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

yeah that's another angle. R1 refused to playlist whip/nae-nae but i wonder if they would again.

I would have thought that iHeartMedia would love Beyoncé

Nah, too politically radical now (or so I heard another customer in the grocery store saying to someone)

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/23/how-meek-mill-hilariously-won-rap-album-of-the-year-at-the-bbmas.html

“Billboard Music Awards finalists are based on key fan interactions with music, including album and digital songs sales, radio airplay, streaming, touring and social interactions on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify and other popular online destinations for music. These measurements are tracked year-round by Billboard and its data partners, including Nielsen Music and Next Big Sound. The awards are based on the reporting period of tracking dates March 23, 2015 through March 17, 2016 and Billboard chart dates April 11, 2015 through April 2, 2016. Since 1940, the Billboard charts have been the go-to guide for ranking the popularity of songs and albums, and are the ultimate measure of a musician’s success.”

Another related issue here in this Chris Molanphy article

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2016/05/23/why_justin_timberlake_and_max_martin_s_can_t_stop_the_feeling_is_no_1_on.html

20 of the 22 Martin-authored No. 1s have come since mid-2008, the moment when dance-pop began its digital-fueled takeover of the U.S. charts. In other words, Martin has not consistently been a top hit-maker for all of the last two decades—he had a notably fallow hit-making period in America in the early-to-mid 2000s, when R&B and hip-hop were commanding the U.S. Top 40.

...

a hard truth about Max Martin is that for all his purported U.S. R&B influence, he doesn’t write songs black radio in America wants to play. Out of Martin’s 22 Hot 100 chart-toppers, all but one has missed the top of the R&B chart; generally, they don’t even touch that chart at all. (The one exception, last year’s smash by the Weeknd “Can’t Feel My Face,” topped the R&B/Hip-Hop list thanks only to Billboard’s current methodology for that chart, which over-weights digital sales and pop crossover. On R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, an all-radio chart that’s a better measure of core black music fans, the Martin-produced “Face” never made it past No. 46.) Martin’s genius is in crafting essentially genreless mass-appeal records that synthesize American and European popular music forms, one part Aaliyah to two parts ABBA. His songs lack clear racial signifiers—by design—and read as inherently pop. So when he does work with an artist of color like Usher, generally it’s a pop crossover move that doesn’t do all that well at the artist’s home format (e.g., 2010’s “DJ Got Us Falling in Love”—No. 4 pop, No. 51 R&B).

x-post -- according to that daily beast piece--

Still, while the Billboard Music Awards, Nielsen Music, and Next Big Sound were tallying mentions of Meek Mill, they weren’t taking into account whether these mentions were actually positive or negative.

i still listen to the radio a lot. (much like i continue to follow a certain sports team that i grew up with, even though it is increasingly terrible and impossible to defend.) but most people i know either don't listen to the radio at all or listen to formats other than pop.

there are so many different places now to seek out music, if it's something you care about. so i guess pop radio now exists primarily for people who don't care about it? and most of those people are inclined to tolerate lukas graham?

His songs lack clear racial signifiers—by design—and read as inherently pop.

I would argue otherwise. His songs very clearly racially signify, it's just that white gets accepted as default. The fact that Black audiences have never embraced him is directly linked to how his music signifies.

the same way that country music programmer insisted that women country singers could only be the occasional tomato in the male singer country radio salad.

I feel like this is the case with urban radio right now. Radio at this point just has a Black women problem in general.

absolutely.

the typical urban-to-pop pathway that prospective crossovers must follow represents an odd multidimensional spectrum, that, no matter which direction you choose to slice it in, tends to exclude black women as performers and listeners. on one side, the center of the pop radio target audience is (young adult) white women; on the other, that of urban radio is black men. turn the dial from the urban station to the rhythmic one and you'll hear songs that are less male, but also less black. in other words, there are more women on rhythmic radio that urban, but even fewer black women. when you consider how pitifully low the number of women scraping urban airplay top 10s today is (even counting the established shoo-ins like bey and nicki), you get the sense of how dire the situation is for black women at radio in general.

agreed with H(EM) - to say that Martin's music is "genreless" with "mass-appeal," in the same breath as saying that they seem not to be very popular on black radio stations, is weird. and, i think, problematic in that "white people don't have a race" kind of way.

Good Lord, Max Martin has written twenty-two U.S. number one singles?!

in the early-to-mid 2000s, when R&B and hip-hop were commanding the U.S. Top 40.

Questions not addressed in that article--
How has or has not the pop radio audience changed since then, how have the corporate chains who own the stations changed since then, and how has the rap and r'n'b changed since then?

relevant: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/k-michelle-talks-double-standard-for-black-pop-singers-20160527

the meek mill album is at least better than compton, it's a pretty good album

xp love that she shouted out "trailer for rent" and the judds. her voice would be a fuckin revelation on country radio.

The excitement of a crowd is an easy thing to feel and an impossible thing to measure — but if you’re seeking a steady, three-hour bliss-buzz, Hot 99.5’s Jingle Ball is about as reliable as it gets. When the local radio station hosted its annual pop revue inside Verizon Center on Monday night — featuring Alessia Cara, the Chainsmokers, DNCE, Niall Horan of One Direction and others — the vibe was electric and the format felt as perfect as ever....

However, the rap tunes that Diplo spun — plus all of the prerecorded guest vocals during Fifth Harmony’s set — highlighted something irksome. White rappers booked for this gig? Two. Black rappers? Zero. Black rappers whose voices were piped-in over the speakers throughout the course of the evening? At least nine. This is something Jingle Ball organizers need to improve on immediately. May all of their Christmases be not-so-white.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/the-queen-of-this-years-jingle-ball-her-crown-is-a-beanie/2016/12/13/0a744168-c14c-11e6-8422-eac61c0ef74d_story.html?utm_term=.12a3c388b61a

but pop radio is SUPER RACIST ATM so here we are.

― maura, Thursday, December 15, 2016 10:39 PM (yesterday

from the thread for 2016 album and singles end of year stuff

So where does one get the actual stats for how the charts are compiled from week to week? Like how many streams/sales/plays go into a specific song's placing on a/the chart over time? Is there a subscription service for chart nerd stuff like that, is it openly available or just a secret to the public?

Saw this online know, but I don't know anymore info

“Nielsen Music is committed to setting the industry standard for music measurement and reporting,” says Erin Crawford, SVP entertainment and GM music at Nielsen. “Music Connect recently introduced genre album consumption charts and we’re excited to work with Billboard as they further adopt this methodology. As the leading music measurement service on the market, Music Connect will continue to present all of Billboard’s consumption, streaming, sales and airplay charts.”

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/7669133/billboard-genre-album-charts-consumption-streams-track-sales

excuse my typos...

yeah you'd need a subscription to a nielsen service like that. soundscan is generally the one people use for sales, while broadcast data systems (bds) is the one for radio spins/audience. not entirely sure about streaming data, but i think it's part of soundscan now. the music connect thing linked above seems to be a user-friendlier environment that combines parts of both of those databases. i assume it's pretty pricey and generally only affordably available to industryites -- at least for bds you have to request a login over email (the "why bdsradio?" document on its homepage says "AVAILABLE FOR CASH OR BARTER").

alternatively billboard gives a rundown of some of the essential data when revealing the top 10 of the hot 100 and billboard 200 in its charts columns each week, tho obviously that's far from comprehensive.

spotify makes its numbers public https://spotifycharts.com/

Only two songs in that entire 200 are climbing - both by Drake.

everything has been pushed down in position by drake except drake

Be nice to see weeks/days available (if not just weeks in the 200).

The #1 song being streamed over twice as much as the #4 song - just...how/wow (was hoping that would be far less of a thing in this era)

all you need know is we'll be hearing that Ed Sheeran song for a while yet

it's silent to folks above a certain age

Yeah, thanks for the suggestions, guys. The kind of stuff I'd be very interested in knowing would be, for instance, how much the inclusion of a song on Spotify's RapCaviar playlist affects its performance over time. Like, what does the streaming data before something like, say, iSpy or Chill Bill goes on there (including youtube hits, I guess) look like? When does it enter the charts in relation to that, when does that start to have an effect on actual mp3 sales, radio play, etc. I understand that it usually goes something like soundcloud/youtube -> official spotify playlist -> billboard -> radio -> prolonged presence in the charts, but having a few case studies would help enormously in just figuring out how variables, general rules, anomalies, etc. Filter in shazam stats in that as well and you should be good to go. I'm guessing there's a lot to be learned if only these numbers were made available and searchable in some meaningful way.

Sonically, the entire track is blown out to a level that feels assaultive, but strangely, “Look at Me!” doesn’t seem to exist in our physical reality. Good luck hearing it in the club, on the radio, out the cracked window of a passing Chevy Malibu, or anywhere else in three-dimensional space. But there it is at No. 65, enjoying its sixth week on the charts, breathing down the neck of Ed Sheeran’s “Galway Girl.”

It’s all thanks to the fact that Billboard now compiles its weekly marquee singles chart by measuring online streaming alongside sales and radio airplay. So to land its current spot on the Hot 100, “Look at Me!” racked up 10.9 million streams across seven days, according to Nielsen Music — enough to compensate for the fact that radio hasn’t really touched it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-brutal-distortion-of-xxxtentacions-look-at-me-is-changing-the-sound-of-the-hot-100/2017/03/24/fa6a3e8e-0fe9-11e7-ab07-07d9f521f6b5_story.html?utm_term=.0e7bface8e50

the idea that heavily streamed songs are not actually being heard 'in three-dimensional space' is bizarre but weirdly pervasive

also that heavily streamed songs w/o much support from radio, even ones w/ tremendous longevity, are mere 'memes' (i suppose one could soundly argue that all songs are memes, but you know what i mean)

well black beatles' streams surged because of the mannequin challenge right?

Good luck hearing it in the club, on the radio, out the cracked window of a passing Chevy Malibu, or anywhere else in three-dimensional space.

yeah, you might have to stream it along with several million other people

also: aux cords?

that is true maura re: black beatles. (tho the song was doing well/gaining strongly even before that.) idk tho it just feels weird when ppl write off the success of e.g. "bad and boujee" or "mask off" as being solely attributable to memes as if the songs aren't the memes themselves. i mean, the 'meme' that catapulted "bad and boujee" to the top was basically 'ppl quoting/riffing on its most memorable lyrics on twitter' so it seems so wrongheaded to dismiss the song itself when the song *is* the meme.

oh i agree with you. i think there's a lot of confusion over what "pop" means because of filter bubbles and it results in conclusions like these.

man I love "mask off" didn't know there was a meme

well black beatles' streams surged because of the mannequin challenge right?

― maura, Friday, March 31, 2017 6:13 AM (fifteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

from what i understand they were just beginning a full court radio press when that happened and it was already building in the top 40, so it was well on its way. that meme just nudged it over the top

tbh i haven't seen any "mask off" memes except for someone syncing it to the crying piccolo girl, ppl just seem to be flocking to it because they like it (myself included)

Future' FB page posts a ton of them.

oh lol i'll check it out

But can anyone get near the amount of spots on a chart as Ed Sheeran?

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/nylpm/2017/03/datapanik-in-the-year-sheero/

drake apparently

all you need know is we'll be hearing that Ed Sheeran song for a while yet

― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, March 20, 2017 10:00 AM (two weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've only heard this from my roommate karaoking it

^^^speaking if songs I only hear when I'm streaming them...

http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1487-will-the-mainstream-support-more-than-one-rap-queen-at-a-time-a-charts-investigation/

"Consider this: In the entire history of Billboard’s Hot 100, solo female rappers have fronted a No. 1 single just twice—Lauryn Hill’s 1998 half-sung “Doo Wop (That Thing),” and Iggy Azalea’s 2014 Charli XCX–backed “Fancy.” (That paltry number rises from two to 2.25 if we count Lil’ Kim’s equally billed verse with Christina Aguilera, Mya and Pink on their 2001 remake of “Lady Marmalade.”) And female rappers aren’t even guaranteed proper credit when they do support a chart-topping hit. On “No Diggity,” the classic 1996 BLACKstreet smash, Dr. Dre and Queen Pen rapped on virtually equal bars, but only Dre was listed on the single; Pen went unmentioned on both the CD-single cover and the Hot 100. Even Remy Ma herself has experienced a buried credit. As part of Fat Joe’s Terror Squad crew, she rapped on the summer 2004 chart-topper “Lean Back,” but despite equal billing with Joe on the single, only the group name was credited on the Hot 100."

Sad! Do US pop hit stations all just take orders from I heart Radio corporate algorhythm types?

the ones owned by iheart do. the ones owned by cbs take cues from cbs data. etc.

http://www.kingdomnubia.com/2017/05/23/8-reasons-why-rb-has-died-in-the-black-community/

A southern soul dj I know on Facebook was circulating this.

The writer doesn't provide many facts to support some of the allegations there