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

like the diversity is already there

watching old david fincher madonna videos this week made me wonder if music vids could ever be that kind of incubator for movie talent again (or easy way for indie filmmakers to garner a check). means of production and distribution are easier now, entry level lower but the market itself has shrunk so much, the stakes are so low, that's it very very hard to imagine a label blowing the kind of cash that some of those huge propaganda films videos routinely got.

there's still a big gap between the quirky viral video and being a guest on the today show or something.

maybe you mean something by this that i'm not getting but doesn't pretty much every viral video star on a certain scale of popularity start hitting the network talk show circuit?

the major difference being that mtv was basically just a promotional outlet that actually cost the labels money (to make the videos, etc)

I thought the labels billed the band for the videos...? I just read in the Tom Petty Q&A book that this fact was what most irritated him: the band got the bill while the label and MTV made millions in sales of the band's product getting promoted.

it's funny to me when people say "maybe it's time to come up with an alternative to Billboard!" cause like, AV Club just started doing their own 'power rankings' of TV ratings that feed the actual Nielsen numbers through this and that funhouse mirror in order to proclaim Community one of the top 10 shows of the week.

but being reflected in billboard gives access to the rest of the big old media outlets like broadcast tv. there's still a big gap between the quirky viral video and being a guest on the today show or something. maybe now the charts can be a conduit for that to happen more often with artists who are outside of the major label system

yeah this is true, psy was internet huge pretty quick but it was only when he got that schmuck who represents bieber on board that he gained entry to old media, actually started to race up the chart. this could remove that need for major label seal of approval, end up fostering interesting stuff. old media is still so weirdly clueless w/ the internet though, i think it's a generational thing.

bieber is new media too tho

i remember thinking pfork should've come up w/ an alternative to cmj, this was when cmj had their weird scandal w/ their charts and pfork was small enough that supplanting cmj would've been a coup. in retrospect it would've been more work than it was worth (and redundant considering how much college radio ends up reflecting pfork's whims anyway)(and possibly how little college radio matters now though that's pure speculation on my part there) and pfork decidedly supplanted cmj anyhow within a couple of years.

bieber's barely more new media than tevin campbell was. youtube got foot in the door and provided numbers to show there was an opp there but usher connection, etc got him thru the door to radio, often quite literally - first i'd heard of him was usher on the bert show (morning radio show on big pop station in atlanta) talking up his discovery, dropping the word 'viral' every other sentence for old media to lap up. in some ways 'youtube sensation' has worked the same way the past few years something like 'england's new sensation' did for a couple of years in the mid sixties.

does anyone miss that month when 'myspace sensation' was the big thing?

Hollywood Undead does

I don't think bieber got big cause 13 y/o girls were listening to the radio - even if his push was ultimately via white guys in suits, it was via new media

some dodgy metal labels do. (the shitty ones who signed all that awful deathcore pish for a start)

yeah Bieber caught on pretty slow with radio -- nothing in the top 20 of the Radio Songs chart until "Boyfriend," after he was super established and had sold a ton of albums and had some big sales-fueled Hot 100 hits

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!

Well this video has over 150 million views on YouTube, but I don't think that's what you meant.

ha yeah the other day i looked through YouTube's top 100 music video chart or whatever and was surprised to see "November Rain" in there, may have been the only '90s MTV staple in there

9,861 couldn't take the time to lay it on the line

9,861 pianists

ok how many records did bieber sell and how well did he chart before raymond braun got on board? cuz by feb 2009 they were working him to radio - was he selling millions to 13 yr old girls in 2008? major label muscle was a factor, the potential now is that this change diminishes that factor and that something like psy (or bieber) could gain entry to old media w/o the need for industry soa. vox populi etc.

the bigger point is 'how many records did bieber sell and how well did he chart' are things that matter less than ever

downplaying that potential is that viral stars hardly have had too hard a time gaining entry to the today show, ellen, even snl w/ karmin or whatever the fuck their name is, so when we're saying gaining entry to old media we mean radio, which has shown resistance to viral/niche charting acts before - bieber initially, glee thankfully.

we're getting close to "how can science begin to quantify how popular chief keef is?" territory here

if only there were a scientist itt

the bigger point is 'how many records did bieber sell and how well did he chart' are things that matter less than ever

― iatee, Friday, February 22, 2013 4:41 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well i was contrasting the fact that "Baby," which before "Gangnam Style" was the most viewed music video in YouTube history, was not much of a radio hit, and noting that its chart peak came primarily from internet-driven metrics like iTunes sales.

lol there's a bieber lookalike here at the DMV right now

I think it's more that 'pop music' doesn't mean the same thing

like the diversity is already there

I guess I'm operating under the assumption that the hot 100 still has some sort of an influence on the industry and that there's an echo chamber kind of effect where the music on the charts effects the kind of music and artists that labels invest money into and that the media deems worthy of attention. maybe that's not the case.

point taken that viral video stars get access to the mainstream media anyway. I do still feel like there are opportunities for which "top 10 on the billboard charts" means more than "got 1,000,000 views on youtube this week" or whatever. but I could be wrong. maybe it's a subtle change but at least it shifts the discussion away from "oh those songs are just gimmicks" to "this is now what pop music means."

Biebs just old enough to get learners permit

big champagne's "ultimate chart" which came out in summer 2010 and was briefly hyped for including streaming data (including youtube) that billboard didn't at that time, has baaeur at #4 on its chart, which covers the same tracking period as billboard's (i think). the song's "online watching & listening" score is just 10, significantly lower than many other songs' scores. i wonder what's different about how they incorporate youtube data vs the way billboard is doing it

kind of feel like comparing bieber to psy is comparing apples to oranges, or at least apples to crabapples

the bigger point is 'how many records did bieber sell and how well did he chart' are things that matter less than ever

man, people on the internet say this all the time, not trying to beef w/you iats but it's a lefsetz-y thing to say when really the way you tell MSG what they have to pay you before you'll even show up is: 1) what kind of numbers did you do at comparable venues in other cities, or last time you were there? and 2) sales/charts. If you were at #1 for six weeks instead of bubbling under for a while, that's going to make an actual big difference in terms of both your guarantee and your percentage. And while tours/live engagements are probably a smaller % of Bieber's overall money picture than they would have been in a bygone age, they're still a cash cow, especially given the ridiculous amounts of merch that moves at those big stadium shows. So while it's true that record sales and chart positions matter much less than they did in the seventies and eighties, they're still pretty important to your overall business picture if you're a big player, and how you charted and what you sold is going to be a question promoters will be asking for some time to come, because they'd like to keep as much of the gate as they can, and "your charts were weaker than last time" will remain an effective bargaining chip in those negotiations.

I wasn't talking about $ in that sentence and its not that these things *don't matter* it's just that there is a pretty clear trend towards them mattering less. charts will get increasingly meaningless until music consumption can be tracked in a regular and straightforward manner, album sales will continue to decrease, etc.

big champagne's "ultimate chart" which came out in summer 2010 and was briefly hyped for including streaming data (including youtube) that billboard didn't at that time...i wonder what's different about how they incorporate youtube data vs the way billboard is doing it

Hmm, I'll walk down the hall and ask John how he computes that. He'd tell me, and I wouldn't understand at all, and then I'd probably get it completely wrong when trying to give you an answer. (disclaimer: crut and I work at Big Champagne.)

so they're gonna start booking baauer at madison square garden? that would be a fun show lmao

can someone explain something to me about this whole thing? pretty much every explanation of the meme says basically that the format is "for the first 15 seconds one person dances and everyone else is motionless, and then for the next 15 seconds everybody starts dancing like crazy." and that's what almost every response video has been. but in the original 'Filthy Frank' video it's several people dancing in one particular way for the first 15 seconds, and then a cut to the same people doing the crazy freeform dance. it sticks out like a sore thumb in this video that shows tons of them at once:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8nSiyP4IMO8

you mean to say... college kids on YouTube take half-assed approaches to their videos?

yeah, the filthy frank one is like the 'original' but it seems like the one that really established the real format that everyone would copy is this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=384IUU43bfQ

The UK singles chart will not include video streaming data, according to the Official Charts Company.

America's Billboard Hot 100 started using YouTube figures to make up its chart last week.

The Official Charts Company says the UK chart methodology and market are both very different to America.

"The Hot 100 has never been a purely sales based chart, incorporating data such as radio airplay since the 50s," said managing director Martin Talbot.

"In contrast, the UK's Official Singles Chart has been a purely sales based chart ever since it launched in 1952.

"With singles sales currently at an all-time high following nine years of continued year-by-year growth, there are currently no plans to incorporate streaming information in the UK."
Viral hits

The Official Charts Company launched a separate Official Streaming Chart last year.

Sales on the main singles chart continue to be dominated by digital downloads.

Viral hit, the Harlem Shake from Baauer, went to number one in America last week after YouTube data was included in the singles chart for the first time.

Billboard now incorporates all official videos on YouTube, including Vevo on YouTube and user-generated clips that use official audio.

Billboard and Nielsen launched an On-Demand Songs chart in America last year and added streaming data from leading on-demand subscription services such as Spotify, Muve Music, Rhapsody, Slacker, Rdio and Xbox Music.

Always believed our sales on chart was best and would hate to see it changed.

*only

yeah yeah that's how you felt during Lexington and Concord too, right?

i see the benefits to both approaches

you can also look at the sales chart in america, it's not like it disappeared

a lot of bands started off with hits just scraping the top 40 due to sales.
Also cant imagine acts like The Fall getting a top 40 in the USA :)

you don't have some magic chart we don't have

this harlem shake thing is so embarassing

it kinda seems like the UK charts being sales-based has always kept it open to lots of goofy novelty #1s ("Crazy Frog," the whole Christmas #1 tradition), and that the US started to veer towards that kind of thing more after iTunes data started impacting the Hot 100, and the YouTube data is just a harder swing towards that.

"Gangnam Style" and "Thrift Shop" became radio hits eventually, but that seemed to be a direct result of the viral success giving them a sales-fueled chart boost before any US radio station would touch it.

yeah, reflecting the larger culture i guess, but it's impossible to imagine something like d4l hitting #1 during the nineties when #1 meant 'this song is completely unavoidable, you know it well regardless of what radio stations or music you listen to, and it ain't going anywhere soon'.

what's funny is this is the first time i can remember (which isn't going back very far - 90s basically) that billboard changed their methodology and it wasn't pretty explicitly cuz 'things were getting too black'. does seem plausible (more plausible at least) that you could have a rap or rock or maybe even r&b #1 hot 100 single again.

i dunno, i think this YouTube thing will benefit rap much less than other genres -- Drake's new single got a boost because his video dropped the week the rules changed, but in general it's pretty rare for even the biggest hip hop radio hit to put up really impressive YouTube numbers on the level of your standard Rihanna pop smashes that already dominate the charts.