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

"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

"YouTube does it automatically" is what i meant to say

Last month, a mixtape album by unsigned artist Chance the Rapper available as a free download landed at No. 63 on Billboard's Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, having sold 1,000 copies in the week ending July 7, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The collection of original music, "Acid Rap," was sold through iTunes and Amazon, despite having been offered for free on the artist's website since April 30. After representatives of the artist claimed that the sales were being made without their knowledge or compensation, digital versions of the tape were quickly pulled from both retailers. But on Amazon, an apparently unauthorized physical version of "Acid Rap," credited to a company called "Mtc," continues to be sold at press time for $14.83.

"I've never heard of Mtc, so this has taken us by surprise," Chance's manager Patrick Corcoran says. "But when I first saw it I showed Chance, and his lawyers are trying to stop it."

Since Chance doesn't have a record deal, he doesn't enjoy the protection of the RIAA. But his mixtapes have generated considerable buzz on the Internet and in the press, enough for a third-party company to see value in manufacturing physical copies and offering them for sale.

if a chance video gets 3 million hits in a week, and the song is available but outside the RIAA sphere - would it make the chart? do you actually know youtube generates mechanical royalties for non-riaa artists? Baaeur isn't non-riaa.

afaik whether a song from a rap mixtape can chart depends on whether the songwriter has officially published the song through ASCAP or just put the mixtape online without doing any paperwork.

there's all kinds of weird blurry areas with that stuff. Rick Ross did an unofficial remix of "Royals" that got picked up by a ton of rap stations, and those spins all just get counted towards the chart position of the original Lorde solo track, same thing happens all the time with freestyles and unofficial remixes that become popular on the drivetime DJ mixes.

yeah so my point remains that one has to engage the standing infrastructure - be it ASCAP or the RIAA - to be acknowledged in a billboard capacity. And if an artist is able to make a chart solely based of 1k that shouldn't have existed, one has to wonder to what degree sales and streams that arguably should be tabulated aren't. i'm not really sure what should or shouldn't be done (Billboard's charts exist to appease and inform RIAA members more than they exist for us), just noting that this is evidence that it's not all sussed out.

though obv when Too Short was selling tapes out of his trunk he wasn't getting that no. 63 spot on Top R&B albums either.

well, yeah. to an extent it makes sense -- you can't just make up a tune on the spot, upload yourself singing it to YouTube, and instantly get royalties from views. it's the difference between putting a "lemonade $1.00" sign up and just leaving out lemonade for people to drink.

things like bootleg Chance mixtapes selling enough to chart has happened for a while -- at least a couple Lil Wayne mixtapes hit the Billboard 200 the same way. that's a weird confluence of the artist not going through official business channels, and the stores that (unwittingly?) sell bootlegged versions dutifully reporting the sales to SoundScan.

man I don't really have any contributions here but I just wanna say that I find this thread completely fascinating/horrifying, good work everybody

yeah but with wayne those mixtapes still did nothing compared to The Carter III - Chance bootlegs actually got on Billboard before Chance! with the record/radio industry on a "madonna wannabe or folkie with a dance beat and a t-mobile sponsorship, otherwise fuck off" lockdown, its just super-worth knowing what artists have to do to make the radar.

it's hilarious how little you actually have to sell to merit placement on these charts, small enough numbers that its easy to conceive of those numbers being sold outside the riaa

yeah. does Bandcamp report to SoundScan? i wonder if some indie band getting a "best new music" boost for a Bandcamp album or something could get them on the Billboard 200 at this rate.

hell, look at something like clap your hands say yeah, which allegedly sold 125,000 copies of their self-released album before the release of Some Loud Thunder, but never made the chart while SLT debuted at #47 off of an initial 19k sold. Surely there was SOME week in between where Clap had earned like #158 but who was counting.

these kind of indie things have always happened, but in the current age - where a rapper sells enough bootlegs to chart before Billboard even knows he's alive - it's all the more obviously an issue.

Of Cascada's two U.S. top 40 singles, "Everytime We Touch" (2005) felt like a classic '90s Eurodance tune dropped into pop landscape that had moved on, while "Evacuate the Dancefloor" (2009) was very much in tune with the Gaga/Ke$ha-style EDM pop of its time.

it's hilarious how little you actually have to sell to merit placement on these charts, small enough numbers that its easy to conceive of those numbers being sold outside the riaa

― da croupier, Friday, January 31, 2014 4:34 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yep. You can currently have a top twenty album on billboard with 13k copies sold.

xp That post isn't in response to anything, btw; I was just thinking about those transitional years.

the craziest thing is that major labels can apparently make sales NOT chart as well -- Justin Bieber's Journals thing that came out a few weeks ago was very "this is a personal project, we don't want to weigh it down with commercial expectations" so it was sold only on iTunes and iTunes didn't report the numbers to SoundScan so it didn't chart on Billboard and there are no official U.S. sales figures for it (all this was at the behest of Bieber's label/management -- Beyonce's album was an iTunes exclusive for the first 2 weeks but they reported all sales right off the bat).

lol that's hilarious

Billboard also chose not to count those 1 million copies of Jay-Z's album that Samsung bought and then gave to its users, even though the RIAA did.

another example of labels withholding data from billboard to prevent songs from charting was the american idol performance singles

When? Not at the beginning! Some of those debuted at number one.

i feel like rebecca black's 'saturday' can be instructive here vis-a-vis youtube and the chart—it got a ridiculous amount of views the weekend it debuted, but didn't chart until two weeks after the fact (even if you factor in the real week/chart week gap) and charted kinda low

(and yes, i understand the hilarity of bringing her up in this thread)

xp: the week-by-week sales of the songs rush-released to itunes have been held back from bb/ss for the purposes of not encouraging/discouraging voters from supporting their own

another example of labels withholding data from billboard to prevent songs from charting was the american idol performance singles

― dyl, Friday, January 31, 2014 5:56 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

When? Not at the beginning! Some of those debuted at number one.

― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, January 31, 2014 5:59 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he means the covers performed during the season that are put on iTunes -- sales figures aren't made public so as not to 'spoil' or screw with the phone voting being the only arbiter of who wins on the show. it's only the official singles released at the end of the season that show up on the charts.

Seattle’s KUBE 93, which has regressed from a balanced Rhythmic Crossover outlet to the terrestrial version of Macklemore’s Pandora station

Oh god, tell me about it. They were perfectly decent through about 2009 or so and then just went completely off the end.

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.

Yeah, I think one of the reasons I've been so alarmist about this is that I grew up in that culture! Even though I lived in an area with few other black people, I never felt disconnected from black culture because it always felt like it was available, whereas until recently I was back in the same area and felt like I was missing out in a way I never had before. Now I've moved to a neighborhood with a large black population and the sense of relief I've felt has been palpable.

Oh, something I noticed! At least one top 40-ish station here has been cutting T.I.'s verse out of "Blurred Lines". What is this, the early 90s?

the grown ppl 'tom joyner in the morning' atlanta r&b station that has a playlist that is at least 60% oldies does this still iirc. this station is awesome fwiw.

man is anyone from atlanta that listens to kiss fm reading this? cuz i really want to know what monica kaufman pearson's show is like. is it just her in oprah/barbara walters mode or does she play music?

yeah there are amazingly still pop stations that play songs with the guest raps excised. the most amazing one i heard years ago that i've probably posted about before is a mix of Nelly Furtado's "Promiscuous" with most of Timbaland's vocals from the verses taken out -- which is doubly absurd because Tim and Nelly are basically rapping in the same cadence and doing these conversational back-and-forth things, but he's a black man and a RAPPER and she's not, so there are all these awkward bits where she's saying a line in response to an awkward silent gap in the vocal track or two non-consecutive Nelly lines are put next to each other in a way that sounds totally wrong.

xp I'd be much more forgiving of an urban ac station doing that. I wish there was an urban ac station here.

pretty sure I would drive off the road if I heard that Garfield Minus Garfield version of "Promiscuous." I'd think I was going insane.

hahahah Garfield Minus Garfield, damn that was a perfect analogy

loool

"...bring that on.......you know what i mean.......hey is that the truth or are you talking trash?"

Oh, something I noticed! At least one top 40-ish station here has been cutting T.I.'s verse out of "Blurred Lines". What is this, the early 90s?

― raggett neds of your summer dress (The Reverend), Friday, January 31, 2014

jesus

lol i have been listening intently to the hot ac station here to see if they'll edit juicy j out of katy perry's "dark horse" even tho the same station plays flo rida and pitbull often now (a few yrs ago that station edited snoop and kanye out of their respective katy perry singles, but they hadn't hopped onto the pit/flo train yet at that pt)

i'm glad there are actual urban and urban ac stations where i am now. the last place i lived didn't have any hip-hop/r&b stations (except for an 80s r&b station which was admittedly great), just a rhythmic guetta-fest.

Where I'm standing, the Garfield thing never went away - ''Payphone'' without Wiz Khalifa, ''California Gurls'' without Snoop...

where are you standing

i haven't listened to much terrestrial music radio in a few years but the last time i can recall encountering the garfield thing in as blatant a manner as mentioned above w/ ti and 'blurred lines' was the jay-z'less verzion of 'crazy in love' star 94 would play at the time, just these long weird instrumental passages. otherwise everything since i've encountered has been like the odb'less version of 'fantasy' where it's a disappointment but it's ultimately just a normal radio edit of the song, if you didn't know what was missing you wouldn't know it was missing.