11, 2012 12:38 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha i saw that, think i favourited it somewhere

― lex pretend, Thursday, October 11, 2012 12:42 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've gone on at least a couple such extended twitter rants. Been meaning to start a thread on the subject here and I think I will now. Please post whatever you saved.

― Cap'n Hug-a-Thug (The Reverend), Thursday, October 11, 2012 12:43 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh wow, part of my gripe about this was going to be that the Country charts didn't get the same treatment but they did -- Taylor Swift leaps from #21 to #1 on the revamped download-heavy Country chart. fucking Billboard, putting nails in the coffin of terrestrial radio formats' ability to make hits.

― some dude, Thursday, October 11, 2012 12:45 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

would quite like to hear about the role itunes is playing in this - that's not in the tumblr & i don't really know

― lex pretend, Thursday, October 11, 2012 12:46 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Wonder if (the very good, all-R&B) Two Eleven has a shot at the Top Ten of the Billboard 200. "Put It Down": 70-76-72 last three weeks on Hot 100 and 16-5-3 last three weeks on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop. Doesn't really bode well.

― Andy K, Thursday, October 11, 2012 12:48 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

2 columns that chris molanphy and i wrote about r&b's hot 100 decline that get into how itunes changed things:

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2011/05/chris_brown_look_at_me_now_hot_100.php

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2012/07/sales_slump_usher_chris_brown.php

― some dude, Thursday, October 11, 2012 12:51 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i read both of those at the time - they were great and i think i may have linked one in my independent r&b piece - but what is it about itunes that means it's an inefficient driver of r&b? it's so geared towards casual/spontaneous consumption that it inherently privileges pop?

― lex pretend, Thursday, October 11, 2012 12:54 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

whereas radio-driven r&b is dependent on gatekeepers to an extent?

― lex pretend, Thursday, October 11, 2012 12:54 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

those might be factors but the more simple truth is just that demographically speaking the songs and artists that get chart boosts from iTunes sales, particularly single sales, strongly skew pop and not urban

― some dude, Thursday, October 11, 2012 12:57 PM Bookmark

so iTunes ID3 genre tags DO matter lol

i'm quite shocked by this. i didn't know people still cared about billboard charts

It's not the charts themselves that I care about so much as how they reflect and drive cultural changes.

yeah the charts are bullshit but they have real ramifications in terms of what gets bankrolled

Oh and Psy has been placed on top of the rap charts, because obv "Gangnam Style" is what's hot in the streets right now.

If you have any interest in this phenomenon, please read the Molanphy articles.

another good reason to hate apple

http://billwerde.tumblr.com/post/33381394622/chart-attacks-pt-71-or-i-really-like-brandy-too

Are there charts for most genres? And did they change too?

yeah the charts are bullshit but they have real ramifications in terms of what gets bankrolled

so does a list of 'what music is actually being bought'

This is really interesting, Rev. We've never really had high-stakes multiple charts and the US system has always seemed incredibly complicated to me, but then we're a million times smaller so it's a different proposition, I guess.

well, they used to be lists of what music is actually being played and requested on the radio, too. but however they combine these different statistics always seems to heavily favor sales over overplay. (xpost)

I for one never liked the idea of airplay contributing to the charts here in the UK and I'm glad it remains sales based.

but I can see why it works better in the USA. You only ever got top 40 or oldies radio here and that was it until digital radio and 1extra.

Chris Mol@nphy wrote this column in ship's column last year:

All I'll add to the exhaustive data you offer is a hobby-horse I've been riding for a couple of years now: the need for Billboard to finally add digital-sales data to the R&B/Hip-Hop chart.

They've been resisting for years, on the (implied, not overtly stated) premise that it would ruin the character of a chart that has a long history with black-owned and oriented retailers. But with that segment (along with all brick-and-mortar music retail) at death's door anyway, the sales portion of Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs has been near-nonexistent for years, making it essentially a radio chart a la the deadly, predigital Hot 100 of 2000–05.

That's led to a problem where there's no longer a radio programmer-to-consumer-back-to-programmer feedback loop that makes for great charts. I'm sure there's a one-way influence from radio to the teen urban-music buyer who then downloads a Trey Songz MP3. But with that sale not reflected on the R&B/Hip-Hop chart, the loop ends there; programmers aren't given clear enough signals of how to reflect their most avid audience members' tastes (especially young audience).

In my ideal fantasy world, you'd be able to segment iTunes/AmazonMP3 song sales to pockets of the country that have large black populations or high urban-radio listenership, but that's probably impossible, or at least fraught. But at the very least, I think it'd be trivial for Billboard to set up a rule whereby a song eligible for R&B/Hip-Hop Songs would have to hit some kind of urban-radio threshold before their iTunes sales would count toward the chart.

here's an explanation of the changes, which affect all genre charts:

http://www.billboard.com/news#/news/taylor-swift-rihanna-psy-buoyed-by-billboard-1007978552.story

the rock charts are much less affected by this than R&B or country -- for instance this week fun.'s "Some Nights" went back to #1 after falling to #8, because it had started to run its course on radio but is still selling strong on iTunes.

ok lol i spoke to soon -- Philip Philips and Train are now big on the rock charts

wtf is philip philips?

Train are now big on the rock charts

chilling words in any context

also holy shit SIX Mumford & Sons songs in a row on the rock songs chart, because that was the last big album release so every song is getting bought individually on itunes

Phillip Phillips won American Idol last year

see that is bullshit with buying albums and the tracks being on a singles track

*chart

what i'm saying!

it's one thing that rihanna has the #1 R&B song now, but when her album is released she'll probably take up the whole top 5

you mentioned itunes sales in the other thread shipz - i'm guessing those are discounted albums rather than individual tracks?

apart from that and

economically privileged listeners, who are more likely to be white, are much more likely to purchase digital music

i'd be interested to know why r&b/rap/country etc might not be as digitally-driven...?

it's funny, you might've thought before this all happened that iTunes impacting singles charts might mean that new artists and grassroots successes that have been shut out by the radio industry might get a better shot at breaking through. instead, it feels like any song by the biggest stars is stomping out songs people love by less famous artists via the power of name recognition and fanatical fanclub followings.

you mentioned itunes sales in the other thread shipz - i'm guessing those are discounted albums rather than individual tracks?

Not discounted albums, people buy lots of album tracks individually from popular albums all the time. A hit album is almost guaranteed to have several album tracks enter the Hot 100 on its week of release because of this.

i'd be interested to know why r&b/rap/country etc might not be as digitally-driven...?

That isn't quite true of country, but white demographics are a lot more likely to have internet in their homes than black/latinos. And even if they do, the white listener is a lot more likely to have spare $$$ to spend on digital music.

i mean if you want to go by the stereotype that country fans are rural/poorer than the same would apply to them too

seems pretty obv

ok...how does that square with the boom in free rap mixtapes?

also, i don't think i realised til now how airplay-driven charts would help songs specifically popular in demographics with no spare $$$ to actually buy them in whatever format.

Note that of the top 20-selling songs in the US during the first half of 2012, only two, #16 "Rack City" and #18 "The Motto" reached the top 50 of the r&b chart.

what genre of music dominates the US singles charts now?

i mean if you want to go by the stereotype that country fans are rural/poorer than the same would apply to them too

― congratulations (n/a), Thursday, October 11, 2012 2:07 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't think this is as true as one might assume? A lot of well-off suburban country listeners. Or at least country seems to do fairly well on Itunes.

capital-p Pop -- Katy Perry, Rihanna, Gaga, Kelly Clarkson, Pink, One Direction, etc. although this year stuff like Gotye and fun. has mixed things up a bit. (xpost)

there's also the argument that buying your favorite song on iTunes (as opposed to just listening to it on the radio, streaming it on YouTube now and again, or buying the album) is a generational habit, and so things that skew younger benefit from this -- Taylor, Rihanna etc.

i mean it sucks because a lot of these formats had been fostering new stars and putting interesting songs at #1 lately, but you're never gonna see Miguel top the R&B chart or Eric Church top the country chart again after this

don't forget Maroon 5

interesting stuff. i don't have my head entirely around the numbers & methodologies here, but there's something about a "return to monoculture" either in real terms or as a measurement phenomenon.

is the pop domination due to itunes or changing of radio playlists/genre stations changing to top 40 or just one of those things that happens?

interesting stuff. i don't have my head entirely around the numbers & methodologies here, but there's something about a "return to monoculture" either in real terms or as a measurement phenomenon.

It's been happening on radio for a while. It's impossible to break the Rihanna-Goyte-Katy-Perry-Maroon-5 stranglehold on Clear Channel Radio. I mean, I hear "One More Night" every 45 minutes.

but you're never gonna see Miguel top the R&B chart or Eric Church top the country chart again after this

to be blunt about this, it's because, even though Rihanna makes club trance, she "is R&B" (because, you know), and Taylor Swift makes pop dubstep, she "is country" (again, because, you know). right?

in a way it seems like this is a identity/identification/musicalogical problem. almost.

Taylor Swift... makes pop dubstep?

p much

well, it's because when five Rihanna tracks become available her fans will download them at once from iTunes.

SWIFTSTEP

What would an ideal modern chart system look like?

Taylor Swift... makes pop dubstep?

I'll assume you don't want to hear her latest track.

What would an ideal modern chart system look like?

"Adorn" and "Springsteen" topping every chart.

http://soundcloud.com/taylorswiftofficial/i-knew-you-were-trouble

is the pop domination due to itunes or changing of radio playlists/genre stations changing to top 40 or just one of those things that happens?

― Algerian Goalkeeper, Thursday, October 11, 2012 2:12 PM Bookmark

Both of those things are happening. Another part of this phenomenon I wanted to get into is how specialized radio stations have been getting pushed off the airwaves. A few years ago another change that happened is how Arbitron, the company that measures radio station ratings (and thus, how much $$$ stations get from advertisers), changed their own system from one in which their sample listeners kept diaries of what they listened to to one in which an electronic device automatically records what radio they listen to. There have been arguments about their sampling methodology underrepresenting minorities and related issues, but the effect of this switch has been black- and latino-focused radio stations plummeting in ratings. A lot have switched formats and this is compounded by the fact that many talk, news, and sports stations have been ditching AM radio for FM, which has traditionally been the domain of music stations due to its higher fidelity. A few years ago, Seattle had three high-powered commercial stations that focused on black music - a rap/r&b station, an "adult rhythmic" station that focused on 80s-2000s dance & r&b hits, and a smooth jazz/adult r&b station. Today only the former is left, and it skews much more towards pop.

I'll assume you don't want to hear her latest track.

lol hell no

this is a identity/identification/musicalogical problem

it has always been this way. R&B is just shorthand for "black", 'twas ever thus

The adult rhythmic station is now top 40 and the smooth jazz station is now sports, fwiw. KUBE, the r&b/rap station, used to be an unassailable ratings kingpin, but now lags behind both the newly-top 40 Movin 92.5 and the already existing top 40 station Kiss 106, which used to have very mediocre ratings.

xp to Rev: something like this happened in the twin cities too. there was a lone black oriented pop station up and running for quite a few years (B96). interestingly it was a new startup at the time (i need to look up exactly when but it was in the 00s) i could tell that the advertiser base was becoming increasingly reliant on only a few businesses as the years went by. and then one day it was done, changed to a pretty generic 80s-10s pop/rock station, a bit like the JackFM format.

xp idk how common this phenomenon was across black radio nationally but this station had its slice of white club pop: gwen stefani, justin timberlake, lady gaga, and right before the end, kesha.

for the last decade or so, there have been 3 contemporary R&B/rap stations in Baltimore and D.C. that all pretty much play the same things from the top of the R&B/Hip Hop Songs chart. in the last year, one of the D.C. stations began dropping Ellie Goulding and Katy Perry and Gotye and Flo Rida into their playlist. and they're the only R&B station i've heard Rihanna's now-#1 R&B hit "Diamonds" on.

xp to myself: er when i say "lone" that's not quite true, there's been a lower-powered black community radio station, KMOJ, on the air here for years. this was the only black radio station with broadcasting reach over the entire metro.

Until now, only country stations contributed to the Hot Country Songs chart, or R&B/hip-hop stations to Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs; the same held true for Latin and rock. The new methodology, which will utilize the Hot 100's formula of incorporating airplay from more than 1,200 stations of all genres monitored by BDS, will reward crossover titles receiving airplay on a multitude of formats. With digital download sales and streaming data measuring popularity on the most inclusive scale possible, it is only just the radio portion of Billboard chart calculations that includes airplay from the entire spectrum of monitored formats.

UGH.

"Adorn" and "Springsteen" topping every chart.

I mean not what kind of music would make up the charts, but how would a properly designed modern chart system function?

I'm trying to wrap my head around how all of this works, but the idea that there was this beneficial feedback loop between radio and what the audience was buying is interesting and something I've never really considered. It makes sense that a chart that allows for some input from tastemakers would work better than one that strictly tracks sales. I always thought of that feedback loop in a negative way, as a pointless echo chamber, and a decade ago I would have thought that something like an itunes chart would end up being more diverse and interesting than a radio-driven chart, but obviously that's not the case.

So I'm kind of wondering what other kinds of gatekeeper or tastemaking factors could be input into the equation besides radio? Like in theory it seems like you could develop some kind of interesting combination of online sales and listening metrics (itunes, spotify listens, lastfm) and then add in something like hype machine data for the gatekeeper input. But that wouldn't really work in the same way and wouldn't result in the kind of beneficial feedback loop that existed between radio and retail.

Boston's R&B/hip-hop station has been a ClearChannel property for years and has therefore already been on this bandwagon; the interesting thing happening here is the dismantling of all of the alternative stations

xp: goole I was gonna ask if KMOJ disappeared after this summer!

i think that the genre charts should have remained dictated by airplay on only stations of particular formats. the Hot 100 and various Digital Sales charts already did a good job of showing what was selling even if it wasn't getting airplay. MAYBE the genre charts could have digital sales factored in, but at a much lower rate than they are now, where it just feels like this trump card that overrides all other factors.

if you look at Billboard's Radio Songs chart, which is all airplay from all formats, you can see that there's clearly just way more pop stations than anything else right now. the 10th biggest pop song on it often outperforms whatever the biggest song on urban radio is.

DJP: i can't/don't listen to it at all really but it's still around afaik: http://kmojfm.com/

I share most of the above concerns about these changes. But is it possible this move could actually prove a good thing by allowing stations to rely less on the charts? Stations still ultimately have agency over what they play, so I don't think urban stations are going to start playing Rihanna just because her songs appear on their charts as a technicality, and if these charts really do become as messy and random as we're predicting here, isn't it possible that could make them such unreliable barometers that stations begin ignoring them?

I don't know how you break the interdependence of stations and the charts tbh

that's a nice thought, but generally anytime some shit happens that makes me hope "maybe this is the breaking point and from here on out things will get more regionalized and freeform and open-minded!" i'm wrong. (xpost)

Rev, re limited American radio options, this started back last century, blame Clinton for signing the Gingrich pushed Telecommunications Act of 1996; and radio programmer Lee Abrams homogenized commercial rock radio back in the late 1970s

http://futureofmusic.org/article/research/radio-deregulation-has-it-served-musicians-and-citizens

The radical deregulation of the radio industry allowed by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 has not benefited the public or musicians. Instead, it has led to less competition, fewer viewpoints, and less diversity in programming. Deregulation has damaged radio as a public resource.

I was hoping no one was going to bring up the Act.

to be fair radio HAS learned to ignore songs with iTunes sales bumps for a long time -- if it's a new artist like fun. or PSY then sales helps show the interest, but so far it's rare that some superstar's deep cut that jumps on the Hot 100 purely from sales gets added to playlists (although sometimes sales can help pick singles -- Molanphy had a good column a few months ago how big sales for "Set Fire To The Rain" as an album track contributed to it becoming a single)

Boston's R&B/hip-hop station has been a ClearChannel property for years and has therefore already been on this bandwagon; the interesting thing happening here is the dismantling of all of the alternative stations

Both KUBE and Kiss 106 in Seattle are Clear Channel. It should be noted that as KUBE is playing an increasing amount of pop (although mostly by black artists - Flo Rida, Rihanna et al), Kiss has eschewed playing rap and r&b at all. The Flo Rida brigade is the only music by black artists they play, and only a few such songs at a time. Their playlist is otherwise white white white white white, which wasn't the case ten years ago, when they were playing 50 Cent just like every other station in America. 92.5 the other, non-Clear Channel top 40 station here, doesn't seem as averse to dropping "Mercy" or whatever from time to time tho.

in ten years all commercial radio is either gonna be chr or talk

i think that the genre charts should have remained dictated by airplay on only stations of particular formats. the Hot 100 and various Digital Sales charts already did a good job of showing what was selling even if it wasn't getting airplay. MAYBE the genre charts could have digital sales factored in, but at a much lower rate than they are now, where it just feels like this trump card that overrides all other factors.

― some dude, Thursday, October 11, 2012 4:35 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, obviously there was an irreconcilable problem that the feedback loop had disappeared, right? that radio was just arbitrarily dictating airplay

i mean radio is already fraught w/ payola & etc.

it seems to me the real problem is that online sales produce no demographic information.

like, genre used to be determined by audience, now it's determined by ... the billboard people guessing based on ???

yeah, that's a huge problem

D-40: as i was arguing earlier, just by how the artist in question came up and/or what the song sounds like (often contradictory)

ie Rihanna is and R&B artist so everything she does now is R&B.

*is an

I kind of get the impression payola is actually less of a problem in the post-Act world, because playlists are much more likely to be dictated by some suit at the top then by a radio dj who may be more amenable to an envelope full of bills. Not that that is a case for allowing corporations to buy up 1,000s of stations.

billboard's always pulled this shit though, i can think of twice in the past 15 years where they modified the hot 100 calculation effectively cuz it was skewing too r&b.

thanks to mergers there are no local morning zoo deejays getting paid off.

yeah huge lol at payola being anywhere near as big a problem now as it was ten, twenty, thirty, etc years ago

Glad to see this thread. My own area of special concern, Latin radio, is probably going to be severely affected in similar ways to the problems you guys have identified with R&B and country: first, superstars with with new releases are going to crowd out everyone else; good if you want more Shakira #1s (which I selfishly do), bad if you want to hear any reggaetón besides Daddy Yankee or W&Y or any bachata besides Royce and Romeo (both of which I really, really do). Second, it'll mean that Mexican regional music will be increasingly shut out of the main Latin chart, since airplay is the bread and butter of banda, cumbia, etc. And there'll be a LOT more J.Lo and Pitbull regardless of language or audience embrace. Pap

I think one thing people are forgetting here tho is that the charts aren't the only data radio stations have for determining what is popular. iirc, radio stations (especially better-financed ones) do a TON of focus-grouping. Also, call-ins.

in hip hop radio i can promise you payola it is still a big thing

yeah urban and country radio are VERY driven by call-in requests

xpost

mention of 50 cent & "in da club" is interesting too -- apart from all of this accountancy, different genres do wax and wane in creative power and popular appeal. it's not a stable equilibrium of li'l genres pumping out the same stuff to the same people every year

very true. and to me that's a reason that the genre charts SHOULD have stayed as they were, those genres need to be able to keep defining themselves by what the core listenership likes rather than what's crossing over to whatever genre is doing bigger business at that moment.

YES

yeah it's just bad datagathering plain and simple. it's not like the r&b audience or country audience and the networks catering to them just disappeared (ok the record stores have obv been going, so argument for incorporating itunes exists but calibration is beyond fucked), but the data of what is succeeding in those markets isn't being captured.

so much contempo-country sounds like AOR rock that I wonder what this forced iTunes mash-up will do to Nashville A&R.

this is an unmitigated disaster

Bill Werde of Billboard seems very comfortable with the changes in that tumblr post above. Like its no big deal

"we are never ever..." was probably going to be tswift's first single (from an album release) not to go at least top 10 on the country chart, which is probably an accurate representation of how country audiences received the song. and now it's suddenly #1 due to a lots of pop/crossover downloads. i always found the genre charts interesting because they offer a glimpse into what more specific audiences are hearing through focused radio formats.

i cant believe he refers to wikipedia as determining what is hip hop w/ a straight face

On twitter Werde says he will engage in respectful discussions of this

i guess flo rida will be getting #1s on rap songs with these rules in place (his only song so far to do this was "low")

wtf wtf

well, one thing that hasn't been mentioned so far is that the Rap Songs chart already factored in airplay from non-urban formats, so Flo Rida and Pitbull etc. had been mainstays on Rap Songs already

but nobody ever really paid much attention to that chart, R&B/Hip Hop Songs was always the barometer of a rap song's success

I recommend everybody jump ship from all forms of popular music

man why would you kick me out, man, i wasn't hurting anybody

anyone here still involved w/ college radio: do cmj charts still matter a great deal or even at all anymore? i can remember thinking when the cmj payola thing happened that it would be a perfect opportunity for pfork to start their own college radio chart and finish supplanting cmj. as it happened they didn't need to and it definitely seems like 'best new music' has supplanted the cmj charts in terms of being the macro table setter for indie rock. at the same time college radio promotion companies like team clermont, etc are still going strong so college radio must still matter on some level which could mean that cmj still matters on some level. does it?

i can't imagine it happening w/ rural country radio but i do wonder if r&b radio could ever go the way of rock radio where it's replaced as an option by ipods, spotify, etc to the extent that a deep disconnect sets in (aided by innacurate billboard charts) leading to station losing more listeners leading to station changing format. i can't imagine this happening in atlanta, too huge a buppie community, but at the same time i was still shocked when the last two atlanta rock radio stations (well there's one left that's low wattage) switched to chr and talk.

anyone here still involved w/ college radio: do cmj charts still matter a great deal or even at all anymore?

It does only insofar as belonging to CMJ gets you "access" to shit.

Emphasis on 'shit.'

I know our radio station bases a fraction of its programming on CMJ charts, most notably what it places into the loop for rotation shows. But there's such a thing as "recurrent" play and "Midnight City" and a track from This is Happening and Malkmus' "Tigers" are on it (I know because I'm constantly telling them to change that shit).

CHR = christian hit radio?

"no less an authority than wikipedia" jesus fucking christ

contemporary hits radio

haven't had a chance to read this thread yet but rev you have a story here you could/should pitch IMO

so is PSY not a rapper?

alfred: ah ok

ok, found one of my twitter rants (their archiving system is terrible obv). from late August:

Right now, there are only three songs in the pop top 40 that are on the R&B chart AT ALL. #marginalizationofblackmusic

#19 "Mercy", #28 "No Lie", #32 "Work Hard Play Hard". All rap songs by male artists. No R&B. No women.

Is there any precedent for this? I know from 1965 when they reinstated the R&B chart to 2009 there was at least one dual chart topper per yr

And there hasn't been in the three years since, but this is ridiculous.

EZSnappin: @reverenddollars Rhianna and Nicki are on there - Nicki has 2 in the top 40. And Usher. Not at same time as R&B charts, though.

@EZSnappin None of those songs are in the the R&B top 100.

@EZSnappin There are actually two Usher songs in the R&B top 10, but neither is "Scream".

frogbs: "wikipedia" didn't think so particulary, until one guy two weeks ago changed the article name.

kinda think also that nobody in america's really taken advantage of ppl streaming stations on their iphones and disregarding geography. i know at work only local radio we listen to is sportstalk, npr, and maybe clark howard on wsb (and even then we stream it cuz the sound is much better), seems like there's a way to make alot of money setting up a bbc one for america. there are a few commercial stations - wfmu the big one - that seem to grasp this opportunity but so far, beyond half measures like 'i heart radio', nothing big on the commercial front as far as i can tell.

Other than Big Sean guesting on a Justin Bieber single, there are no black musicians in the top 10 this week. When was the last time that happened?

Hot 100 top ten, obv

yo rev check yr emailz

here's Rev's other twitter rant from June that i referred to earlier:

Black women are becoming increasingly marginalized in pop.

Other than Billboard changing the rules to let Whitney in, only Rih and Nicki have had top 10 hits as lead artist this DECADE.

And then people wonder why they make crossover songs?

Re: Marginalization of black women in pop, by this point in the last decade, the following black women had had top ten hits as lead artist:

Whitney (for real that time), Missy Elliott, Blaque, Destiny’s Child, Macy Gray, Sonique, Toni Braxton, Aaliyah, Janet Jackson, Erykah Badu

Samantha Mumba, Mya, Debelah Morgan (who?), Tamia, Lil Kim, City High, Eve, Blu Cantrell, Mariah Carey, Alicia Keys, Mary J. Blige, Brandy

Brandy, Tweet, Ashanti, and Truth Hurts

As compared to this decade so far: Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, zombie Whitney.

That's 25 to two (or three if you count Billboard changing the rules so Whitney could have a hit posthumously)

@theilliterate tastes change but you don't think it's odd that (with 2 exceptions) black women are being excluded from top40 radio entirely?

@theilliterate when even someone as universally beloved as beyonce can't even get on rhythmic radio, let alone pop stations?

@theilliterate sure, but if it was only beyonce, that would be one thing.

@theilliterate kube's playlist - rhythmic not even top40 - 1st appearance of a black woman other than Nicki/Rih is #51 http://www.kube93.com/iplaylist/playlist.html?net=41

@theilliterate I didn't say that though- "increasingly". I'm of the opinion that itunes inadvertently destroyed Black American pop music tho

@theilliterate And the start of that dates back to around 2005

@GracieLoPan @theilliterate lol. the problem was that the audience for black music was less likely to purchase itunes & the market adjusted

Itunes destroyed Black American pop music.

Can't let this thread die so soon here. Then again, I've been wondering what next -- IS there a next step? Can anything be done or are we all just watching on the sidelines?

my sense of Billboard is that they commit to any change of methodology wholeheartedly and permanently. i hope the uproar over this is huge but i kind of doubt it will make any difference, except maybe in effecting how they make similar decisions in the future.

rev check email again

it's also a matter of whether you want to reflect direct revenue generation based on sales of actual product (mechanical royalties), or if you want to have a reflection of the reach and penetration of your song. the latter is much harder to quantify and in turn, harder to generate value from. i agree this whole new methodology is ridden with holes tho

let's not forget that billboard exists for record labels and music biz folks, and not really for regular people, so they have to cater to the people footing the bill

the thing to me was that the genre charts were valuable BECAUSE they weren't simply "the top 5 country/R&B/etc. songs are whatever the top 5 songs on the Hot 100 are this week," that there was a demonstrable community or network arranged around that genre that existed more or less apart from what parts of that genre made it into the big crossover tent. making these charts more like the Hot 100 instantly renders them less interesting, less valuable, less able to measure any kind of success besides top 40 crossover.

xpost -- i'm not really sure how this move benefits anyone in the music biz at all, to be honest

i mean it's "good news" primarily for the Rihannas and Taylors of the world who already have more impressive stats on more general charts. being #1 on additional genre charts won't help them sell records or seem any more impressive, but it will definitely diminish the accomplishments of the artists who would've topped those genre charts before this move without being a major presence on the Hot 100.

not disagreeing at all, just making some probably-not-very-good points is all. agreed totally, especially with the last post

yeah, i mean you may not be wrong -- Werde's tumblr thing referred to discussions Billboard had w/ labels etc. about this decision so it's possible for some reason or anything people in the biz were jumping for joy at this change

Has anyone tried to engage Werde on his tumblr or via twitter?

the thing to me was that the genre charts were valuable BECAUSE they weren't simply "the top 5 country/R&B/etc. songs are whatever the top 5 songs on the Hot 100 are this week," that there was a demonstrable community or network arranged around that genre that existed more or less apart from what parts of that genre made it into the big crossover tent. making these charts more like the Hot 100 instantly renders them less interesting, less valuable, less able to measure any kind of success besides top 40 crossover.

so otm

also, billboard arbitrarily determining what songs (or really what artists, it would seem thus far) belong to what genre is just shameful

don't they test out new chart rules for at least a few weeks before they officially implement them? i am surprised they didn't realize what a shitshow it would be. but i guess they see nothing wrong with "diamonds" topping the r&b chart. i guess they'll see nothing wrong when taylor swift's album comes out and the entire country top 10 (probably even more than that) is taylor swift songs.

To be honest I don't have a problem with Diamonds topping the R&B charts at all. Crossover or not, Rihanna makes R&B and the divide between R&B and pop was definitely bridged as early as with So Sick. That pop-friendly style has been a part of R&B and somehow trying to exclude it smacks of purism. So I really think that part of the argument is a little shaky since it seems as if personal taste is shining through. As for the larger implications though, I totally agree. Just not sure if Rihanna is the best example to sell this with. The Gagnam Style one is infinitely more painful.

I've yet to hear the current number one Hot R&B/Hip-Hop single on any of Detroit's R&B/rap stations.

Does anyone know why tunein no longer publishes radio-station playlists?

i'd be interested to know why r&b/rap/country etc might not be as digitally-driven...?

That isn't quite true of country, but white demographics are a lot more likely to have internet in their homes than black/latinos. And even if they do, the white listener is a lot more likely to have spare $$$ to spend on digital music.

― Cap'n Hug-a-Thug (The Reverend), Thursday, 11 October 2012

speaking almost entirely from ignorance here but tho the above is doubtless right, i feel like ppl are quite well-connected generally these days (evidence: WSHH, datpiff, livemixtapes, youtube, "black twitter", bossip, necolebitchie etc.) Seems like internet has increasingly become a spending priority across classes, almost like tv. so i think a bigger distinction has to do with youth access to credit & access to credit generally: "i'll buy this on my credit card", "hey mom can u put this on yr credit card". that's what unlikely when $$$ aren't spare. round my way a lot of people who like music don't have even bank accounts (tho pre-paid disposable cards are becoming popular).

thats a good point

Yeah, that's something I hadn't considered at all, actually.

of course i agree that rihanna has recorded many r&b songs (especially in the vein of "so sick") but "diamonds" does not strike me as one of them (and i don't say this because i don't like the song -- i appear to be one of the very few on here who does like it). i'm not hoping for the exclusion of strongly pop-influenced r&b and i'm, by my own estimations, hardly a purist for r&b or any other genre. i just don't think it's appropriate that a song that was hardly doing anything on the radio format that actually caters to the r&b-listening audience shoot suddenly to #1 after incorporating sales (and airplay, actually, which is even more ridiculous) from much larger and generally separate crossover audience.

yeah, without being too ageist, since they obviously have adult fans as well, i think the huge iTunes receipts for Katy Perry, Taylor Swift etc. singles has a strong whiff of 'mom's credit card.' also the part of the urban audience that's 'plugged in' to the internet is also already used to getting most of their new music on mixtape sites, blogs, etc. the idea of most fans of non-crossover superstar rappers and R&B acts going to iTunes to buy that act's new single en masse on the release date would probably seem absurd to them (although to that audience first week album sales are still kind of a big deal).

Well I think that since So Sick, these white/black pop/r&b delineations (feel free to add mom's credit card/authentically consumed music to the pot) just aren't the best compass anymore. With Rihanna being who she is, and having held a certain position for some time now, it just seems obvious that she is also renegotiating what r&b is, reordering it from within as it were - in ways that cannot simply be written off as external or wholly negative or even the evil plot of corporate interests. R&B must have room for Diamonds too. It will sit just fine on her greatest hits vol. 1, whenever that will appear.

here is Rihanna's whole pre-"Diamonds" single catalog, broken down by the Hot R&B Hip Hop Songs peak (the first number) and Pop Songs peak (the second number):

pon de replay: 24, 2
if it's lovin' that you want: 99,15
sos: -, 1
unfaithful: -, 2
we ride: -, 84
break it off: -, 6
umbrella: 4, 2
shut up and drive: -, 11
hate that i love you: 20, 7
don't stop the music: 74, 2
take a bow: 1, 1
if i never see your face again: -, -
disturbia: -, 1
live your life: 2, 1
rehab: 52, 19
run this town: 3, 8
russian roulette: 49, 21
hard: 14, 9
rude boy: 2, 1
rockstar 101: -, -
te amo: -, -
love the way you lie: 7, 1
only girl: -, 1
what's my name: 2, 4
who's that chick: -, 33
raining men: -, 48
all of the lights: 2, 38
s&m: 48, 1
california king bed: -, 18
man down: 9, -
cheers: -, 11
fly: 35, -
we found love: 54, 1
you da one: 60, 19
take care: 26, 8
talk that talk: 12, 26
birthday cake: 2, -
princess of china: -, 24
where have you been: 56, 3

only 8 times out of 39 has a song been as big or a bigger R&B hit than pop hit, and most of them involved a rapper (or a more overt R&B artist like Chris Brown).

it's not like Michael or Janet or Prince or Mariah where their pop success was so huge that they kind of transcended R&B while R&B radio still faithfully played them. Rihanna came to urban radio kind of late in her career -- only one of her first 10 singles was a big hit on the R&B chart, and it was the one with Jay-Z.

if being #1 on a genre chart isn't going to help tswift or rihanna sell any more records, then why has this change happened? afaict charts and radio are all about 1) breaking records and 2) selling more of the records that have already broken. if this change isn't accomplishing either of those two things, then why? what's the rationale?

radio doesn't care about selling records, they care about selling ads

right but labels put massive amounts of pressure on stations to make their records hits, mainly by playing them a million times a day, and it sounds like this move does nothing to further that.. or maybe it does? i dunno

i guess what i'm trying to ask is: who benefits?

yeah I was trying to figure out the economic aspects of this as well

Maybe the labels want to concentrate it to a few artists from across some genres to be megastars; selling their albums to a core audience plus the pop crossover instead of having some semi successful stars on genre charts as well as the "big" artists they hope to sell 10 million albums of. By combining it they hope to get 80s/90s style megastars selling shitloads? rather than having hundreds of ok selling acts.

I don't know if that's the case, but it's plausible. Major labels already carry a lot less mid-level acts than they did pre-collapse.

what are the economics of being a #1 download on iTunes vs. say, having an album going gold in the old days?

but yeah algerian's point was what I thought of - the size of the pie is getting smaller, so they're trying to give megastars a larger slice.

It will sit just fine on her greatest hits vol. 1, whenever that will appear.

it will for sure!

but still. it seems like billboard's decision when it comes to whether a song counts as part of a certain genre is based on whether the artist has recorded songs of that genre before. i'm not so naïve that i'll pretend that who the performer is never has anything to do with how music is classified, but it seems to me that "genre" really has to do with a certain set of slowly evolving aesthetic qualities, lyrical themes and so forth that are collectively valued by distinct audiences. and yes, while many of the people in these audiences are "purists," i don't think these charts should just ignore them. "we are never ever getting back together" and "i knew you were trouble" were both somewhat jarring and alienating to the people who listen exclusively to country music -- the songs' performance on country stations will certainly reflect that, but this week "we are never..." is the #1 and "i knew you were trouble" certainly will be next week after the absolutely monstrous sales it's getting right now.

man i don't know, it's just so boring that the r&b songs chart is going to be "list of songs on the hot 100 that are recorded by artists generally maybe considered part of the r&b genre in the exact order that they appear on the hot 100"

the megastars idea is interesting -- the bill werde tumblr post says that the genre charts never before showed the level of dominance that the pop charts occasionally did (w/ the beatles and bee gees and so on). but that's not really true -- the r&b charts reasonably often would have several of its top slots commanded by certain huge artists (recently drake in particular)

anyway i am not holding my breath but it's not completely unprecedented that billboard cancels certain chart experiments; they shut down the "pop 100" after only 4 years (and what a shady chart that was, seriously -- like, by all appearances the formula may have been "take hot 100 data for the week then subtract several chart points from everyone who isn't white")

The R&B chart was shut down in 1963 back when artists like Elvis and the Beach Boys were scoring R&B hits, and then it was reinstated in 1965 at which point black music seemed to get funkier. It also seems rock music got whiter from that moment on, never again to converge with R&B as it seemed to be doing around 1963. Of course, in the mid-1960s you still had a lot of black-oriented record shops and radio stations, so it wasn't so easy to kill the concept of R&B; the framework of it was too strong - as opposed to the more perilous situation today. But I suspect that this older episode and the one we're talking about now just have to do with Billboard attempting to make the music-selling business more streamlined and efficient, damn the consequences.

It will sit just fine on her greatest hits vol. 1, whenever that will appear.

unless "Diamonds" tops the Hot 100 (which i doubt it will) there probably won't be any room for it on her greatest hits!

Great thread. This may have already been noted upthread, but one of the things that makes me uneasy about the new methodology for the genre charts is that, instead of determining a song's genre by which radio formats play it, Billboard itself is now making judgment calls. Chart director Silvio Pietroluongo has said, "Determinations on genre are decided based on the sonic make-up of the song." Which just seems like a can of worms.

plus they're very clearly often making these decisions on something other than the sonic make-up of the song (like who the artist is, what their previous songs have sounded like, their skin color, etc.)

yeah the general impression that the majors' strategy here is to consolidate their promotion into an even smaller number of artists is otm, in part because the staffs at majors have all gotten smaller, and in part because the long tail of pop music matters less when that audience is so much more likely to pirate. my guess is that this will mean not only a different (prob less interesting) range of artists being played on hip hop stations, but also a smaller one, as though that were fucking possible.

i think the emerging importance of asian markets also has something to do with this. prob needless to say that labels think hot 100 topping artists have a much better chance of selling in asia than r&b and hip hop specifics, so it's another reason for majors to care less about development and promotion of artists relatively on the fringe. this in turn puts pressure on billboard to adopt a methodology aims for the same level of consolidation.

^^^great point

I can't really give you any actual *reasons* or *facts* to back up my opinion but I really feel that Drake destroyed hip hop musically & culturally, and it just feels true to me

otm

if you think drake destroyed hip hop musically & culturally that actually means you think that lil wayne destroyed hip hop musically & culturally (and i won't argue w/ you)

*otm

eh, even as much as Lil Wayne has jumped the shark and I dislike Drake, I don't really agree with either of those things

Not sure what yr rationale is for saying Drake destroyed hip hop musically and culturally, but what about Black Eyed Peas? Or Flo Rida?

Or perhaps nothing is destroyed? Nothing is ruined? The world won't end? We just get slightly suckier hit lists?

@theilliterate I didn't say that though- "increasingly". I'm of the opinion that itunes inadvertently destroyed Black American pop music tho

@theilliterate And the start of that dates back to around 2005

@GracieLoPan @theilliterate lol. the problem was that the audience for black music was less likely to purchase itunes & the market adjusted

Itunes destroyed Black American pop music.

i hate to get all reactionary/reductionist, but i've always wondered what the hell happened the so completely freakin awesome rap/r&b scene of the early thousands, seemingly overnight, and this makes a certain amount of sense.

http://tasteofcountry.com/billboard-chart-changes/

I wonder how this petition drive by country fans opposed to the changes is going?

i dunno but it wouldn't surprise me if it gets more momentum than any other response to this, country fans/industry definitely seem to care more about the singles charts than rock/urban/latin/etc.

Have not seen followup alt-weekly, magazine, or blogposts re the r'n'b change (just ones froma few days ago announcing the change)

you realize alt weeklies and magazines generally need more than 6 days to react to news right?

Yes, I mean that some post stuff on their own blogs sooner. Chicago Reader just had something about Mumford & Sons itunes and Billboard success.

billboard reports:

Due to its pure pop, even dubstep-leaning, sound, "Trouble" does not appear on the newly-revamped Country Songs chart, which, as of last week, now blends airplay, sales and streaming data; it's also not being promoted to country radio. "Never" spends a second week atop the tally

so their main criterion seems to be whether it's promoted to that radio format?? at least that is what i'm figuring because i don't see how "we are never" is any less 'pure pop'

well there's a country mix are "We Are Never" that was sent to country radio -- it was a moderate country radio hit before the chart changes. i wonder if this means not all Rihanna singles will be on the R&B chart, because the overtly dancey stuff like "We Found Love" generally isn't promoted to urban radio -- although to me "Diamonds" doesn't seem to have significantly more appeal there, aside from being midtempo.

the Mumford & Sons album has been out for 3 weeks btw

published my first rant on the topic:
http://www.splicetoday.com/music/meet-the-new-charts-worse-than-the-old-charts

that was great al, good work

Seriously. Great piece, cuts right to the heart of the problems.

great article! i think there's a story yet to be told about who benefits, and what those ppl did in order to get thid change in place

thiS

Agreed, and you wagged a finger at Billboard editor without losing your cool.

wagging a finger without losing his cool is really the essence of al ship

ha ha

Well done btw.

billboard should just get rid of every chart except the hot 100

is billboard 'too big to fail'? should billboard be nationalized for the benefit of the public?

thanks y'all

tagged werde on twitter, not thrilled w/ his response but i didn't expect much anyway, i just wanted to be heard

Bill Werde ‏@bwerde
@alshipley I respectfully disagree w much of your logic. But I've also addressed virtually every point already on twitter.

Bill Werde ‏@bwerde
@alshipley I'll add: you say "listeners" decided genre in old way. Not true. Only radio did. Now listeners do, via iTunes, Spotify etc.

And did he address said points or is he blowing smoke?

that's pointedly ignoring the fact that itunes and spotify have certain demographics and userbases that mean their results are skewed in important ways

some dude vs old dude

from his picture i imagine he's maybe around my age or not a whole lot older

my piece was finished a few days ago so there ARE some things he's said to other people since then that address my points. am prob going to direct some specific questions to him on twitter tonight or tomorrow, will probably bring up m@tt's point and if anyone else has anything they'd like addressed

It seems he has not addressed the difference between itunes demographics and r'n'b/rap radio demographics

Would it be possible to think noz's pitchfork piece in conjunction with this?
http://pitchfork.com/features/hall-of-game/8969-record-sales-and-digital-scales/

I've got to admit that I find it a bit more problematic than shipley's piece though.

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis are in the r&b top 5.

errr top 25, it ain't that bad.

but still, goddamn

can somebody explain the relationship between the genre charts and radio playlists? cause i feel like there's something crucial i'm still not understanding. like, if a genre chart gets swamped by crossover/pop megastars, what's the impact on, say, the playlist of a radio station that specializes in that genre? why does it have to have any impact at all?

I haven't seen anyone arguing that radio playlists are going to change as a result of the new chart methodology, but I suppose if stations are using Billboard charts as a tool to tell them what's hot in their genre then those charts could have an impact.

well, given that the change is a week old, it's hard to say what the long term effect will be on radio, if any. my fear is that a lot more stations will start to sound like the one awkwardly straddling urban and pop playlists in D.C. that i described upthread: Itunes, Billboard, and the marginalization of black music and black audiences in America

Some of Werde's tweets seemed to imply that he does not recognize, as was noted upthread, that r'n'b/rap radio stations receive calls and communication from their listeners; and that simply dismissing the old way as "radio" dictating, is not fully accurate. He also does not get into how itunes and spotify listeners make their selections.

http://www.spin.com/blogs/how-did-psys-gangnam-style-become-the-no-1-rap-song-in-the-country

yeah i saw that the other day, nice of brandon to give me a shoutout

i tweeted a bunch of follow-up questions to Werde (including about why the R&B/Hip-Hop chart includes any popular R&B of any kind but pop rap like PSY and Flo Rida is still excluded) but dude seems to be actively ignoring me while engaging w/ belligerent Carrie Underwood fans

i mean i have a lot of respect for what he and billboard do, and he seems to be friendly w/ some of my people (maura, whiney), so maybe i got off on the wrong foot w/ him, it's a shame

He seems to be defensive in general, so it might be hard for anyone to get him to address this further

NYT article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/27/arts/music/billboards-chart-changes-draw-fire.html?pagewanted=1&ref=arts

Salt-n-Pepa's Legends of Hip Hop Tour featuring: Salt-n-Pepa, Doug E. Fresh, Big Daddy Kane, Right Said Fred, Kool Moe Dee and Kurtis Blow.

i mean i have a lot of respect for what he and billboard do, and he seems to be friendly w/ some of my people (maura, whiney), so maybe i got off on the wrong foot w/ him, it's a shame

It's not like you were abrasive.

The weird thing is that "Diamonds" is on the R&B chart while "Let Me Love You," which is right behind it on the Hot 100, isn't -- even though the latter, while having dancepop leanings, sounds much more in line with the R&B format. (The other night I heard a live version of it -- dude's band is unbelievably tight.) Would love to know how the decisions as far as which songs go on which charts are made.

Also I didn't realize that all the format-specific charts now use total radio airplay stats (hence "Diamonds" barreling up to No. 1 from No. 66 on the R&B chart and staying there and ugh I loathe that song so much, it's so DREARY). That seems to eliminate the need for genre-specific charts in my eyes. Or maybe it's a leading indicator in the way radio is going -- music formats that aren't top-40/Hot AC/primarily old songs are certainly on the wane here in NYC (the merger of Kiss-FM and WBLS so that ESPN Radio could get the 98.7 frequency, the recently resurgent alt-rock station at 101.9 FM imminently being taken over by sports chat). It's depressing, especially given that the discovery tools on digital-music services are for the most part pretty poor.

Six R&B (or "R&B") songs entered the R&B/Hip-Hop chart in October. Six.

Ciara - "Sorry"
Faith Evans - "Tears of Joy"
Whitney Houston - "I Look to You"
Rihanna - "Diamonds"
Avery Sunshine - "Ugly Part of Me"
The Weeknd - "Wicked Games"

did they randomly change their minds about including train on the rock chart or did it just drop so much that i can't see it on the online version of the chart? i am guessing it's not the latter considering some of the things located in the 10-25 region of the chart rn

lmao yup, looks like they removed the song from the chart after one week, when it debuted at peaked at #4. that they are actually changing their minds about what songs merit inclusion on a chart shows how much of a mess this shit is. shameful.

considering that I didn't see anyone else make the point about Train publicly before my piece, i'm very tempted to take some credit for that

i mean i have a lot of respect for what he and billboard do, and he seems to be friendly w/ some of my people (maura, whiney), so maybe i got off on the wrong foot w/ him, it's a shame

Twitter has basically allowed every semi-major dude to treat any legit critic of their actions as the equivalent of the worst twit-trolls they've encountered.

xp you changed chart history!

haha well actually nevermind, i thought Train went missing from the chart the week after my piece ran but it was the same week, so i rescind my pretending to take credit. still, pretty interesting to see clear evidence of them not being so sure of themselves w/ some of these genre distinctions.

the R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart was just downsized from top 40 to top 25 on the main Billboard site, which is not a big deal but another thing pissing me off

damn

"Adorn" is currently #10 on airplay and #71 on digital.

The highest it's gone on the latter is #49.

Overall airplay, not r&b airplay, if that needs clarification.

#10 on Radio Songs is actually uncommonly high for a recent R&B radio hit w/ minimal pop radio crossover too -- "Climax" was probably the next highest this year and it peaked at #16

serious lols at the cover of miranda lambert's "over you" from the voice being #3 on the country chart this week

oh god yeah i didn't even think about what talent shows are gonna do to these charts now

shd have a talent show/glee covers chart imo

"Diamonds" is still number one on the R&B Songs chart.

Has anyone heard this song on an R&B station?

yeah it has actually climbed up the R&B airplay chart over time, is at #13 now, i hear it here and there. the Kanye remix helped, too.

also "we are never ever getting back together" has 'made chart history' by breaking the record for longest run at #1 on country songs

wish we were discussing Herb Alpert's "Diamonds"

sorry, for solo females

"Gangnam Style" is now 17th on the Billboard Latin Airplay chart

yeah sometimes somewhat unexpected songs do pretty well on latin (adele and lmfao placed a number of singles on it recently)

also "we are never ever getting back together" has 'made chart history' by breaking the record for longest run at #1 on country songs

― teledyldonix, Monday, December 10, 2012 8:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

one thing i love is that practically EVERY current country act's wiki page (besides Taylor's) now has Country Airplay added to its chart info to reflect the popularity of recent singles -- it's a shame fans of other genres whose charts got screwed with aren't as fired up about this as country fans.

"Thrift Shop" being in the top ten of the r&b chart is even more ridiculous than the "Diamonds" thing

It should be noted that after 13 weeks at the top of the roost, "Adorn" is the "greatest gainer" in r&b airplay.

it's also #10 on Radio Songs, which is easily the highest any R&B song has gotten w/o pop crossover all year ("Climax" got no higher than #16), so the extent of its playlist saturation is staggering.

billboard's year-end charts are out:

http://www.billboard.com/news/the-best-of-2012-the-year-in-music-1008045682.story#/news/the-best-of-2012-the-year-in-music-1008045682.story

as i'd hoped, they used the old methodology (pre-October changes) for the year-end genre charts:

http://www.billboard.com/news/the-best-of-2012-the-year-in-music-1008045682.story#/news/the-best-of-2012-the-year-in-music-1008045682.story?page=2

"Diamonds" obviously nowhere on the year-end R&B list

damn "love on top" was that big of a hit, huh

"lotus flower bomb" was the third biggest hit of THIS YEAR?

There was like a six- to eight-month period where I would turn on the radio and hear "Lotus Flower Bomb" within the first three songs.

I try not to speak of those days.

"Party" actually got airplay down here than LOT.

yeah "Lotus Flower Bomb" was pretty gigantic, and gotta remember these things go December to November, so things that broke wide late the previous year have an advantage (i'm betting in decade-end lists "Adorn" will triumph over "Lotus" easily)

R&B/hip-hop top 100 is 27% Young Money, 13% G.O.O.D. and 12% MMG

This can't be life.

(Wild Colonials reference.)

Only 16 of the r&b eoy top 100 made the Hot 100 eoy chart.

In 2002, there was a 48-song overlap, exactly 3x as many.

9-song overlap with eoy Rock chart (way up from i think 3 last year), and 14-song overlap with country

Via Danyel Smith/Andy Kellman:

http://madamenoire.com/247266/arbitron-sale-to-nielsen-could-be-good-news-for-urban-radio/

Songs with most weeks at number one on Billboard's R&B chart:

18. "Choo Choo Ch'Boogie - Louis Jordan
15. "Be Without You" - Mary J. Blige
14. "Nobody's Supposed to Be Here" - Deborah Cox
14. "We Belong Together" - Mariah Carey
14. "Blame It" - Jamie Foxx Feat. T-Pain
14. "Pretty Wings" - Maxwell
13. "Can't Be Friends" - Trey Songz
12. "Diamonds " - Rihanna
12. "Un-Thinkable (I'm Ready)" - Alicia Keys
12. "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" - Beyoncé
11. "Climax" - Usher

if the chart hadn't been changed in October, Miguel's "Adorn" would be on its 16th week at #1 (as it stands it only had 4 weeks). I'm pretty sure Rihanna will be dethroned in the next week or two...by Macklemore.

...........

I know this should have its own thread but man these changes have turned the rock chart into a dire melange of Of Lumineers And Mumfords

xp are you trying to imply this guy isn't keeping the block hot?

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wdNofQxrfrk/UEAcCPiLXnI/AAAAAAAAC5w/qg00qrcI9Ho/s1600/Macklemore.jpg

I just listened to Macklemore & Ryan Lewis for the first time. Why did I think that was a good idea?

tbf the rock airplay charts are also a dire melange of Lumumfordeers, it's the Ed Sheerans and Phillip Phillipses that the download-dominated charts are bringing in

what the fuck is a lumineers anyway

The light that illumines the path for hipsterati

the whole "guitars are back on the charts! but only acoustic ones" thing is pretty surreal

I Like Lumineers and Mumfords

the whole "guitars are back on the charts! but only acoustic ones" thing is pretty surreal

fuck yes time to get paid

dude if you think you could troll the world by writing the next "Ho Hey" Top 40 folk pop blockbuster you should really go for it

TROLL BITCHES, GET MONEY

I'd be much more willing to give it a shot now than I would have been before there were baby clothes to buy but I'm long in the tooth. Gotta get me some Rob n Fab gone rustic stand-ins for my big-dollars Mumford heel turn

For real dogg if you sold that song abt the cubs to the right set of dickheads in hobo hats you could make bank

pull a semisonic

has "thrift shop" entered the r&b/hip-hop airplay chart? the billboard website seems to suggest not. it would be kind of funny/sad if it topped the overall chart w/o reaching the airplay chart at all

yeah, only airplay charts it's been on are rock, alternative and pop

it's funny because "Gangnam Style" is STILL at the top of the Rap Songs chart, but for some reason that was never allowed on the R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, where "Thrift Shop" is despite having pretty similar airplay demographics. the top 3 on Rap Songs is all stuff that has zero urban radio airplay (PSY/Macklemore/Flo Rida).

how do we know psy has no urban radio airplay? like what's the go-to reference on that?

for me it's just anecdata in two major cities (philly and nyc)

I have not heard him on DC urban radio (some dude listens more to DC and Baltimore radio than I do; he could give a more full response I bet)

I don't think I've even heard any of the DJs or radio personalities even mention him or the fad

maybe gangnam style will appear in a kanye verse on a remix 5 years from now, tho

the slowed-down olsen twins reference already feels 5 years old, i'd give him maybe two months

I don't think I've even heard any of the DJs or radio personalities even mention him or the fad

I mostly listen to urban radio these days, so I didn't know about the song until months after the masses (I had to YouTube it after reading that it was a defining song of 2012). That song is so far removed from rap radio interests that I'd be surprised if any rap station anywhere in the country ever played it even once.

the slowed-down olsen twins reference already feels 5 years old, i'd give him maybe two months

have you heard the diamonds remix?

Seattle's pop-ass Flo Rida-playing, Macklemore-playing rap station hasn't even touched Gangnam Style

#1 rap song in the country folx

I am sure Bill Werde at Billboard will continue to defend this (and sound annoyed in his tweets that anyone would ever question anything Billboard does)

yeah, that guy is the worst on twitter

how do we know psy has no urban radio airplay? like what's the go-to reference on that?

i don't know about the specific data in psy's case b/c i rarely look at radio numbers, but if you are wondering about that kinda thing, a lot of ppl look at mediabase data to get numbers for what certain formats are playing. for example here and here are some recent data on what mainstream/rhythmic radio and urban/urban adult contemporary radio are playing (and music video plays on tv, which are hilariously low)

yeah i wasn't saying no urban station has ever played "Gangnam Style" once. but it never got enough spins to chart on R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, so whatever play it got was negligible (relative to tons of spins on pop radio).

ok so macklemore is #1 now (w/ zero entries ever on the r&b/hip-hop airplay chart) and probably will be for the next 10+ weeks since that is the pace the pop charts are going now. at what point is an actual r&b/hip-hop radio hit going to top this chart? never?

Well yeah. That would be bad for business if that happened.

when Drake drops his lead single is prob the correct answer

only songs that were in the top 20 of both Pop Songs and Hip-Hop/R&B Airplay at any point in 2012: J. Cole's "Work Out," T-Pain's "5 O'Clock" and Rihanna's "Diamonds"

artists that were in the top 20 of both charts but never with the same song: Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Usher, Chris Brown, Drake, Wiz Khalifa, Big Sean, Ne-Yo)

2 thoughts:

1. I don't understand the point of this thread, but I hate seeing the term "black music" used in place of "industry manufactured pop music"

2. I would not worry about the marginalization of black audiences. All of the black people I know (all over 30 years old) seem to have no problems finding all the music that they need, none of which seems to be Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Drake, Rick Ross, Wiz Khalifa, 2 Chainz, Ne-Yo, or Chris Brown.

I apologize if I am way off the make. I respect the fact that so many here care about music and culture, and I tried to understand the point of the thread. There just seems to be some stereotyping going on here.

Regarding item 2, the point was/is that Billboard was not giving respect to widely popular black music. Your reference to people you know not having problems finding the music they need is not analogous.

what do you mean by "widely popular black music?"

a. widely popular music performed/produced by black artists
b. a style/genre called "black music" that is widely popular
c. music that is widely popular among black audiences

what are you trying to accomplish, nicky lo-fi?

learn something, maybe. why do you assume agenda?

just weird to see someone think that their sample of 'black people over the age of 30 who I personally know' is representative of black audiences of all ages all across America, is all.

sorry, I in no way meant to imply that anything is "representative" of anything. I only brought up age because maybe it's a youth culture thing, of which I'm pretty ignorant.

I was wondering how Billboard was marginalizing black audiences (from the title of the thread)

I don't know anyone, of any race, who is so influenced by Billboard charts as far as their taste is concerned.

maybe it is. I don't know. can you explain?

nicky lo-fi, are you a rockist?

nicky lo-fi, do you recognize that the songs that are popular on billboard at this very moment may, perhaps, could, maybe, influence the songs that are produced in the future, songs that aim to be liked by a large number of people?

do you recognize that there exists a collection of songs at any given moment that may be broadly categorized under the term "popular music"?

x-post- if you're just saying that it would be better to say "rap and r'n'b" than "black music" when referring to the genres that Billboard and this thread are referring to just say it. Your "industry manufactured pop music" term suggests an agenda and is also unclear.

nicky lo-fi, do you think that music only means anything if it was produced by something other than an 'industry' that 'manufactures pop music'?

nicky lo-fi, do you think that pitchfork is an 'industry'?

nicky lo-fi, what is your take on the following:

1. stereogum
2. fluxblog
3. gorilla v. bear
4. billboard

haha this is getting rough

nicky lo-fi, do you believe that we live in a 'post-racial America'?

nicki lo-fi, can you tell that some of us are drunk on saturday night?

People questioning rap sound exactly the same as my grandmama questioning rock & roll. It's sort of cute.
― nicky lo-fi (nicky lo-fi), Thursday, October 12, 2006

so sticking up for rap means I'm not a rockiest, I guess? I hope fancy symbol dude caught that.

nicky the issue, in a nutshell, is that Billboard has made a variety of changes in how it puts together its charts over the past several years to factor in downloads/streaming in addition to the traditional radio play, and the demographic differences in who buys music on iTunes vs. who listens to the radio, etc. has seemed to diminish the presence of hip-hop and R&B on singles charts far more than any decline in the general popularity of those genres. a lot of other issues and nuances have been covered in this thread, if I had started it I probably wouldn't have made the title as focused as Rev did or used the phrase "black music" but I totally get why he did.

Another way of putting it: radio stations whose audiences are overwhelmingly black now disappear statistically, and they appear on the record as if their audiences like the same music which is favored by white audiences on iTunes. In fact, they don't, but history will record the hegemonic music as being beloved by all, and future production and programming decisions will be based on this egregious distortuon.

I would just like to go on the record as being a racist. Thank you all.

you are a goon, after all.

alright, thanks, that part I was pretty close on. I guess I'm just such a cynic about about the music biz that I assume whatever they do is because they think it will make more money.

so that it will always be catering to people with money. an example of this goes back to the 'race' records of the 20's and 30's

great blues, jazz, and gospel music the industry thought would not sell to white people, so they marketed to blacks only

http://www.pbs.org/jazz/images/exchange/racerecords.jpg

when white people started to buy, they not only stopped that marketing to black people, but even influenced a change in the style of jazz (the rise of the white big bands)

You do realize this thread is intended to track pretty much the exact same phenomenon, though?

is this the rolling macklemore thread

fancy cymbal dude

http://www.tbrucewittet.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Zildjian-Gen-X-Cymbals.jpg

xp yes, no, Macklemore, "Same Love"

who the hell is macklemore?

hoo boy

im in the uk.

A Macklemore is what we in the scientific community would describe as a cornball.

the best thing about bands like Mumfords and Macklemores is that their names just inherently sound like punchlines.

i have a thread i bet nicky would enjoy

the best thing about bands like Mumfords and Macklemores is that their names just inherently sound like punchlines.

and Phillip Phillips!

I'm feeling particularly apocalyptic today.

yeah i don't think i even have the energy to rage against Billboard's latest change like i did the last one, even though this one is clearly even worse

this is insanity, truly

What happened?

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/1549388/baauers-harlem-shake-debuts-atop-revamped-hot-100

Counting Spotify streams clearly makes some kind of sense, counting Youtube views is just insane, especially if they are weighted as highly as they appear to be based on that article. "Gangnam Style" would have been number one for months if this had been implemented sooner.

it's just going to lead to more hegemony, which i think is the opposite of their intention?

yeah my whole thing at this point is i'm not even so against counting streaming/youtube/etc in charts as how heavily they weigh it, how it can just trump every other factor and put something at #1. (xp)

labels are going to pour even more money into stupid-ass 'lyric videos'

Spotify listeners at least are generally listening seriously as opposed to for lolz

Lame either way

I mean, it's also #1 on iTunes so it's not like only YouTube but it's absolutely asinine that it's rated as 3.5 times more popular than the next most song ("Thrift Shop" which clearly deserves to be #1 on popularity though not song merit).

it's just going to lead to more hegemony, which i think is the opposite of their intention?

― J0rdan S., Wednesday, February 20, 2013 8:40 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Spotify top tracks stay the same for ages, pumped up kicks is probably still number one

I can thank The New Paradigm for today's marvel: walking into the student union to watch 500 undergrads performing "Harlem Shuffle" or whatever it's called in the pit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMyFgOmu0w8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMyFgOmu0w8

surprised you didn't post the marvelous Stones video

I've never really fuxed with the Stones tbh

Cultural stuff aside: wouldn't it be really easy for labels to game the system by having computers running scripts to keep refreshing youtube videos?

I mean I know there was payola in radio but at least there's some honor & dignity to giving free cocaine to dudes that look like martin mull

*furiously refreshes papoose youtube*

mean I know there was payola in radio but at least there's some honor & dignity to giving free cocaine to dudes that look like martin mull

why Martin Mull when Clive Davis is the industry prototype?

I'm a lot more interested in the cultural stuff than the numbers shit at this point and it feels like af-am culture is getting an ever-increasingly raw deal. :/

Cultural stuff aside: wouldn't it be really easy for labels to game the system by having computers running scripts to keep refreshing youtube videos?

― in a chef-driven ambulance (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, February 20, 2013 10:07 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

theoretically the same has been true since they've been putting Spotify stats in charts, you could just play a song over and over and over. i kind of imagine the effect is negligible, but then YouTube stats have been famously hacked/juked many times, this seems to be just asking for shenanigans.

Like it feels like black people have been pretty central to the american cultural discourse at all points in my life except the past few years.

mean I know there was payola in radio but at least there's some honor & dignity to giving free cocaine to dudes that look like martin mull

why Martin Mull when Clive Davis is the industry prototype?

― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, February 20, 2013 9:12 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I meant djs

"wouldn't it be really easy for labels to game the system by having computers running scripts to keep refreshing youtube videos?"

why would the labels pay for it when fans do it for free

I was thinking more in the early stages, just to push it towards hot counts where it might get featured on the front page or suggested videos

I mean, sure, never underestimate the power of people to throw money at things (well, some things), but that's the unspoken wink behind all the fan-activation stuff, premieres, etc.: "support view-spam the shit out of this!" and obviously I don't have raw numbers / more certainly couldn't hurt, but it seems kids with too much spare time do a pretty good job of this on their own.

come to think of it, I'd probably be more surprised if labels weren't already doing this / just now started.

"support the artist! AS MANY VIEWS AS YOU CAN HANDLE!" that is.

yeah i mean before "Gangnam Style" the most viewed music video on YouTube of all time was Bieber, and i think that was less 'he has the most fans/they watch his video over and over' and more 'his fans are so rabid that they're hell bent on driving up his views and making him #1'

I definitely had a friend who had a temp job that involved phoning in requests to TRL back in the day. soooo...

haha wow

Is this the first big instrumental hit since Crazy Frog? Why is Thrift Shop still listed as #1 at billboard.com?

Is Harlem Shake an instrumental track? If so, it might be the first since ... I wanna say Miami Vice Theme? ... to hit number one.

it has vocal samples but yeah i'd consider it an instrumental

Yeah, so is "The Hustle."

yep, miami vice. http://tunecaster.com/charts/music/instrumental-top-10-4.html

most of those last big instrumental hits were tied to movies or tv shows too. axel f, miami vice theme, & chariots of fire. kenny g was pretty much the last big non movie related instrumental hit. kenny g killed the instrumental for 25 years!

(spitballing below, I really should formulate this into an actual pitch or something)

yeah, like I said, no fucking way labels aren't already (at least) implicitly encouragingthis / nurturing fan communities to explicitly encourage this. like calling into radio, maybe, except people on that end who can theoretically give a shit / run QC are replaced with automatically generated viewcounts that don't (and programmers who, let's be honest, have no real incentive to care, even if they didn't also overlap with the sort of person who'd be into the idea of baauer / macklemore hitting no. 1. which is a stereotype yes but probably true.)

honestly I don't really have a problem with this in principle -- I'm no Luddite*, if you just look solely at the medium it really is the same thing as calling in requests or whatever, in a way -- but it's the sort of variable that probably, in practice, adds far more weight to virality/memedom than actual musical popularity**. which is of course from a business perspective a feature, not a bug -- and not even new with these changes (gotye, carly rae jepsen, etc) -- but yeah, it is kind of fucked that Baauer has a No. 1 hit when 75% of the people responsible for doing this for him have no idea who the sam hill Baauer is. not even on a "oh, the girl who did 'Call Me Maybe'" level --- not at all. which makes for an excellent chart for measuring the best ways of emulating OK Go videos, but as a music chart, or at least something that tries to be one...?

now! when the bigger problems will happen is either if/when this takes on more weight, which, who knows; or when it jumps to the genre charts. which you know it will.

* was trying to google an old tumblr post of mine and I came across a very angry, very evangelical tech-blog guy accusing me of this, which, lol

** I mean, I can see the argument that some audiences/genre audiences listen to their music solely on YouTube, and that this will benefit them, but I just can't see that being statistically significant on a Hot 100 scale. anyone who reaches that sort of critical mass tends to find other streams open up to them to supplant YouTube.

I just want to post this, I know it's not on topic or anything. ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U15HQJwqslo

it is kind of crazy that gangnam style never hit #1. how is that not the most popular song of 2012?

wait, this counts all music featured in some random dudes youtube vid? it seems like it wouldn't be hard to just include the views on the official videos, which makes more sense. otherwise you might as well count the music you hear blasting out of car stereos or w/e, its not intentional listening

the music blasting out of car stereos has always been counted (via radio airplay being factored in)

Most of the views for "Harlem Shake" aren't even the whole song, it's just for the first 30 seconds. How much of the song has to be on the video for it to count? I really don't understand why Billboard isn't just limiting this to official videos.

Billboard is counting 30 second videos, and starting it this week, precisely to capitalize on "Harlem Shake" and show off how 'with it' they are for being able to measure its popularity. i was reading a Billboard.biz article a few days ago about how the technology for recognizing whether a copyrighted song is used in just-uploaded YouTubes is really advanced now so Baauer's been generating instant royalties every time one of these videos gets made.

smh is billboard gonna change its rules with every new meme to show how "with it" they are

Damn I just realized that "Friday" would have been a top 10 hit if this had been in place at that time.

it even made the bbc
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/21534066

Damn I just realized that "Friday" would have been a top 10 hit if this had been in place at that time.

― justfanoe (Greg Fanoe), Thursday, February 21, 2013 7:36 AM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

God I didn't think of that

all pop music is just a menagerie of memes set to the illusion of music iirc

Rebecca Black definitely would've been #1

hopefully there will be another rebecca black event to showcase how absurd billboard is now

billboard should be nationalized and taken over by the government so this shit doesn't happen

it'd be a good time in history for somebody to get serious about making a competing chart tbh. It's weird to me that this idea of Billboard as the immoveable object of popularity measurement is so instilled - that it's "The Chart," still? get w/it people who give a shit about this stuff

Let's do it.

let's just go straight to the source

http://www.youtube.com/channel/HCp-Rdqh3z4Uc?feature=gb_ch_rec

there's no competiting chart because what billboard used to do isn't practical anymore. I think 'people who give a shit about this stuff' are limited to this thread.

i was reading a Billboard.biz article a few days ago about how the technology for recognizing whether a copyrighted song is used in just-uploaded YouTubes is really advanced now so Baauer's been generating instant royalties every time one of these videos gets made.

idgi who's paying him the royalties?

youtube I think

people watch ads on youtube, youtube makes money from ads, youtube gives some of that money to people

o yeah

Yup, pretty much says as much here

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/17/meet-baauer-the-man-behind-the-harlem-shake.html

The “Harlem Shake” videos, meanwhile, have totaled over 175 million YouTube views and counting. And, according to Billboard, Baauer and the label that put out the track, Mad Decent, stand to make quite a pretty penny with it since they, through various deals, will collect revenues for each and every one of these YouTube views.

How much royalty are they getting per view? Much much less than 1 cent, right?

they are getting one shake of a white person's butt per view

hopefully there will be another rebecca black event to showcase how absurd billboard is now

― 乒乓, Thursday, February 21, 2013 10:18 AM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

imo "Harlem Shake" at #1 is dumber than "Friday" at #1 would've been

What's today's exchange rate on white booty shakes to the dollar? Is it something like 75,000 WBS = 1 USD?

yeah though the WBS exchange rate goes down exponentially in canada

http://www.thecmuwebsite.com/article/gangnam-style-generated-8-million-in-youtube-ad-revenues/

It was estimated last month that the six month old novelty track and internet phenomenon had generated about that much in total, including download revenues and sync deals in addition to YouTube revenues. The Google figures would suggest Psy’s big hit may have been even more profitable to date, though it’s not clear how much of that $8 million in ad income went to the artist and his business partners.

With ‘Gangnam Style’ having been viewed 1.23 billion times to date, that stat suggests the video was earning about $6.50 for every 1000 streams, which would suggest ads around the promo were being sold at a premium, which figures given just how big a hit the cheesy-k-pop+silly-dance phenomenon became last year.

so roughly $1m probably at this point

will never look at william bloody swygart's name the same way again xp

hopefully there will be another rebecca black event to showcase how absurd billboard is now

I think gangnam style being kept out of the #1 spot already proved how absurd billboard is. unless you think that a maroon 5 song with a tenth of the youtube views of GS is really more popular just because clear channel plays it more.

can we leverage the internet to get old memes like "Chocolate Rain" onto the Billboard charts?

"Nyan Cat" was robbed.

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/webdr01/2013/2/19/16/anigif_enhanced-buzz-22020-1361308248-10.gif

hate u

http://i.imgur.com/SMYgWps.gif

u are not tricking me again

I vented a bit.

re: the static nature of the Spotify charts, I notice that AWOLNATION's "Sail" is still at #15 as of today

who's crying the most right now...psy, rick astley, antoine dodson or rebecca black

and does this mean fewer "this video has been deleted per sony/bmg/random label" occurrences? does having random lyric videos and fanvids of watson/sherlock set to an adele now mean enough eyes and ears and billboard impact that it changes how they manage the dissemination of their ip on youtube and in general?

i'm not a fan of this but i suppose it seems like logical progression. i'm old school and think of billboard charting as more of a "statement" vs an actual snapshot of what's going into people's ears, incidental or not. so what gives me pause is that it takes a lot of the agency and intention out of what drives the chart...when you buy/stream a song or a radio station chooses to play it it's about the specific song; a song charting because it was the bg music in a video of skateboarding injuries that was posted on reddit is giving it credit for a secondary and not indispensable role.

there was 'agency and intention' driving the chart?

more so than a song is getting a bump on the chart because it's part of a viral video that people are clicking on w/ zero aforethought to what song was included. traditionally someone was making a decision based on the song, someone was buying it or streaming it, a radio station chose to play it (involved in some cycle based on listener preferences), so the previous iteration of the chart was based more on active listening preferences than passive.

but sales still factor in, and harlem shake is selling. there's a lot more intention involved in somebody deciding to put that song in their video, a friend deciding to forward it to you because you might like it, you deciding to click on it, etc. than in a song getting added to a corporate radio playlist.

Sales factor in, but Billboard says that "Harlem Shake" is at 3.5 times the chart points of the current #2 hit (Thrift Shop), which has more sales than "Harlem Shake". I'm 99% sure that even if "Harlem Shake" had no sales at all it would still be #1 by a comfortable margin. That's my main problem, that the YouTube views seem to be weighted too high.

it's really dumb to equate youtube views with an itunes sales, it's a whole different level of engagement with a listener, an itunes sale is saying "i like this song and i want to listen to it repeatedly", youtube can be anything "i like this song" to "what the fuck is this?" "this is so stupid" "eh this is kinda funny" etc etc

you're talking about intention re: the video aspect, i'm talking about intention re: the song. you're clicking on "guy gets hit in the groin" because you want to see a guy get kicked in the crotch, the fact that "hurts so good" is playing in the bg is neither here nor there to the viewers. songs get added to radio playlists because stations and listeners have a symbiotic relationship so they supposedly drive each other's decisions.

i'm not a pollyanna, i don't harbor any misconceptions about charts perfectly and fairly capturing the zeitgeist. but doesn't mean that this isn't a step down.

on the other hand, 2 Girls 1 Cup would have made a pretty awesome #1

omg

look at the upside, maybe lemme smang it will get the respect it deserves

i don't see the problem, a priori, with rebecca black or somebody like it being #1 on a chart

there's no competiting chart because what billboard used to do isn't practical anymore. I think 'people who give a shit about this stuff' are limited to this thread.

I don't think either of these claims are true! the thing is, Billboard's nationwide charts generally shitty for a number of reasons, one of which is the dreaded homogeneity - as late as the late eighties, regional charts are a thing, I know some old-school industry dudes who collect and publish them and they're fascinating and cool. And extinct, because Clear Channel etc., but we're in a moment where something like them - except not regionally, but in terms of "people who're into _____" - could be gathered and reported and used. I do get that artists can use their Billboard performance to get better advances, guarantees, etc., but...it's really weird that this antiquated dinosaur model of popularity measurement is afforded any "preserve this model" sentiment imo

i buy all the arguments that a set of music charts ought to represent music as it is being produced and consumed by its various communities, instead of... whatever billboard is ostensibly trying to show

i wonder if the way around all this is, instead of trying to weigh and then compile diffs between purchases, airplay, tube plays, etc, and running them together by ill-defined genre, just have charts for the various channels. physical sale, (paid?) download, radio, internet video/stream.

you're clicking on "guy gets hit in the groin" because you want to see a guy get kicked in the crotch, the fact that "hurts so good" is playing in the bg is neither here nor there to the viewers.

but that song wouldn't end up on the charts. if lots of people were making similar videos using the same song and the track started to sell because of it, then the song is obviously a big part of the viral success and does deserve to be counted in the charts.

xxp I'm fine with them including youtube numbers (although I think they're going about it all wrong), but like I said I'm a lot more interested in the cultural implications of all this than the numbers stuff.

just have charts for the various channels. physical sale, (paid?) download, radio, internet video/stream.

They have this.

ha i was about to addend that i barely know what billboard offers now

i buy all the arguments that a set of music charts ought to represent music as it is being produced and consumed by its various communities, instead of... whatever billboard is ostensibly trying to show

the problem is there's not some objective way to go about this. these charts have always involved an arbitrary weighing of metrics and we're currently in an era where the way that music is being produced and consumed changes and continues to change every year.

oops meant to italicize

a good comparison point might be the us news college ranking. it weighs a dozen streams of 'hard data' in an ultimately arbitrary way and spits out a list that is very important to some people and mostly not important to the rest of the world. but 'what is a good college' is like 'what is a popular song' - there are various hard numbers you can wave around but it's ultimately a question that can't be answered and will be even harder to answer in 20 years.

i buy all the arguments that a set of music charts ought to represent music as it is being produced and consumed by its various communities, instead of... whatever billboard is ostensibly trying to show

i wonder if the way around all this is, instead of trying to weigh and then compile diffs between purchases, airplay, tube plays, etc, and running them together by ill-defined genre, just have charts for the various channels. physical sale, (paid?) download, radio, internet video/stream.

As a trade publication they're basically trying to gauge how much money a song is making right? And since significant revenue can now come from places like youtube it makes sense to include them. If anything, I think you could argue that radio is the least important factor.

and I would assume the main reason to include radio is so that retailers know which records to stock. since that's increasingly irrelevant, I don't see much of a reason to include airplay in charts at all anymore.

Part of it's just the cultural baggage from the days when charts were more directly pinned to what people were shelling out money on - the idea that "this is one of the top ten songs in the country!" was a shorthand for "this is actually really popular and is somehow indicative of mainstream taste in the country" or alternately "of what hip hop/rock/whatever fans are really excited about."

Radio has a tenuous relationship to that concept; obviously something can be a major zeitgeist piece of music and radio not really show that, but somehow it just feels right that the #1 song in the summer of whatever year should also be the song that, twenty years later when you think back on that year, that's the song that comes to mind, it was inescapable, every car that drove by you heard it coming out the windows! As opposed to some thing on Youtube that a much smaller segment of the population watched over and over again, with way more people never even knowing it exists. It's the lingering fantasy that we have some kind of, let's call it a "pop culture" that carries with it some kind of unifying Zeitgeisty significance over and apart from its actual roots in the kind of bean-counting money-making that is actually why records get made and why Billboard makes charts.

For another version of this that may complicate my take, see best song that reached #1 on airplay but was never allowed to chart on the billboard hot 100 1995-1998 - dunno if it seems wrong that "Fly" was not #1 but it sure seems weird.

the youtube zeitgeist is probably more inescapable than the 'every car that drove by you' zeitgeist

Disagree - it's still a lot easier to not see a viral video than to not hear a hit radio song, IMO. There are lots of viral songs that I could name just from seeing them discussed and links shared on Facebook, but never actually clicked on even once.

I think wk's point about billboard being a trade magazine and not, idk, a journal of cultural history is important. I mean ultimately billboard is just trying to keep itself relevant in a business that has changed substantially and will continue to change at a very rapid pace. it probably won't keep itself relevant, because something's 'billboard ranking' has already lost its luster as a universal metric and any new metrics it constructs will have to change so frequently that they won't hold any authority.

xp

Jody Rosen and Chris Molanphy weigh in

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/02/21/_harlem_shake_is_no_1_after_billboard_begins_counting_youtube_views_what.html

lol @ that article. I can't help but feel an intense schadenfreude at the total failure of popism here. "My populism only runs so deep." indeed.

re: the static nature of the Spotify charts, I notice that AWOLNATION's "Sail" is still at #15 as of today

― This beat is TWEENCHRONIC (DJP), Thursday, February 21, 2013 1:13 PM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah that song has pretty much not left Spotify's top 30 for 2 years now, and recently jumped up the sales charts and reached its highest Hot 100 peak in the last few weeks (for what reason i'm not sure). it's pretty much oldest song on the Spotify charts, though, most everything else is from the past 6 months or so.

sorry if this has been mentioned already, but does billboard have a way of telling how many youtube streams are actually coming from within the united states?

Was just going to ask teledyldonix's question. Can I as an Australian influence the billboard charts? Does this mean that k and j pop will now be more generally present on the charts?

the cheap stunts begin

http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/1681/popupgr.jpg

think the thing that annoys me most is the 30 sec thing? even if you ignore the fact that checking a song out on youtube doesn't equate to actually LIKING it, at least limit it to people consuming the actual full song

in a way i totally hope for another "friday", where most of its views were driven through DISLIKE, or morbid fascination with how "bad" it was

The 30 seconds thing is particularly troubling given the "coincidence" that it greatly benefits "Harlem Shake" the first week it was introduced.

to be clear, I have no idea if there IS a rule about minimum video length to impact chart position -- just asked Bill Werde on twitter, although he'll probably ignore me again.

watching 2 seconds of a 4-minute YouTube always counts towards its views and always has, though. Lex bringing that up raises a whole other issue about all this.

watching 2 seconds of a 4-minute YouTube always counts towards its views and always has, though

aaaaahahahahaha really??? so someone checking a youtube out of curiosity and then within the first 10 secs going "ugh no do not want" counts towards its measure of popularity????

i suppose in a clickbait age i shouldn't be surprised but omg everything is fucked

guys the charts weren't exactly an oasis of integrity where we fled from the harsh uncool realities of the world you know

this is kind of a 'the devil you know' thing though -- we're used to the inherent problems of the old Hot 100, but now there's a bunch of new ones to sort out and identify

Once the dust settles on this whole dubstep Harlem Shake meme, more people will have learned about the actual Harlem Shake. Will the original dance make some kind of comeback? Will youtube uploaders start refining their Harlem Shake dance styles? Will G Dep see a significant boost in sales? Just some things I'm thinking about. I didn't even learn about this meme until yesterday.

the whole "how dare they use the name of a dance to describe an editing gag" thing is weird

i mean it's totally ok to find some viral nonsense stupid but the self-righteousness is ott

Well, I mean, hip-hop has appropriated and recontextualized things from other genres and mediums on occasion, yes.

the cheap stunts begin

the stunt has everything to do w/ the fact that they make money from those youtube views (+ it's free publicity) and 0% to do w/ billboard

are they only counting views of the official Youtube or do they include all the fan videos and "with lyrics" ones? I ask because I tried to click on some of these "Harlem Shuffle" Youtubes to see what this is all about and a lot of them have been removed.

not to be all fact-check police but the Carly Rae Jepsen thing is almost certainly unrelated to this, considering it happened in 2012: http://www.carlyraemusic.com/2012/10/make-your-own-lyric-video-and-win-a-skype-call-and-signed-goodies/

(different song, of course, but same idea.)

I assume they count any videos where an artist/song has been recognized by YouTube.

yeah that seems to be the gist, any recognition is registered and paid for. i'm just curious if there is or ever will be a statute of limitation.

the whole 'lyric video' thing seriously is out of control though. Justin Timberlake is on-camera, occasionally mouthing words of the song, in the "Suit & Tie" lyric video, but because the words are on the screen and it's not a super high budget production that's just the lyric video, and the 'real' video was something else.

A board member of yore weighs in

http://t.co/YYHOtAKK86

pretty sure this lyric video was made by a 12-year old

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6S-0SbIVgs

that's my niece you're talking about!

watching 2 seconds of a 4-minute YouTube always counts towards its views and always has, though. Lex bringing that up raises a whole other issue about all this.

― D4y0 (some dude), Friday, February 22, 2013 6:03 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is not actually true from what I understand

ha well you def know more about YouTube than me, i thought all view-based traffic was measured by the "open the page and you're counted" rule. what is your understanding?

Looks like some dude is right?
http://www.quora.com/YouTube/How-far-into-the-video-does-a-user-need-to-watch-for-YouTube-to-count-it-as-a-view
http://www.atlantaanalytics.com/practicing-web-analytics/how-does-youtube-video-view-count-work/

Anyway, I wonder how many songs this year are going to come with dance moves attached.

you say that like half the songs out there don't have dance moves attached to them already

think the thing that annoys me most is the 30 sec thing? even if you ignore the fact that checking a song out on youtube doesn't equate to actually LIKING it, at least limit it to people consuming the actual full song

being forced to listen to a song over and over again on the radio doesn't equate to actually liking it either! also looool that you want to limit it to people listening to the "actual full song."

Maybe they'll somehow work YouTube Likes and Dislikes into the system.

this harlem shake song. does it really only last 30 seconds? (i only heard about it yesterday sorry if im asking a dumb question)

someone 'liking something' and something being popular aren't the same things regardless

ie like the billboard chart never strictly reflected 'the most liked' music

anyway related to this: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/02/21/172644482/tv-ratings-agency-nielsen-will-begin-measuring-online-streaming

this harlem shake song. does it really only last 30 seconds?

it's normal length (4 mins or something) but some of the meme videos that are being monetized / counting toward it's #1 chart position are that short

it's 3:18

ahh ok. I did wonder.

is it really less than 4 minutes, it felt like it went on for 10

Has there ever been a song as short as 30 seconds at #1? Or is there a minimum limit? I know in the UK in the 90s they changed the maximum to 19mins 59 secs because the orb,fsol etc were releasing 40 min singles and charting.

Looks like some dude is right?
http://www.quora.com/YouTube/How-far-into-the-video-does-a-user-need-to-watch-for-YouTube-to-count-it-as-a-view
http://www.atlantaanalytics.com/practicing-web-analytics/how-does-youtube-video-view-count-work/

― marc robot (seandalai), Friday, February 22, 2013 10:15 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ahh interesting—it does say in analytics you can see what point people stop watching

that feels a bit creepy

I would assume that billboard is smart enough to count the views per week, not just the cumulative total. In which case they must be getting data directly from youtube I would think. And if so there's no reason they couldn't also get U.S. only data, filter out the plays that are too short, etc.

The shortest ever #1 hit in the US is "Stay" by Maurice Williams & The Zodiacs. Something like a minute and a half.

or about three harlem shakes, which is the new convention for measuring time

3 malted harlem shakes please

and one shamrock shake

https://twitter.com/McDonalds/status/303230001342472192

being forced to listen to a song over and over again on the radio doesn't equate to actually liking it either! also looool that you want to limit it to people listening to the "actual full song."

feel like this is as good a place as any to confess than, on purpose, my iTunes is set to only count plays that play 100% of the song/track

Been waiting for that. xp

tbf don't most radio programming surveys only play the first ten seconds of a song to ppl surveyed to see if a track is 'known'?

so is that why so many songs start with a chorus now?

that's not why, but a lot of songs do do that to try and hook people as quickly as possible

also while i can totally believe (and assume) billboard's methodology here is off in principle this move is an obv good thing, in terms of trying to capture snapshot datapoint of a song's popularity, relative popularity of songs for a certain week in time right? it's a move toward greater accuracy (and unlike weighing sales v airplay ratio, youtube and streaming is obv under airplay and the only question is how you calculate and weigh it in that number), unlike the moves w/ r&b, country, etc charts.

starting songs w/ chorus is old as the hills
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoF-7VMMihA

also a good move in that it simultaneously dilutes the weight of radio airplay, reflecting the greater culture (something radio itself has been reflecting increasingly for a little while now - hello fm talk radio, goodbye rock radio).

there's no such thing as greater accuracy, there are just different ways of defining 'popularity'. and the old ways of defining it are becoming increasingly absurd.

yeah obviously it's a standard way to do a song, i'm just saying people writing big budget pop these days have openly said there's pressure to go straight for the hook. xp

personally i think any argument for this move just highlights how silly it was that they never made MTV and other video channels a factor

there's no such thing as greater accuracy
defining terms is kind've a first step, pretty sure billboard has an idea of what they mean by popularity. also will let everyone else in the lab know we can feel free to just go by guesstimates and eyeballing stuff, who needs assays and a280s.

personally i think any argument for this move just highlights how silly it was that they never made MTV and other video channels a factor

― D4y0 (some dude)

too true, ridiculous at the time but even more ridiculous now when '20 million views' can have chart impact and '20 million views' would've been what a heavy rotation video would've pulled on a friday night way back when. they may have just been reflecting the prerogatives of their readership (radio lobbying for mtv to be excluded would be plausible to me). not that the record industry was blind to the power of the huge, popular national radio station, the mtv oral history has many tales including label interns and flunkies attempting to stuff the ballot box w/ 1-800-dial-mtv, etc.

personally i think any argument for this move just highlights how silly it was that they never made MTV and other video channels a factor

the major difference being that mtv was basically just a promotional outlet that actually cost the labels money (to make the videos, etc) while youtube is actually a revenue stream. gangnam style probably made about $1 million from youtube, which is the equivalent to selling a million singles. why shouldn't that be factored in pretty heavily?

there's no such thing as greater accuracy

surely the data that youtube collects is much more objectively accurate than whatever voodoo nielsen does with radio.

too true, ridiculous at the time but even more ridiculous now when '20 million views' can have chart impact and '20 million views' would've been what a heavy rotation video would've pulled on a friday night way back when.

I think you're vastly overestimating the size of a typical friday night mtv audience when they were playing music videos. 2011 vmas were mtv's biggest audience ever with only 12 million viewers http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1669953/vma-2011-ratings-history.jhtml

it speaks volumes that PSY had to get a billion views to generate income comparable to a million single sales

defining their terms doesn't make it more acccurate because 'popularity' isn't something that can be accurately judged. the numbers they plug into their formula can be more or less accurate but the number it spits out is never going to have anything to do w/ accuracy. if they had a clear idea of what they mean by popularity they wouldn't be radically changing that number crunching machine multiple times in a year.

there *isn't* some clear idea of popularity because the way media is consumed is changing basically year to year. spotify was barely a thing fairly recently. it could be replaced by something different soon. etc. that doesn't mean these things shouldn't be included, it just means billboard won't be able to come up w/ some magic formula that lasts a decade unless the way people consume media stops changing so quickly.

xps

it speaks volumes that PSY had to get a billion views to generate income comparable to a million single sales

how many radio plays or mtv views do you think it takes to convert into a single sale?

gangnam style probably made about $1 million from youtube

thought it was $8 million

http://www.wallsave.com/wallpapers/1920x1200/chalkboard/2768651/chalkboard-tags-equation-theorem-math-image-resolution-x-2768651.jpg

hmm lemme get back to you on that one (xp)

even more ridiculous now when '20 million views' can have chart impact and '20 million views' would've been what a heavy rotation video would've pulled on a friday night way back when

and again, back to the intentionality argument, 20 million youtube views is way more meaningful than 20 million passive views or listens on radio or TV. if someone watches a video 3 times on youtube that means a lot more than if they happen to hear it on the radio 3 times.

I'm gonna throw this in as a data point: I work for a label doing online content/digital marketing, and have been told that the person at the top of the pyramid is very interested in giving more and more latitude and encouragement to the online department to promote stuff and come up with ideas to build awareness of artists, because she thinks the cost/benefit ratio w/r/t pushing songs to radio in the old school way isn't what it once was.

hmm lemme get back to you on that one (xp)

btw, I meant that in a curious way. it's a interesting question I think. wasn't posing it to you as a challenge or anything.

haha yeah i would just feel foolish trying to confidently deliver any kind of answer to that question in a couple minutes or something

impact seems like it may be greater than introduction of itunes, not as drastic as soundscan. guessing that it will have similar impact to soundscan in terms of greater democratization, dissimilar in terms of actually changing music ie if rise of gangsta and grunge in nineties can be tied to soundscan (for the sake of argument), i'm not sure any similar change (certainly nothing on that scale) happens here - there's no new information here (ppl knew 'harlem shake' was a phenom), it's just now being reflected in a big, old media outlet. most i would guess is that certain niche genres (k-pop an obv candidate) get larger chart presence, increased likelihood of (another) breakout hit. i could imagine labels and artists being less likely to have tracks deleted from youtube, also maybe more resources devoted to music videos?

I don't think it's a question with an answer. every case is different. xp

So when will there be a viral video as expensive as November Rain?
I demand more videos of guitar solos from on top of pianos!