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

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.

god that perpetua hire at buzzfeed looks more and more tragic and evil every day

I heard "Thrift Shop" for the first time today. That shit is terrible.

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'.

I did not have this experience of the '90s at all. at least the latter half of the '90s.

ok but name some #1s of the late 90s that you can't hum, i think a lot of people would go whaaaat

I completely avoided the latter half of the 90s number ones - for ex I did not recognize a single song on that recent boy band poll

the only ones I recognize are the big jokey gangnam style / rebecca black things like the macarena or mmmm bop. pre-internet it was pretty easy to avoid that kind of stuff if you didn't listen to pop radio. basically my total ignorance of top 40 music began at the point I went to college and ended when the internet made that stuff inescapable again.

'4 seasons of loneliness' is one tbf. i think that was the last #1 i hadn't heard until 'harlem shake'. excepting whitney/boyzIImen, the '#1 = monolith' trend may be most pronounced immediately before the itunes introduction (thinking of usher, outkast). jesus christ babyface must be rich as fuck.

how is that stuff more inescapable now??? deliberate exposure vs radio, grocery store pa's, mtv

I still haven't heard the majority of 90s number one singles.

you were a 9/11 baby there's no shock there

what is a Londonbeat

that was when music meant something, the berlin wall had fallen, pepsi was clear, and a little song called 'smells like teen spirit' had changed the world and opened ppl's minds

how is that stuff more inescapable now??? deliberate exposure vs radio, grocery store pa's, mtv

when I was in my 20s I didn't watch much TV or listen to the radio and didn't really know anyone my age who did either. I'm just saying it all depends on your age and to what degree you engage with pop culture, and I suspect your memory of '90s pop has a lot to do with how old you were at the time. I do think the internet makes it harder to escape this stuff though. If I wonder "what is this thing people are talking about?" I can click and form an opinion in 30 seconds. And I just find that it's more difficult to insulate your self from pop culture on the internet than IRL.

and for the record I did watch a lot of mtv in the late '90s and it was all Beavis and Butthead and the Real World

why hasn't billboard deemed baauer worthy of the r&b/hip-hop songs chart

yeah they make a lot of judgment calls there now that i don't totally understand

songs that Billboard deems worthy of the new iTunes-driven R&B/Hip Hop Songs chart: Rihanna's "Diamonds," Macklemore's "Thrift Shop," Justin Timberlake's "Suit & Tie"

songs that haven't been deemed worthy of that chart: Rihanna's "Stay," Flo Rida's "I Cry," PSY's "Gangnam Style," Pitbull's "Don't Stop The Party," Baauer's "Harlem Shake," Justin Bieber's "As Long As You Love Me"

sales-only chart has always been a dishonest kind of honesty if you examine the ways that music is consumed irl

Thinkpiece time!

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9005926/harlem-shake-thrift-shop-youtube-music-revolution

And it ends with:

"Friday" already seems like a throwback to a more innocent time. Back then, memes were only memes. If "Friday" came out today, Rebecca Black would have a no. 1 record.

So there you go.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/21775499

Some music artists are buying social networking statistics to get into the charts, a Newsbeat investigation has found.

The statistics, which can be bought, include YouTube views, Twitter followers and Facebook likes.

Newsbeat has found that you can buy 10,000 YouTube views for as little as £30.

There is also a market for buying comments to attribute to the views to help authenticate them.

A data monitoring company based in America says that it has a list of artists who they believe are buying statistics to increase their popularity with record labels and radio bosses.

....

Alex White is the CEO and co-founder of Next Big Sound, which gathers information on daily physical music and online consumption around the world.

He wouldn't name which artists he suspected had been purchasing its data, but said sometimes it was obvious to see that they had.

Martin V is based in Ottawa in Canada and runs a company where people can buy tens of thousands of YouTube views and comments for less than £100.

Twitter says using a company or a computer programme to increase your online activity on Twitter is against its rules.

In a statement it told Newsbeat: "Twitter reserves the right to immediately terminate your account without further notice [if] you violate these rules."

Facebook told Newsbeat that gaining "likes" from people who aren't interested in that page is "no good to anyone".

They advised: "If you run a Facebook page and someone offers you a boost in your fan count in return for money; walk away.

"Not least because it is against our rules and there is a good chance those Likes will be deleted by our automatic systems."

YouTube agreed that purchasing views or any other channel data was against its rules and said if it found out it had been done they could go as far as terminating your account.

got an email today with the subject line "Billboard Charts Now Using YouTube Data!! Get Youtube Marketing Today!!!"

"Harlem Shake" has finally dropped from the #1 spot after five weeks. "Thrift Shop" would have been at #1 for eleven weeks without the recent rejiggering.