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

i'm saying that using a track that owes much of it's success to ad/movie placement as an indicator of a genre's health is probably ill advised. maybe stay on the e! threads in the future.

yeah i mean there are really lots of promotional stars aligning for most of these songs. "all of me" looked like it was going to be a minor hit until the grammys exposure. "drunk in love" seemed like it would remain stuck in the top 15 until the grammys as well, and wasn't really crossing over until then (also it doesn't seem to be crossing over to pop radio to the extent that i thought it would). "talk dirty" was an inevitable hit but as usual r&b radio does not touch derulo.

"drunk in love" is certainly not exactly a slouch in sales or radio play but i am surprised by the extent to which streaming is really carrying it on the charts compared to other measures (especially the week after the grammys when its streams and chart placement skyrocketed). i mean yeah, tons of people bought the album right away and thus won't buy the track again, but that can't be the only explanation can it?

tv in being the best promotional firehose for music shocker

it's kinda funny how the Grammys broadcast ended up being a boon to some singles by black artists after all the complaints of the 'whitewashed' VMAs last year

i feel like "four of the top five are black artists" is an outlier in a similar way to "zero no 1s by black artists in 2013" in that the exact stat is at an extreme, but even if rihanna had released a single in 2013 and it had gone to no 1, it wouldn't have made any difference to the underlying issues/trends

(and the current top five doesn't mean those issues are "solved")

I'm guessing Rev wasn't suggesting that at all.

it's also a little weird that I haven't heard this new #1 a single time on pop radio, though I've heard "Drunk in Love" and the John Legend song a bunch of times. Is "Happy" mostly a streaming thing?

not at all, it's all over the airwaves, #2 on urban radio and #10 on pop radio

maybe Philly radio hates Pharell

I spoke too soon, they're playing it now

I haven't heard it a lot of times on the radio, but I've heard it on a lot of different radio stations -- pop, urban and NPR-affiliated alike.

fwiw i haven't heard it a lot on philly radio either

I heard it on the radio a few days ago & immediately afterwards the DJ came on the air and called his station manager "a gypsy." it kinda deflated the happy moment

and now an "R&B is back!" piece. There's no narrative that can't be overstated.

http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/radio/5915823/ross-on-radio-an-rb-comeback-almost?utm_source=twitter

"things really seem to be turning around with the breakout successes of Jason Derulo's 'Talk Dirty,' Pharrell Williams' 'Happy,' Kid Ink's 'Show Me' and Aloe Blacc's 'The Man.'"

oh dear let's just pretend that one doesn't exist

lol crut

I love (read: hate) that Aloe Blacc's song sounds exactly like "The Ballad of the Green Berets."

I feel like the success of the DeRulo song has more to do with R&B stations' programming decisions being marginalized by the charts than anything else.

At least Aloe Blacc is getting billed on this song. Progress?

I haven't heard "Happy" on the radio, either, but my car died a few weeks ago, so I haven't heard anything on the radio, tbh.

http://m.xxlmag.com/entry/view/id/82505

wd Pat Boone

Just took a look at the full list now and find it amusing how both "Lollipop" and "In da Club" were ranked lower than something as obscure as Strik 9ine's "Dansin' wit Wolvez" (???). What's even more amusing is that somehow that record actually managed to stay at number one on the rap charts for 6 weeks in 2001.

where my tribe at?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Potd5vdhC6o

lol what IS this

reached #1 the week of 9/11

We forgot

neither wikipedia nor allmusic have ANYTHING on this guy

and he took the top spot in november - petey pablo was #1 on 9/11

(assuming the sep 15 billboard street date of his taking #1 came before the actual date of 9/11, otherwise #1 Coo Coo Cal's "My Projects")

http://c3.cduniverse.ws/resized/250x500/music/834/6558834.jpg

lmao. I remember hearing that song tho!!

the only other acts to hit #1 on the rap singles chart and not have their own wikipedia page are 1991's Jibri Wise One (who still has an allmusic bio, in full: "A new rapper with a street sense as well as a knack for songs with a pop touch.") and 1993's Trends Of Culture (who have an allmusic page but no bio).

ok, considering that Philly's Most Wanted's "Cross The Border" is the 22nd biggest rap song of all time on this countdown (between "get low" and "drop it like its hot") despite only peaking at #3 in Dec 2000, I have to wonder if it was easier to linger in the charts around this time or something, as their methodology was count the number of weeks a song was on the chart, weighing different eras and different positions.

actually, i'm wondering if there is a bit of an indie bias on this countdown (maybe some indie songs lingered on the chart considerably longer than songs with major-set promotional periods?), as the only songs that didn't hit #1 but appear in the Top 80 of the countdown are "Cross The Border," "I Like Dem Girlz," "Walk It Out," "Da Dip," "Dunkie Butt (Please Please Please)" and "C'Mon And Ride It (The Train)," all from labels that were probably calling stations to keep playing well after major reps would have moved on.

this possibility is also backed by "Tootsee Roll" allegedly being the 2nd biggest rap song of all time

"cross the border" being so high was o________o

macklemore is also indie(-ish) but obv benefits more from the chart covered switching focus from radioplay to itunes

i hope the billboard folks realized the quirk, but decided they were fine with giving a boost to every "Butt! (Get It Get It)" by The FreakTastikk 4 on BumpIt Records.

the biggest statistical variable of Hot Rap Tracks imo has always been that it's basically the R&B chart minus the R&B songs, and sometimes the #1 rap track was the #1 song on R&B radio, sometimes the top ten songs were all R&B and the #1 rap track wasn't actually all that popular.

lol i love the description on the strik 9ine youtube vid

I've never heard or heard of this Strik 9ine song!

I wonder if they had done this chart pre-Mack would they really have given "tootsee roll" Top Rap Song Ever status or changed the methodology to be less about weeks on chart.

http://www.soultracks.com/cr-whitewash

good piece, and yeah billboard methodology has issues and o no the internet etc but 90% of this problem (at a minimum) is due to radio, more specifically homogenization of pop radio and shift toward edm and post-edm. there's also an extent to which the trend is shaping (warping) r&b radio.

yeah, great piece

so with "all of me" looking like a legitimate contender for #1 in the coming weeks (to follow "happy" which is still going strong, tho declining), it would seem that the safest way to score a crossover smash these days if you are a black (male) artist is to release something that adult contemporary radio could get on board with

the middle of the road in 2014 is the worst middle of the road

I don't think it's that simple, dyl, both those songs are kind of unique cases. I do think it's notable, though, that black artists only have to skew mild and adult contempo if they're not already pop radio mainstays, Jason Derulo can be as clubby and risque as he wants.

the safest way to score a crossover smash these days if you are a black (male) artist is to release something that adult contemporary radio could get on board with - same as it ever was