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

Am I right that with digital-era sales trends we have no frame of reference to say, meaningfully, that the Eminem chart-topper, despite its wallowing all over the Hot 100, is measurably not that popular?

I dunno...on my Clear Channel station this thing gets round the clock play.

Yeah, but does anybody actually want to hear it?

actually the other person ive found prevalent on urban radio (aside from rihanna) is...chris brown? dude's having something of a comeback there ("it won't stop," "show me," "love more," "fine china"). in fact, in my research i found rihanna and breezy to be maybe the strongest name brands in the r&b world since edm (or whatever you want to call it) became a chart phenomenon.

i say urban radio, btw, because that was the meat and potatoes of the hot r&b/hip hop songs chart pre-chart changes.

Chris Brown isn't on a comeback, he's been a non-stop presence on urban radio for the past 3 odd years since "Deuces" gave him his first big post-controversy hit.

Can't imagine they would be playing "Monster" so much if people didn't want to hear it. They are in business to make money.

yeah it's a popular song. people love it. we're better off not second-guessing the sincerity of one fanbase vs. another.

i would argue that eminem is possibly more popular now than he was pre-retirement, even if critics (except xgau lol) have moved on completely.

actually think limiting to top 20 is extremely justifiable (esp when you consider just how limited playlists are at pop radio). i could imagine some kind of weighed sample might reveal more but i suspect it would just confirm the above. curious to see 80s data, esp early 80s, cuz that was a time when r&b acts could have a difficult time crossing over to pop (esp more than once) and obv hip-hop acts could have a very difficult time getting on the radio. and yet even then yr freddie jacksons and stephanie mills would manage a pop hit, a gregory abbott would have a 'shake you down'. even luther vandross, who got alot of the 'why isn't this guy crossing over to pop?' thinkpieces before he finally really broke thru around 1990 would managed to have an occasional crossover hit (just nothing sustained and befitting a talent like luther vandross). suspect this might be due to smaller playlists also or just more fractured market possibly. curious if there's been any evidence of major format changes in radio, the kind of thing you might expect when a genre completely dies in the marketplace. in atlanta there's been a definite rise of edm/rhythmic friendly pop stations (probably the second most notable development locally after the rise of fm talk radio) but it has been at the expense of what was left of rock and altrock radio. i could imagine in a city w/ different demographics than atlanta that might not be the case though. curious about how and why the bottom fell out of r&b/hip-hop sales so dramatically (eg even w/ the high profile and tv appearances and critical acclaim and domination of r&b radio that last miguel album has yet to even go gold). suspect also that if you really want to look at a systematic root of this the general downsizing of music industry is going to be a primary cause, lex and some dude know more about this than me but the past whatever years is just littered w/ debut albums or followups that never got released or recorded or promoted really. country has seen it's pop presence erode as well (unless you want to include taylor swift post-'o wait, i'm a yankee - why am i singing w/ this accent?' as country) but it obv had a much larger base demographically and its infrastructure has always been separated from the rest of the music industry (geographically even).

also xina totally codes as white. maybe not as white as say britney but whiter than say ted cruz, nevermind shakira.

Country still crosses over, but the singles stall. Keith Urban and Miranda Lambert just scored a top 30 crossover, but I'm sure that's sales-driven.

i could imagine in a city w/ different demographics than atlanta that might not be the case though. curious about how and why the bottom fell out of r&b/hip-hop sales so dramatically (eg even w/ the high profile and tv appearances and critical acclaim and domination of r&b radio that last miguel album has yet to even go gold). suspect also that if you really want to look at a systematic root of this the general downsizing of music industry is going to be a primary cause, lex and some dude know more about this than me but the past whatever years is just littered w/ debut albums or followups that never got released or recorded or promoted really.

R&B album sales remained strong in the mid-00s even when rap sales were starting to sag (I remember Ne-Yo and Mary doing huge numbers during the bleak stretch when T.I. was the only rapper with a platinum album), but yeah they're really in the toilet now. Frank Ocean is the only new R&B artist of the last few years with a gold album, and of the established artists the only ones besides Beyonce that went gold with their last album are the ones that used to go platinum like Alicia Keys. now even when a new R&B artist is all over urban radio, major labels will only release an EP by them (Sevyn Streeter, Ty Dolla $ign, Rico Love, Jhene Aiko).

i guess you COULD say that the 80s were light on R&B crossover but i mean, Michael and Janet and Prince and Whitney, however rock or pop they occasionally leaned, were R&B artists. R&B ran pop in the 80s.

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

― 乒乓, Wednesday, December 18, 2013 3:09 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark

still waiting for this tbh

Country fans buy albums, not singles. tons of platinum country albums lately, but the biggest country radio song of last year, "Hey Girl" by Billy Currington, only went gold (Florida Georgia Line needed that Nelly remix on pop radio to get a multi-platinum single). but tons

yeah sales don't matter, i'm talking about pop radio airplay. toby keith had great sales but never really crossed over to the extent that even a tricia yearwood did nevermind yr shanias, faith hills, leann rimes, dixie chicks. garth brooks outsold all those artists (and any other artist on this thread or any other thread except the beatles depending on what day of the week it is) but never came close to crossing over the way shania did (the only crossover he had period apparently was his cover of yr favorite dylan song, though i swear i heard several other songs by him get some pop or ac airplay)(then again i live in the south)(chris gaines otoh).

but tons

buttons

guys we're discussing this stuff with too much nuance and reason, somebody needs to throw out some race-baiting hyperbole so that Mordy can feel smug about dismissing the entire topic of discussion

yeah some dude i guess i was thinking more pre-'billie jean' mtv, immediate post-disco for an example of when pop radio was damn near lillywhite and yet nowhere near as bleached as today. even w/ those artists you're talking about four textbook examples of who spike and flav were making fun of w/ the 'i'm not a black singer, i'm a singer that happens to be black' thing on the 'fight the power' 12". one of my fave weird chart stats: every single from control went #1 on the hot black singles chart except 'when i think of you'...which was the only single from control to reach #1 on the hot 100.

honestly i tend to just kind of avoid the topic of whether MJ or Prince or whoever from that era was R&B enough or 'black enough' since R&B from the mid-90s onward is so much more heavily influenced by hip-hop than anything before then that it really makes it hard for me to have a clear hindsight of what it all means. sure Parade-era Prince was not appealing purely to black radio like Freddie Jackson, but the distinction seems less fraught than the current demographic disconnects.

the popular music climate also starting to feel like a parallel to the state of affair in Hollywood, where it's become a real problem how few black films there are outside of Tyler Perry and period pieces about slaves and servants -- there was this sense, both in music and film, in the 80s and 90s that the mainstream was becoming more diverse and less white and would continue on that path, and then at some point things started to reverse in discomforting new ways.

one of my fave weird chart stats: every single from control went #1 on the hot black singles chart except 'when i think of you'...which was the only single from control to reach #1 on the hot 100.

now compare the Bad singles on both charts.

the popular music climate also starting to feel like a parallel to the state of affair in Hollywood, where it's become a real problem how few black films there are outside of Tyler Perry and period pieces about slaves and servants -- there was this sense, both in music and film, in the 80s and 90s that the mainstream was becoming more diverse and less white and would continue on that path, and then at some point things started to reverse in discomforting new ways.

― some dude, Friday, January 31, 2014 12:09 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is really true and weird

i can remember my black friends making fun of me for still liking michael jackson in 1984 :/

it's interesting you mention parade cuz that was when prince briefly did kinda become primarily an r&b artist again, album in general much more r&b than around the world (tough task that) but he also did that soul revue style tour (which he didn't bring to america cuz prince is a weird asshole)(something that's been kinda forgotten: prince for a while effectively stopped touring america after purple rain; he did a small tour for lovesexy but he doesn't really become a normal touring artist in america again until the 90s), i can remember if you wanted to hear 'anotherloverholenyohead' you had to listen to r&b radio. he kinda maintained that dichotomy in a less pronounced form from there out - 'adore' and 'if i was yr gf' huge r&b smashes but not really doing anything on pop radio, the requisite prince slow jams that were all over r&b radio and bet but not really touched by pop radio or mtv: 'scandalous', 'insatiable', 'damn u', 'i hate u'.

keep thinking there's a really good piece to be written about this, pbr&b, etc, an update of nelson george's the death of rhythm and blues (which i keep meaning to revisit and recommend to anyone wanting to understand 80s r&b context in that moment).

the thing I find fascinating is how Kevin Hart has suddenly become the new nexus of black America in Hollywood but that's another thread

according to Matos' book, Parade was first Prince album to sell well in England and Europe.

yeah he toured like crazy for it over there. and then bet would show clips of these amazing prince shows and you'd be simultaneously amazed and pissed off.

part of Prince's intentions re D&P btw was to regain his black fanbase.

the weird thing about Kevin Hart being a mainstream star now is that 10 years ago, when he was only known on the 'black standup circuit,' he'd be in the videos for rap hits like "Lean Back," back when songs like that got played on pop radio

off topic but can I just

http://www.jukebo.com/prince/music-clip,anotherloverholenyohead,surfq.html

Parade was a bad example i guess, i just meant broadly that Wendy & Lisa-heavy period between Purple Rain and SOTT when he seemed to drift furthest from trad R&B

o yeah i can remember that being a big part of the hype when d&p came out, alot of prince got distracted and lost touch w/ his base, he lost touch w/ the streets man, but now he's back and he's focused and, um, he's down w/ this rap music stuff *enter tony m.*

it's funny to think of "Cream" and "Diamonds & Pearls" being the big hits from his 'return to black radio,' even the schmaltziest Luther and Mariah songs from that period are more likely to get played on an R&B station today

well he never really left black radio but there was definitely a segment of the market that thought he was passe or had gone soft or whatever, it was the same need for relevance mj felt the need to address w/ dangerous. supposedly that mid80s turn toward trad r&b was inspired by this -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHaFj7gOWh4

i would argue that eminem is possibly more popular now than he was pre-retirement, even if critics (except xgau lol) have moved on completely.

This seems true. Many of the neg reviews of the new album (to paraphrase: "Sounds like he hasn't listened to the radio in ten years," "Rock samples out of step with new dance-y environment" "Kids who buy records don't know who Monica Lewinsky is.") seem kind of like bad record exec notes now.

when did rhythmic radio start becoming a haven for edm? 2010-2011? it's a shame because even today there are plenty of (non-edm) records that labels try to break primarily through rhythmic radio

the seeds were planted heavily in 2009 with the early Gaga hits and BEP working with Guetta, etc., and then became pretty ubiquitous in 2010. there had been a good amount of Euro-sounding four on the floor Stargate and Dr. Luke hits for a few years before that, though.

wasn't the real first shot rihanna's don't stop the music? or maybe it's just the black eyed peas existence in general

"S.O.S." was before "Don't Stop the Music"

i can't decide if my old analogy of kevin hart being to chris rock & dave chappelle what 2 chainz is to t.i. and young jeezy is weaker or stronger than when i first made it a few years ago

"S.O.S" was kinda the beginning of the 'shuffle pop' thing that was everywhere by 2008 but it didn't feel that much light part of the slide towards straight up dance pop, although i guess it was.

Ne-Yo bringing Stargate into U.S. pop with a bunch of midtempo tracks was pretty portentous imo. and then in 2008 "Closer" was kind of the first four on the floor R&B track that was bigger on pop radio than urban radio.

pop radio has had this increasingly small circle of top 40-ready rappers for the last few years (Pitbull, Flo Rida, Macklemore plus the perennial crossover stars like Jay and T.I.) that i'm curious whether that changes anytime soon. Katy Perry just went to #1 with Juicy J on the track, and they've issued a remix w/ Pitbull but the Juiceman is still in the video and Grammys performance, and 2 Chainz is now on a big pop hit with Jason Derulo. maybe stuff like that will become more commonplace or maybe it's a blip.

It just seems like the perfect storm - the majors are in free fall, mainstream radio playlists getting stricter and smaller all the time, and what genre stations are left are increasingly ignored and forced to court crossover. the internet audience is skewed economically, still growing and hard to measure. while we've been in a period where half the music is country-rap-disco and the other half is "disco sucks" new wave before, the barriers to entry just seem so severe.

music has always had a weird relationship to tv/movies/etc, but never one as subservient as the one its taking to The Internet.

like, when they measure youtube views, is it only videos that have that little "buy this on mp3" link in the lower right corner? Seems like a mess to tabulate and certain to benefit artists who bother to engage that infrastructure.

i may have said this before but if it wasn't for clumsy arbitrariness of how they've changed their charts, I'd feel bad for them getting so much "kill the messenger" grief for trends they're merely reflecting rather than instigating. I'm glad for those graphs so we can get past "ARE there fewer artists of color on the chart?" and focus on the why and what can actually be done about it, rather than just yelling "fix it!" at Bill Werde.

like, when they measure youtube views, is it only videos that have that little "buy this on mp3" link in the lower right corner? Seems like a mess to tabulate and certain to benefit artists who bother to engage that infrastructure.

― da croupier, Friday, January 31, 2014 3:38 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nope, there's now song ID technology that means non-official videos w/ songs in them instantly get counted towards royalties and chart positions (cf. how "Harlem Shake" fan videos helped it get to #1).

yeah but harlem shake videos, official or no, have that link on the lower right corner - i assume that's linked to the technology. my question is what about videos that don't request that song ID utilization.

there are undoubtedly better examples from people who don't get all their news about what the kids like from ilx and pitchfork, but looking at chance the rapper's relationship with the chart is interesting

http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/legal-and-management/5650665/chance-the-rapper-with-acid-rap-mixtape-meets-the

that's what i'm saying, the uploader doesn't request it, YouTube doesn't automatically, both to generate mechanical royalties and to be able to takedown stuff that the copyright holder doesn't want on YouTube. i don't know if the 'buy this song' links work the same way or are connected at all, though. xp