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

Are there any good articles on why there are so many 'charts' in the US?

Here in the UK its always been sales based. That way its [been seen as] not been decided by pluggers ,labels or stations what gets in a chart. Obviously there's been cheating done in the past.

The public woudnt have it anyother way. It's also why weird songs can sometimes top the chart. I cant imagine commercial radio playing 'o superman' for instance but it sold loads.

re: nsync, "bye bye bye" and "girlfriend" weren't released as cd singles in the u.s. (this was common for teenpop acts like nsync, bsb and britney -- wasn't true for christina, tho). in 2000, cd singles were the only physical format that actually made an impact on the charts from retail, and in 2002 (when "girlfriend" was out), even those were so negligible in sales that the hot 100 basically parroted the airplay chart every week. "it's gonna be me" did have a cd single (it might have been a limited release), which allowed it to jump up to the top for a couple weeks.

i thought "o superman" did become a hit partly thru radio play? at least that's how the popular story goes

U.K. has never factored radio play into the Official Charts, afaik. But radio play (John Peel) probably *influenced* sales.

Are there any good articles on why there are so many 'charts' in the US?

Here in the UK its always been sales based. That way its [been seen as] not been decided by pluggers ,labels or stations what gets in a chart. Obviously there's been cheating done in the past.

The public woudnt have it anyother way. It's also why weird songs can sometimes top the chart. I cant imagine commercial radio playing 'o superman' for instance but it sold loads.

― pfunkboy (Algerian Goalkeeper), Saturday, December 14, 2013 1:12 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

we have lots of different radio formats and regional differences and different cultures/ethnicities, and our media isn't controlled by a centralized BBC-type entity?

BBC doesnt control any of the commercial radio stations though.

Also, as I understand it until very recently the single format has always been a much better seller in the UK than in America.

yeah diversity, complexity, and sheer size of us market are why microfocus w/ charts are useful and necessary in a way they aren't w/ an extremely homogenized and small market like the uk. the problem that has arisen for billboard is that whereas before on the retail side they could do some very specific targeting of markets the quasi-monopolization of retail (at least w/ mp3s) has made this much much more difficult. selecting certain record stores as yr bellwether for a genre is simple enough and accuracy is easily achieved there (r&b chart effectively starts as a survey of harlem record stores iirc), doing the same thing when there's effectively only one record store and that record store is also the one record store surveyed for any other chart makes it much more difficult, you're flooded w/ noise. there's an argument that they could've just kept the old model but i can buy that the storefront market (esp when you're talking about the ones you'd target for this) has shrunk so much that the data you gathered there wouldn't be very meaningful. i've thought that if itunes/amazon were willing billboard could target markets geographically but this still wouldn't approach the effectiveness of what they had twenty years ago and would be more problematic obv. in theory they could draw data from trends, using ppl who have focused there itunes purchases on a certain genre be it country or r&b as defining that market, adjusting week by week, but you could imagine ppl freaking out that this was an invasion of privacy or something. us has pure sales based and airplay based charts and while there's the obv fun of the uk charts having surprises and anomalies topping the charts these very anomalies are due to the small size of the market in question and also probably point to some problem w/ the sampling model. us chart model (imo) an easily more accurate model of measuring actual popularity. this is reflected in radio ignoring certain sales hits that have little appeal outside of their fanbase, esp since that fanbase probably isn't listening to the radio but streaming glee/boy bands/indie rock on their phone anyway. also fwiw the uk does have more charts.

while there's the obv fun of the uk charts having surprises and anomalies topping the charts these very anomalies are due to the small size of the market in question and also probably point to some problem w/ the sampling model

One startling thing about the introduction of streaming to the Hot 100 is that it has now started having bigger anomalies than the UK. "Harlem Shake" and "The Fox" both charted higher in the US; Ark Music have never had a song make the UK top 40.

novelty hits /= anomalies! novelty records have been hugely popular since the dawn of billboard. i'm talking more the case of some single topping the charts thru some campaign - ratm, iron maiden. here if some fanbase decided to coordinate efforts and try to drive 'reflektor' or whatever to #1 it wouldn't work unless it was w/ a song or act that was already actually popular. something like blur vs oasis could happen but 'bring yr daughter to the slaughter' couldn't or if it did it wouldn't be a surprise or anomaly cuz it would mean 'bring yr daughter to the slaughter' was already a hit or primed to be one (airplay, etc).

in the case of an act like one direction, it's not that the singles are selling a ton and not getting played -- it's that they have hugely frontloaded but ultimately moderate sales. looking at the first-week sales of a new one direction or justin bieber single has almost always been misleading, so it's not a huge surprise to me that radio is reluctant to hop on board fully w/ these songs. the bieber songs that actually got real radio support (the first 3 singles from believe) managed it partly b/c the sales managed to hang on decently even after the initial surge.

― dyl, Saturday, December 14, 2013 12:43 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This seems to be reaffirmed by the success of their current single. It hasn't left the itunes top 10 since release and as a result radio seems to be steadily picking it up. It's almost top ten on pop radio and already top 40 on radio over all.

as for Beyonce getting a #1 before year ends, the songs won't be available for individual purchase until Dec. 20, so radio play, streaming and/or digital sales would have to be massive, like record breakingly huge to get the #1.

And Chris Molanphy brings it

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_music_club/features/2013/music_club_2013/the_rock_hall_of_fame_and_the_billboard_hot_100_where_were_the_black_acts.html

not quite sure how this relates to the main themes of this thread, but this year a black performer had a #1 on the country chart! (#15 on the hot 100)

does he tho? his explanation for why black artists didn't chart in 2013 like they did in 2004 is pretty lackluster - i think under a little scrutiny it turns out not to be an explanation at all. He writes:

"there’s no willful racism or systematic exclusion happening" but "Music fans are playing out an unironic version of Stephen Colbert’s joke about not seeing color—we’re cool with the idea that authentic rhythmic music can now come from anyone, and yet somehow, when the data is compiled about what we’re all buying and streaming, the Timberlakes and Matherses and Macklemores keep winding up atop the stack, ahead of the Miguels and J. Coles." which seems a bit of having his cake + eating it too?

and then disavowing black artists topping the album chart by handwaving albums away bc singles are more important? idk, he's doing a lousy job selling me on this narrative.

I don't think anybody could sell you on the narrative anyway

i think if someone made the case that billboard made the youtube changes to intentionally skew towards white artists i'd find that more -- idk if compelling but direct at least? now it's like very ephemeral. it seems like the argument is that it's racist, but not bc of racism.

Sure, it'd be a direct statement that's out there and that people can immediately start piling up pieces of evidence for and against

That's definitely one method of presentation but not the only one

What we have now can be classified as sort of a really broad and vague form of demographic data, where we had the opportunity of seeing the collection methodology change and now we're seeing the results

If you want a writer to come out and say that yes, there was racist intent, you'll probably find one eventually, maybe it hasn't been written yet, but I'm sure it will be soon

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_music_club/features/2013/music_club_2013/the_rock_hall_of_fame_and_the_billboard_hot_100_where_were_the_black_acts.html

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_music_club/features/2013/music_club_2013/the_rock_hall_of_fame_and_the_billboard_hot_100_where_were_the_black_acts.html

Haven't seen this posted yet, anybody have any thoughts?

no but i did just read a link on slate that seemed relevant to this thread

singles are more important, at this point, to the cultural narrative, if maybe not to what the industry rewards. here are some No. 1 albums from 2013 no one gave a shit about: Jack Johnson, Luke Bryan, Avenged Sevenfold, Keith Urban, Wale (unless you work at complex), Queens of the Stone Age (unless you are that one guy complaining that Pitchfork left QOTSA off their singles list, who is a real person and not some guy I made up), the Josh Groban/Michael Buble one-two punch this spring...

Mordy might take issue with you for the Avenged Sevenfold snub

haha I bought the Luke Bryan album twice for two different people: my bro in law for his birthday and (today!) for a friend's fiancee. They're always bemused when I say I like a couple of his tunes.

The fact that you can get a #1 album and sell less than 100,000 copies in a week might have a little something to do with that.

yeah I was about to say

I see a lot of people complaining about Queens of the Stone Age not appearing on various year end lists, but maybe it's just one guy posting under various accounts.

My impression is that QOTSA have a kind of pseudo-radiohead like fanbase

And on a slight tangent, I was kind of shocked to recently discover that prior to Beyonce, the only other artist to have had 5 consecutive albums debut at number one was DMX.

Somewhat embarrassing but I used to post on a video games message board in high school and the amount of people on that board talking about QOTSA rivaled the number talking about Radiohead, Rush, Tool, Opeth, and A Perfect Circle

obv the shift towards far less black artists charting on the hot 100 has come about due to the change of billboard methodology from practically 100% airplay to including digital sales since 2005, but i'm wondering in light of that slate piece how well black artists did on the singles charts (when physical single sales were relevant) back in the 80s/90s? is there any info on that? have white artists always dominated single sales or has there been a shift w/ the itunes era?

i think QOTSA is in this zone now:

that stage where you think they aren't popular anymore but are actually way more popular than they were when they had "buzz"

white artists have not always dominated singles sales and while previous billboard adjustments have take a form that definitely obv open to a charge of racism the case isn't nearly as strong w/ most recent adjustment - change in late 90s and mid 00s were tied to movements away from dominance by babyface acts and hip-hop acts, youtube factoring in (and there's no way youtube shouldn't be factored in even if billboard's actual algorithm might be off) is a movement toward something and adjusting a calculation to account for something it was missing. this can only really work w/ the hot 100 chart. also as much as ppl keep writing the same 'what's wrong w/ billboard?' and 'what's wrong w/ radio?' pieces they might want to examine what has changed w/ r&b and hip-hop - there's nobody w/ the adult contemporary chops of babyface dominant in r&b right now and there's nobody w/ the pop chops of timbaland or the neptunes or puff daddy dominant in hip-hop right now.

That attributes the previous success of R&B and hip-hop on the charts to a small handful of amazing producers, which is totally not the story at all. Those genres thrived before and outside of Babyface/Timbaland/Neptunes/Puff, just like current pop isn't solely defined by Dr. Luke facsimiles. And it's not like Timbaland or Pharrell have been irrelevant in making hits this year, their big pop culture-dominating hits just seem to have only been with mainly white artists.

producers and songwriters*

confused by him saying that there's no "systematic exclusion" when it does obviously seem systematic, even if it's not "willful" as he says

I like this To be sure, radio-pop in 2013 encompassed a bracing range of stuff that would have seemed improbable just three years ago—from a kickass, late-blooming bit of Icona Pop trash talk; to twee indie-ish pop ballads by Passenger and A Great Big World; to a goofy Imagine Dragons mashup of butt-rock and dubstep. Whatever the merits of these songs, this really is a deeper level of sonic catholicism than we’ve heard on hit radio in years. That’s what makes it all the more surreal, dismaying, and almost insidious that virtually all of our soul is of the blue-eyed variety.

i think it's abundantly clear that billboard's current method of gauging internet success is offkey - that people clicking on a "goofball dances to old song" video for a week puts that old song in the top 40 for a week suggests they don't know how to distinguish between people buying "Unchained Melody" and people going to see Ghost. and the changes to genre charts have rendered them absurd redundancies to the hot 100. but these are clumsy attempts to adapt to a new marketplace - one where "crossover" potential doesn't primarily come from kicking ass with genre-centric radio stations. i'd be curious to see more reportage on what's going on with the infrastructure of r&b, country, rock, etc than just reaffirmations that only the stuff going mega is MOR dance and troll-bait.

I don't think the overall trends would change dramatically if you add some depth to the data but I think the fixation on #1s is very "thinkpiece w a deadline", would like to see someone write about it who wasn't just prompted by a particular statistic...#1 songs in 2013 is such a small sample... What about top 5/top 10 this year, was it overall as monolithic? Same w 2004... was it a statistical aberration that black ppl dominated the pole position or did they blanket the top 10?

It's not just 'a particular statistic,' this is the first time this has happened since Billboard came into existence

I mean 5 years from now it'll either be a statistical aberration or it won't be but right now is also not the time to handwave away that fact

billboard so imperfectly measures whatever it is supposed to measure in reality that it's very hard to understand what this unique event means. did fewer ppl listen to black artists in 2013 than 2012? lots of think pieces are concluding that this says something about music listeners in america but it could be breakdown of listening hasn't changed at all and this is entirely attributable to billboard switching ways of measuring listens. no one knows which is why the discussion regarding it is so awkward imho

theoretically could someone backwards engineer new billboard formula for 2012 (maybe it's not transparent enough for this) and compare results? add YouTube views and mix?

also are we sure billboard shouldn't be counting novelty songs on YouTube? why not? since when did billboard only measure non-novelty songs?

Yeah though I'm not sure how much data is publicly available or even available to somebody with a Billboards industry insider subscription (vaguely waving my hands here)

no they blanketed the top 10. and yeah it's systematic but w/ the hot 100 i think billboard is more reflecting a reality than shaping it unless someone want to argue that in fact black artists did sell a ton of singles and dominate pop radio this year. suspect homogenization at pop radio is overwhelmingly the key factor. obv pop radio was pretty homogenized ten years ago when you had an all hip-hop top ten etc but playlists weren't remotely as tight and when you go back twenty, thirty years there's far more diversity in the pop chart at least partially as a result. even around 80-81 when pop radio and pre-'billie jean' mtv were damn near openly racist you still have more diverse top tens than we've seen the past few years. and yeah this is systemic but you're insane if you think pop music doesn't have the equivalent of keystone species.

Wrecking Ball went back to #1 off the back of a viral video that used the song and parodied the nude wrecking ball moment. That seems like not at all what was intended behind the inclusion of youtube, since it's abundantly clear those views didn't come from increased interest in the song, but the humorous content based around a single moment in the video of the song.

I think there's also two separate lines of thought here - there's consternation at the change in the face of the Hot 100, and there's also consternation at what's happening in the subcharts like R&B and Rap, the latter of which was dominated b... Psy for a long while

also are we sure billboard shouldn't be counting novelty songs on YouTube? why not? since when did billboard only measure non-novelty songs?

it's not even about novelty songs - it's about 30 second novelty videos where the song is just an aspect. In the late '80s the original "Unchained Melody" was in the Top 20 because radio was playing it a lot, and a shitty re-recording was in the chart as well because people were buying the cassingle. But it didn't make the chart just because people were paying money to see a movie it was in.

But honestly these charts don't exist to provide info to music nerds, they're a dick-measuring contest for the labels. Back in the day it was about who can push units and force airplay (with one hopefully helping the other). With radio and sales dwindling, they want to pat each other on the back for what's getting looked at on the net (and tbf, songs like "wrecking ball and "blurred lines" did become radio hits thanks to that initial "on the net" enthusiasm. billboard's going about giving them that in the sloppiest way.

also are we sure billboard shouldn't be counting novelty songs on YouTube? why not? since when did billboard only measure non-novelty songs?

― Mordy

alot of rock critics think this cuz they don't like novelty songs and they really resent the existence of the internet and any reminders that it's not going away. obv novelty songs are and have been incredibly popular and whether or not ppl are actually sincerely correctly enjoying the song or just using the song as a mean of enjoying some larger cultural phenomenon be it an internet meme or the 85 chicago bears is irrelevant (the ratings for the super bowl still count regardless of whether emily nussbaum or whoever think it's a 'real' tv show). that said everything i've seen of how billboard actually accounts for youtube views suggest they heavily heavily overweigh that sample.

wait, is mike will someone without pop chops or did "we can't stop" (even though I hate it) just not exist

honestly they should just get rid of the non-airplay genre-charts if they're just going to be "songs on the hot 100 we've arbitrarily decided are in this genre, basically in the order they can be found on the hot 100"