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

"ahhh, you guys didn't tell me Tove Lo was a girl not a BAND...Paramore is a BAND..."

it's hard to really think of anything as pushing the envelope anymore but it is a little jarring sometimes to put on the top 40 station and and hear all the munchies/high all the time stuff on the Tove Lo song in heavy rotation. definitely thought it was gonna be more of an alt radio thing initially.

Its all about the Aussies. PR email I received:

After seeing the success from his recent collaboration with Australian artist Iggy Azalea, T.I. has partnered up with our client Aussie DJ duo, The Stafford Brothers and dutch singer Eva Simons on "This Girl." ...

The Stafford Brothers' ...can discuss what it’s like working with T.I., how the single came about, how Australian artists are taking over the US music charts with 5 Seconds of Summer going #1 yesterday, Iggy Azalea and now Australia’s #1 DJ duo are about to release their first US single with one of America’s biggest rappers.

The first DJs to sign to Cash Money Records,...

So I remember a while back having some conversation here about how in the 90s r&b/AC crossover was the sweet spot for pop domination. I was looking through the list of AC chart #1s and noticed this: there were a bunch of AC #1s by black artists through most of the 90s, but the only ones between 1998 (when ummm "I'm Your Angel" by R. Kelly & Celine Dion topped that chart) and this year were "Bleeding Love" and a Mariah Christmas track. Interesting how as pop music became dominated by black artists in the 2000s, AC swung hard the other direction. So then the other interesting thing is that this year, after that huge drought, there have been three AC chart-toppers by black artists: "Happy", "All of Me", and "Am I Wrong". Not sure what to make of that, but it seems that particular 90s pop sweet spot may be returning?

bobby shmurda inches into the top 10 this week thanks largely to streaming (#3 on streaming songs) and to some extent digital sales (#20 digital songs). while he's #8 on r&b/hip-hop airplay it's not enough airplay for him to have reached the all-format radio songs chart. http://www.billboard.com/articles/6281818/meghan-trainor-hot-100-tove-lo-bobby-shmurda

so basically the routes to top 10 hits for (lead) black artists so far this year:

(1) ac-ready multiformat songs ("happy," "all of me," "am i wrong")
(2) viral video streaming ("anaconda," "hot nigga," "love never felt so good," "drunk in love" to an extent)
(3) getting a huge shit-ton of urban and rhythmic airplay (#1 for several weeks on at least one but preferably both formats) so pop radio might pick it up ("loyal," "don't tell 'em," "drunk in love" to an extent)
(4) being jason derulo

(5) Pharrell

see (1)

Pharrell is the Grover Cleveland of lead black airplay, dude.

Derulo fits pretty firmly into (1) as well. He's a pop artist making pop songs that get play primarily on pop and rhythmic radio.

It's amazing how little impact urban radio has on the charts now. Without rhythmic radio airplay, most of the song's in the current top 5 on urban radio wouldn't touch the top 75 on all format radio.

what were the routes to top 10 hits back in the day outside "pop crossover," "popular video," "doing great on genre-specific radio" and "being a popular performer"

not denying that genre radio makes less of a dent these days (lol look at the rock chart), just thinking a lot of bases are covered by that list

yeah that is true, i guess the ways songs become hits have barely changed. my sense is that crossover is exceedingly rare now compared to before but idk i guess i'd have to comb thru old charts and crunch a few numbers to be sure.

Eh, the thing is that pop radio is so narrow in what it plays now that you could almost get away with calling it genre-specific radio in its own right, but it still holds way more sway over what songs end up becoming hits than any other genre-specific radio format. No songs in 2014 are going to go top ten based solely on urban, country, or rock radio airplay. "Are You That Somebody" peaked at #6 on pop in 1998 and in 2014 it feels like pop radio would never play that song. Beyonce is nowhere to be seen nowadays on a radio format she used to routinely do well on not even 10 years ago.

really? when I was hearing Beyonce every twenty minutes on pop radio earlier this year.

was it a top 40 station or a 'rhythmic top 40' station? "Drunk In Love" got to #13 on the former format and #1 on the latter format, so it makes a difference. the pop stations i listen to played only "Drunk" occasionally in between constant spins of "Timber" and "Counting Stars."

I definitely agree that pop radio is super exclusive and divorced from genre radio more than before, but when we get to "I can't imagine radio playing music as awesome as it did fifteen years ago, and why aren't they playing this artist I've loved for over a decade" we're moving from noting trends to noting our age.

Eh that's a bastardization of my point. I mean that I couldn't imagine pop radio playing anything that *sounds* like Are You That Somebody today, not some "oh music is so much less awesome than before" observation. I can't remember the last time I heard anything that could be considered an R&B vocal performance on pop radio that wasn't by like...Justin Timberlake, despite the fact that not long ago those exact sorts of songs routinely got play there. There was a time when R&B and hip-hop artists regularly did well on pop radio formats and it wasn't that long ago. Now we're wondering what magic Jeremih used to get pop radio to actually play Don't Tell Em.

On a related note, I'm 90% sure the only rap songs to reach the top ten this year *and* also receive tons of pop radio airplay have all been by Iggy or Eminem and all of those were pretty much big pop choruses with rapped verses.

but would a boomer r&b fan have thought aaliyah was carrying the "r&b vocal performance" torch? again, i'm not denying that pop has narrowed, i just think it's important to remember that 10-15 years IS a long time in pop, and that some of these complaints are constants.

i should say specifically on "are you that somebody" - i know she covered the isleys

Uh there is current r&b though that is successful in r&b channels that doesn't cross over so ...

Low record sales mean hip-hop artists must diversify to attract major music labels

starting december 4th the billboard 200 albums chart will incorporate streams from subscription services. 1500 streams = 1 album sale. 10 a la carte digital track downloads = 1 album sale. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/20/business/media/billboard-changing-the-charts-will-count-streaming-services-.html

One expected result is that albums by big pop stars — which tend to open high on the chart and then plunge after just a few weeks — should linger longer in the upper rungs. Ariana Grande’s “My Everything,” for example, which opened at No. 1 in September, was No. 36 on last week’s chart, with 10,000 sales. Under the new formula, it would have been No. 9.

will this help the admittedly awful landscape for hip-hop/r&b albums right now or just do that much more to damage it? it's looking like artists and their teams are learning how to get their singles good exposure again --meme-worthiness and youtube-based streaming in particular have helped songs ignored by pop radio achieve decent showings on the charts lately, such as "lifestyle" and shmurda. (and pop crossover, while probably rarer, is not entirely out of the question -- i have a feeling "tuesday" could be the next that pop will actually pick up significantly.) but whether this will improve the prospects for their albums seems... uncertain at best.

wait so 1,500 spins of "break free" = an album sale of "my everything"? this is straight-up jive.

why don't we count 1,500 web comments about an outfit as an album sale

10 a la carte digital track downloads = 1 album sale.

this makes even less sense ... if i buy an album digitally it 'counts' a tenth as much? wtf

It counts 10 times as much

not really sure which genres it will help but unless i'm misreading things it seems like a transparent way to prop up the "album" market by pretending people are engaging with "albums" when they're not.

but it's always important to remember that billboard can't just make straightforward individual stream, album sale, airplay charts. they have to engage in these wacky metrics for an all-inclusive countdown to dignify their existence - otherwise soundscan etc could just share the raw data.

jesus fucking christ

do people care about the album charts?

oh wait i misread, its 10 tracks = an album ... that's still weird

xp the industry seems to care a lot, i mean we have a lot of highly anticipated albums getting pushed back to no end b/c some label people are worried about the albums not being likely to do well enough

it's pretty crazy. there are SO many albums where people only buy/stream the one big single in significant numbers, and they already have a bazillion singles charts to measure that stuff. now those albums are going to jump up the chart too? seems like a matter of time before the next "Harlem Shake" type meme pops off and whatever random indie EP it's on that's only sold 200 copies suddenly shoots up the album chart.

it's just downloads for the 10 tracks though right? you only download a song once

SoundScan and Billboard will count 1,500 song streams from services like Spotify, Beats Music, Rdio, Rhapsody and Google Play as equivalent to an album sale. For the first time, they will also count “track equivalent albums” — a common industry yardstick of 10 downloads of individual tracks — as part of the formula for album rankings on the Billboard 200.

the other big winner would seem to be albums full of short songs/interludes/skits? #hiphopconspiracy

I've always understood Billboard as functioning as a way to demonstrate what's popular and being listened to a lot. So introducing streaming made some sense to me for the Hot 100. But this just seems to go against that. So if people don't really care for an album enough to buy it, but they do buy the one big single from it, every 10 of those purchases gets treated like an album purchase? This only obscures the shrinking market for album sales and lack of interest in albums, it doesn't actually fix the problem of no one buying albums.

a digital purchase/play of Donuts or Double Nickels counts fourfold lol

spotify streams take Dilla to #1 in 2016 after America legalizes Weed #markmywords

billboard should retroactively award flo rida four number 1 albums

heh

typical number of streams in a week for a big hit song: 3 million via subscription services + 7-8 million via youtube
typical sales in a week for a big hit song: 150,000

so an album with only one big hit on it would only have like 2-3 thousand weekly 'copies' added to the itunes/retail sales tally... unless youtube is also incorporated in which case it would add about 6-7 thousand. that's obviously not trivial in an industry where albums by artists with actual hits are now routinely debuting with less than 50k in sales and current albums are often selling less than 10 thousand weekly, but not enormously earth-shattering either? idk.

i wouldn't be surprised to see some annoyingly long runs at the top and fewer albums debuting at #1. and 'albums artists' not doing as well as before, lol.

I keep waiting for a mention of disposable income (people's lack thereof) in discussions about The Way We Consume Music Now and it never comes

^otm

there was some talk about this and a rather astute comment about access to credit upthread but I agree it is horribly underdiscussed

I'm not sure the level of disposable income has shifted that radically but the competition for that income has definitely increased. Teenagers spending, conservatively, $50 a month on phone contracts and maybe $500 - $1000 a year on new tech aren't going to have as much cash burning a hole in their pockets.

i really have no idea how young pop fans - the ones who actually buy music to support the artist, tickets to shows etc - afford it

Selling plasma

Part-time job at Hot Dog on a Stick and living with their parents?

Well, about the whole rap starting to do well on the Hot 100 again cause of viral streaming hits...

Also of note: Effective this week, the methodology for the Hot 100, along with Billboard's genre hybrid songs charts, has changed slightly to rebalance desired chart ratios for sales, airplay and streaming, as the chart's streaming component has often been above its desired average ratio, and download sales noticeably below, in recent weeks. Such adjustments to these multi-data pool charts are common (and have been implemented on the Hot 100 when, for example, sales had increased exponentially).

Bobby Shmurda tumbled 8 spots down the Hot 100 this week, but most of the other rap songs in the top 40 seem pretty unaffected by the changes