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

so iTunes ID3 genre tags DO matter lol

i'm quite shocked by this. i didn't know people still cared about billboard charts

It's not the charts themselves that I care about so much as how they reflect and drive cultural changes.

yeah the charts are bullshit but they have real ramifications in terms of what gets bankrolled

Oh and Psy has been placed on top of the rap charts, because obv "Gangnam Style" is what's hot in the streets right now.

If you have any interest in this phenomenon, please read the Molanphy articles.

another good reason to hate apple

http://billwerde.tumblr.com/post/33381394622/chart-attacks-pt-71-or-i-really-like-brandy-too

Are there charts for most genres? And did they change too?

yeah the charts are bullshit but they have real ramifications in terms of what gets bankrolled

so does a list of 'what music is actually being bought'

This is really interesting, Rev. We've never really had high-stakes multiple charts and the US system has always seemed incredibly complicated to me, but then we're a million times smaller so it's a different proposition, I guess.

well, they used to be lists of what music is actually being played and requested on the radio, too. but however they combine these different statistics always seems to heavily favor sales over overplay. (xpost)

I for one never liked the idea of airplay contributing to the charts here in the UK and I'm glad it remains sales based.

but I can see why it works better in the USA. You only ever got top 40 or oldies radio here and that was it until digital radio and 1extra.

Chris Mol@nphy wrote this column in ship's column last year:

All I'll add to the exhaustive data you offer is a hobby-horse I've been riding for a couple of years now: the need for Billboard to finally add digital-sales data to the R&B/Hip-Hop chart.

They've been resisting for years, on the (implied, not overtly stated) premise that it would ruin the character of a chart that has a long history with black-owned and oriented retailers. But with that segment (along with all brick-and-mortar music retail) at death's door anyway, the sales portion of Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs has been near-nonexistent for years, making it essentially a radio chart a la the deadly, predigital Hot 100 of 2000–05.

That's led to a problem where there's no longer a radio programmer-to-consumer-back-to-programmer feedback loop that makes for great charts. I'm sure there's a one-way influence from radio to the teen urban-music buyer who then downloads a Trey Songz MP3. But with that sale not reflected on the R&B/Hip-Hop chart, the loop ends there; programmers aren't given clear enough signals of how to reflect their most avid audience members' tastes (especially young audience).

In my ideal fantasy world, you'd be able to segment iTunes/AmazonMP3 song sales to pockets of the country that have large black populations or high urban-radio listenership, but that's probably impossible, or at least fraught. But at the very least, I think it'd be trivial for Billboard to set up a rule whereby a song eligible for R&B/Hip-Hop Songs would have to hit some kind of urban-radio threshold before their iTunes sales would count toward the chart.

here's an explanation of the changes, which affect all genre charts:

http://www.billboard.com/news#/news/taylor-swift-rihanna-psy-buoyed-by-billboard-1007978552.story

the rock charts are much less affected by this than R&B or country -- for instance this week fun.'s "Some Nights" went back to #1 after falling to #8, because it had started to run its course on radio but is still selling strong on iTunes.

ok lol i spoke to soon -- Philip Philips and Train are now big on the rock charts

wtf is philip philips?

Train are now big on the rock charts

chilling words in any context

also holy shit SIX Mumford & Sons songs in a row on the rock songs chart, because that was the last big album release so every song is getting bought individually on itunes

Phillip Phillips won American Idol last year

see that is bullshit with buying albums and the tracks being on a singles track

*chart

what i'm saying!

it's one thing that rihanna has the #1 R&B song now, but when her album is released she'll probably take up the whole top 5

you mentioned itunes sales in the other thread shipz - i'm guessing those are discounted albums rather than individual tracks?

apart from that and

economically privileged listeners, who are more likely to be white, are much more likely to purchase digital music

i'd be interested to know why r&b/rap/country etc might not be as digitally-driven...?

it's funny, you might've thought before this all happened that iTunes impacting singles charts might mean that new artists and grassroots successes that have been shut out by the radio industry might get a better shot at breaking through. instead, it feels like any song by the biggest stars is stomping out songs people love by less famous artists via the power of name recognition and fanatical fanclub followings.

you mentioned itunes sales in the other thread shipz - i'm guessing those are discounted albums rather than individual tracks?

Not discounted albums, people buy lots of album tracks individually from popular albums all the time. A hit album is almost guaranteed to have several album tracks enter the Hot 100 on its week of release because of this.

i'd be interested to know why r&b/rap/country etc might not be as digitally-driven...?

That isn't quite true of country, but white demographics are a lot more likely to have internet in their homes than black/latinos. And even if they do, the white listener is a lot more likely to have spare $$$ to spend on digital music.

i mean if you want to go by the stereotype that country fans are rural/poorer than the same would apply to them too

seems pretty obv

ok...how does that square with the boom in free rap mixtapes?

also, i don't think i realised til now how airplay-driven charts would help songs specifically popular in demographics with no spare $$$ to actually buy them in whatever format.

Note that of the top 20-selling songs in the US during the first half of 2012, only two, #16 "Rack City" and #18 "The Motto" reached the top 50 of the r&b chart.

what genre of music dominates the US singles charts now?

i mean if you want to go by the stereotype that country fans are rural/poorer than the same would apply to them too

― congratulations (n/a), Thursday, October 11, 2012 2:07 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't think this is as true as one might assume? A lot of well-off suburban country listeners. Or at least country seems to do fairly well on Itunes.

capital-p Pop -- Katy Perry, Rihanna, Gaga, Kelly Clarkson, Pink, One Direction, etc. although this year stuff like Gotye and fun. has mixed things up a bit. (xpost)

there's also the argument that buying your favorite song on iTunes (as opposed to just listening to it on the radio, streaming it on YouTube now and again, or buying the album) is a generational habit, and so things that skew younger benefit from this -- Taylor, Rihanna etc.

i mean it sucks because a lot of these formats had been fostering new stars and putting interesting songs at #1 lately, but you're never gonna see Miguel top the R&B chart or Eric Church top the country chart again after this

don't forget Maroon 5

interesting stuff. i don't have my head entirely around the numbers & methodologies here, but there's something about a "return to monoculture" either in real terms or as a measurement phenomenon.

is the pop domination due to itunes or changing of radio playlists/genre stations changing to top 40 or just one of those things that happens?

interesting stuff. i don't have my head entirely around the numbers & methodologies here, but there's something about a "return to monoculture" either in real terms or as a measurement phenomenon.

It's been happening on radio for a while. It's impossible to break the Rihanna-Goyte-Katy-Perry-Maroon-5 stranglehold on Clear Channel Radio. I mean, I hear "One More Night" every 45 minutes.

but you're never gonna see Miguel top the R&B chart or Eric Church top the country chart again after this

to be blunt about this, it's because, even though Rihanna makes club trance, she "is R&B" (because, you know), and Taylor Swift makes pop dubstep, she "is country" (again, because, you know). right?

in a way it seems like this is a identity/identification/musicalogical problem. almost.

Taylor Swift... makes pop dubstep?

p much

well, it's because when five Rihanna tracks become available her fans will download them at once from iTunes.

SWIFTSTEP

What would an ideal modern chart system look like?

Taylor Swift... makes pop dubstep?

I'll assume you don't want to hear her latest track.

What would an ideal modern chart system look like?

"Adorn" and "Springsteen" topping every chart.

http://soundcloud.com/taylorswiftofficial/i-knew-you-were-trouble

is the pop domination due to itunes or changing of radio playlists/genre stations changing to top 40 or just one of those things that happens?

― Algerian Goalkeeper, Thursday, October 11, 2012 2:12 PM Bookmark

Both of those things are happening. Another part of this phenomenon I wanted to get into is how specialized radio stations have been getting pushed off the airwaves. A few years ago another change that happened is how Arbitron, the company that measures radio station ratings (and thus, how much $$$ stations get from advertisers), changed their own system from one in which their sample listeners kept diaries of what they listened to to one in which an electronic device automatically records what radio they listen to. There have been arguments about their sampling methodology underrepresenting minorities and related issues, but the effect of this switch has been black- and latino-focused radio stations plummeting in ratings. A lot have switched formats and this is compounded by the fact that many talk, news, and sports stations have been ditching AM radio for FM, which has traditionally been the domain of music stations due to its higher fidelity. A few years ago, Seattle had three high-powered commercial stations that focused on black music - a rap/r&b station, an "adult rhythmic" station that focused on 80s-2000s dance & r&b hits, and a smooth jazz/adult r&b station. Today only the former is left, and it skews much more towards pop.

Great post by J0rdan, but I think Renaissance had two more singles after "Break My Soul" ("Cuff It" and "America Has a Problem")?

oh yeah i forgot about "cuff it" but that sorta happened outside beyonce's control. and even then i'd point out that like, her response to the "cuff it" tik tok madness was not to do a remix w/ sza or lizzo or whatever but instead to do a slowed down R&B version based off a largely forgotten twista track. compare to taylor swift putting ice spice on the remix of "karma" and rolling it out like a summit meeting between two great nations. i just think taylor still consciously feeds the beast that is mainstream cultural omnipresence in a way that beyoncé doesn't

Yeah for sure

circling back to the rap/country/black/white representation on the hot 100 topic that triggered this revive ... i think it's hard to draw any real conclusions based on 3-9 months of hot 100 data. i think to some degree we've hit a cultural moment where rap has a pretty concrete set of stars who have been around for a while and very likely reached the peak of their cultural & commercial power -- future, lil baby, lil durk, travis scott, young thug etc. you could even rope post malone & the weeknd in there as major A list stars who are in/adjacent to rap culture and who appear to be on noticeable commercial downturns after years of invincibility. you have the ice spices, sexyy reds, destroy lonelys of the world who are new superstars & likely future commercial powerhouses but who are still at the very beginning of their careers. it also has to be mentioned that an entire generation of rap superstars from juice wrld to xxxtentaction to pop smoke to kay flock were all dead or in jail before the age of 22, and whatever commercial juice existed in their leftover catalogs has now been fully squeezed out.

comparatively i think country is just in a phase of the cycle w/ its current crop of stars where artists like morgan wallen, zach bryan, luke combs etc are in that sweeter spot of being established A listers who also still feel fresh & new -- being fans of those artists has, at the moment, the ever-shifting zeitgeist element, the feeling that you're apart of something culturally progressive that transcends the self. and that feeling is running off onto both newly minted stars -- bailey zimmerman, warren zieders -- and recent forefathers of less commercialized country such as chris stapleton. to make a generalization, i saw zach bryan in NYC this summer and it was a young, fratty type crowd -- if i had to guess these are kids whose older brothers were prob huge fans of future & young thug, along w/ the florida georgia lines and mainstream bro country of the time. do zach bryan fans just like rap less? maybe. obviously it's impossible to say. but if you talk to white country fans of that age, they look at all that bro country stuff -- sam hunt etc -- as corny shit that people older than them listen to. i do think that we might just currently be in a tiny sliver of the cultural timeline where, if you're a 15-22 year old white male, mainstream rap stars feel like your older brother's music whereas what's happening in country right now feels like "yours." if this is the case, things can/will shift in 2-3 years as a newer class of rap stars (the sort that i mentioned above) cement themselves culturally.

i think w/in the music industry people are looking at all of this less thru the lens of black/white and more thru the lens of mainstream/not, american/non-american. rap may be doing relatively poorly on the hot 100 right now but white mainstream pop isn't looking much better. taylor swift, dua lipa, billie eilish, miley cyrus etc can get their hits off but artists like sabrina carpenter and charlie puth -- young famous white artists w/ label machines behind them who are making quite good mainstream pop -- are having a hard time gaining any real footholds on the charts. let's say you had to put a mainstream pop artist on your artist's new single, but the true A listers were not an option -- who would you choose? i promise you its' harder than you think. fifty fifty just put carpenter on the remix of "cupid," which is one of the biggest new pop songs of the year. it's slim pickings out there. i would say the biggest new pop successes of this year are fifty fifty and newjeans -- not as relevant to our black/white dichotomy but very relevant if you're looking at the charts thru the lens of genre or nationality. K pop is absolutely taking up parts of the pie chart that used to belong to white american pop musicians and may not be giving it back. the biggest white pop breakouts of the year are guys like noah kahan and david kushner who are more serving the rock & AC spaces than they are true blue mainstream pop. the mid to up tempo synth based mainstream white american pop song -- the shadow of madonna that we have all lived in for 40 years -- is in a very endangered place, at the moment, if your name isn't taylor, miley, dua, billie etc

there is also the fact that a huge piece of this puzzle is the economics of purchasing a song from itunes vs listening to it on streaming & how billboard chooses to count a download versus a stream. conservatives absolutely discovered this summer that you can make a dent on the pop charts by purchasing songs when your "opponents," as it were, are largely streaming them. jason aldean went to number 1 w/ something like 230k single sales in one week -- that is a healthy number at any time, but it's way outsized in the current market. in 09 when 50 cent/dre/eminem went straight to number 1 w/ "crack a bottle" it set the one week itunes sales record w/ 420k downloads. so you can make the same impact now w/ half the sales. k pop fans have obviously been exploiting this market for years, as have nicki minaj fans who consistently send her new songs/remixes up the charts only for them to crash back down to earth a week or two later. if you take the view that black people at large have less purchasing power than white people and thus streaming had an equalizing effect post-itunes era by shifting the marketplace from multiple purchases to one monthly purchase (that granted access to an immense amount of data on listening habits), then i think it would be fair to say that a faction of white people realized they can tilt the playing field back the other way by once again making the rules of the game about individual purchases instead of the one time catch all (not in the least because you can generate a "controversy" via your sales and then also catch all the attendant streaming interest as well). there isn't a single mainstream black rapper in the top 80 of the digital sales chart as of this writing, but if you look at the apple music or spotify charts you will obviously not see that. you *will* see a lot more country, latin & k pop artists on those streaming charts than you typically did -- and thus less rap music, it is true -- but i do think people need to understand that a lot of what's happening w/ the hot 100 comes down to itunes sales vs streaming, and that says way more about the chart math employed by billboard than it does about people's listening habits or feelings towards entire genres of music.

it's obvious that a certain percentage of people buying up jason aldean and oliver anthony songs on itunes aren't actually fans of music per se -- instead they are either making pure political statements w/ their money (and here we connect to the bud light protests etc) or are just simply riding a fad in a less politically fraught sense ("lemme check out this new non-mainstream music everyone is talking about. i hate mainstream pop!"). so i think what we're seeing here is temporary -- either bcuz the conservative world will move on from sticking it to the libs by buying country music on itunes, or bcuz billboard will adjust its formulas so that itunes sales have less weight than they do now and the charts feel more reflective of what's actually happening out in the real world. billboard is frequently making tweaks to its chart formulas to reduce the purchasing power of small groups of people (i.e. announcing this summer that they were going to stop counting digital downloads made direct to consumer via in artist's website)

i think that the movement behind ppl like wallen, bryan, zimmerman etc is far more real, but also so much of why those artists are rising is because of rap, even as rap itself is impacted from a chart perspective. w/ wallen, you have a guy making direct musical overtures to rap music & doing some chart gaming by releasing 30+ song albums aka the rap streaming playbook. w/ zach bryan there is no musical connection, but you're nonetheless talking about an artist who blew up by releasing albums direct to soundcloud and then poured gas on the fire by feeding his fanbase an unending stream of new music. he is as much a mixtape rapper as he is a mainstream country musician. and what you're seeing w/ artists like zimmerman & warren zeiders & dozens of others kids nobody on this board knows is a lowering of the bar for the creation of what is now called country music. rappers have always just needed a beat to make rap music -- kids now don't even need to know producers, they can just rip free beats off youtube. there is no barrier to entry to become a rapper, artistically speaking. the same is now true for aspiring country singers -- you no longer need to move to nashville and get signed by a label and get a band together to record your songs and then have them pushed thru the radio to find an audience. all you need an acoustic guitar & a tik tok account. so part of what's happening is that the market is being flooded by new country artists in a way that wasn't previously possible when nashville as an industry had a complete stranglehold on the genre. perhaps the result of that is that the market share for country increases at the expense of rap music, but unless you work in the music industry i don't think that's really something to worry about. i think it means there will be more good country music being made than before but i don't think it means there will be less good rap music being made. there might be a direct relationship between how much country can be on a 100 song chart vs how much rap, but there is no such inverse relationship when you're talking about the creation & quality of music on the ground level.

ultimately i don't think rap music's status as the dominant musical cultural force in america is in peril. i mean, all this regional mexican rap that is blowing up is rap music. i think the winds of technology have been blowing in a way that has allowed other genres (and races, if we wanna put it in those terms) to catch up to the playbook rappers have been using for years. and i think rap has also stagnated a bit culturally as i outlined at the top. but i do think that rap music has always been a source of cultural & business innovation & that we'll be sitting here in a few years w/ a new crop of culturally dominant rappers aided by changes in technology (or innovations in how we use our current technology) looking back on the summer of 2023 as more of a blip in a hyper-specific period of time than the harbinger of a grand shift in the tectonic plates that undergird popular music

Great post, Jordan.

On the other hand, there's a new Ed Sheeran album coming out soon, so I expect that to rule the charts for awhile.

I was explaining to a friend last week that Zach Bryan released what are in essence two Drake-length mixtapes.

and great post, sarge

On the other hand, there's a new Ed Sheeran album coming out soon, so I expect that to rule the charts for awhile.

― hardcore technician gimmicks are also another popular choice f (President Keyes), Monday, August 28, 2023 4:32 PM (two minutes ago)

his album from earlier this year was a pretty big flop, this is basically his "i need to rescue my career right this instant or it's gone at this level" album. the last one had luke combs as the big "juice my streams" deluxe edition guest star reveal & it didn't even really work. which felt like the sign of something in a number of ways. i should've have mentioned him

which of these seems different than the others

This week's most-streamed songs:

1. @AintGottaDollar Rich Men North of Richmond
2. @MorganWallen Last Night
3. @DojaCat Paint The Town Red
4. @1GunnaGunna Fukumean
5. @lukecombs Fast Car

— billboard charts (@billboardcharts) August 28, 2023

This week's most-heard songs on the radio:

1. @heisrema & @selenagomez Calm Down
2. @lukecombs Fast Car
3. @taylorswift13 Cruel Summer
4. @sza Snooze
5. @DUALIPA Dance The Night

— billboard charts (@billboardcharts) August 28, 2023

This week's top-selling songs:

1. @AintGottaDollar Rich Men North of Richmond
2. @AintGottaDollar I Want To Go Home
3. @AintGottaDollar Aint Gotta Dollar
4. @Jason_Aldean Try That In A Small Town
5. #PaulRussell Lil Boo Thang

— billboard charts (@billboardcharts) August 28, 2023

ultimately i don't think rap music's status as the dominant musical cultural force in america is in peril

the freakout surrounding “rap’s cold streak” on the hot 100 always conveniently ignores “kill bill (remix)” (starts with a full 16 bars from doja) and latto’s duet with the bts guy

The Doja Cat version is not the one I hear on the radio.

yeah but the doja remix is what put the song over the top on the hot 100

the freakout surrounding “rap’s cold streak” on the hot 100

it also puts far more importance in the hot 100 than is warranted at a time when it means less than ever. there's this weird feedback loop happening where the hot 100 reflects less monoculture than it ever has -- and so understanding the charts requires more cultural literacy than perhaps it did before -- and yet its being used by people who aren't doing that kinda contextualization work to make grand monocultural statements about music

and by nicki minaj stans who believe that her “super freaky girl” being the last pure rap song to top the hot 100 is yet more proof of her perfection

Extremely anecdotally (on the Taylor/Beyoncé thing) – when Swift was coming to town (and then actually here), my work Slack was full of ppl trying to get tickets... now that the Beyoncé shows are coming up, there are many folks selling/trying to unload Beyoncé tix (including on behalf of others). Kind of strange, not sure what's behind that... there was plenty of Beyoncé buzz when her album came out (and I never saw anyone mention Midnights).

that lines up w/ my experience too ... at the beginning of the renaissance tour there were those articles about people flying to sweden bcuz it was cheaper/easier to buy airfare + that ticket than to get into one of the USA shows. meanwhile fast forward to now and i have multiple friends flying to new orleans because resale tickets for those shows were sub-$200 (upper deck but still). i just talked to a friend yesterday who decided on a whim to fly to LA for the shows this weekend bcuz the tickets had dropped like crazy on the secondary market. so it does seem like something is happening there but i also don't really know why. there were those early reports about how she wasn't moving/dancing as well as she typically does but i've heard glowing reviews from everyone who has seen the show. then again they all paid like $600 to get in so maybe not unbiased sources, but i don't detect any backlash to the shows so it's not clear to me why the enthusiasm seems to be waning

in my mind taylor hadn't toured in years whereas beyoncé has been out on the road a lot. but i looked up their touring schedules from 2015 on and that's not really the case, they've done the same number of tours. but the demand feels very different. the only thing i can think of is that a. swift has released a lot more music in between her tours than beyoncé has b. perhaps the marketing/structuring of the show as comprising all of her "eras" is really genius marketing, ppl feel like they're seeing a career spanning megashow as opposed to simple a tour attached to a new album

does it feel like the Beyonce resales are markedly more than any other non-Taylor Swift show? i guess that'd be the question. not that a Beyonce show isn't an "event", but these Taylor shows are essentially the most "can't miss" type gig to roll through, at least at this particular scale. it doesn't feel like the type of thing people are going to start to say "eh i don't really feel like going..." as it approaches.

A couple things with Swift too was it seems like she was <this> close to announcing a Summer tour for 2020 when Covid happened, so there was pent-up demand from that, and it seems like she picked up a lot of new fans during the quarantine times. Like I know a number of people who were casual fans before then who are diehard Swifties now (dropping $$$ on tix, vinyl even though they don't own turntables etc.)

xp I'm seeing resales for as low as $300 (that one's in Vegas, though); Row 2 of some "VIP" section for $750; Row 7 on on the field "Open to Best Offer (original price w/ fees is $1500 per tix)"... etc. Definitely on the higher side as concerts go, but not the crazy prices that Taylor tix were being offered at.

XPS I suspect the Beyonce resale market suffered from over-speculation from resellers hoping Eras lightning would strike twice.

(OTOH, a coworker told me about a friend who has literally gone bankrupt from seeing 7 or 8 dates on the Beyoncé tour, in locations ranging from New Jersey to Paris. The friend has a ticket for another, and my coworker says he's trying to convince him to sell it, so he can pay his rent...)

Beyonce is definitely not catering to the casual audience with her setlists, where Swift's tour seems like it's kind of the perfect greatest hits type tour for everyone?

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/beyonce/2023/allegiant-stadium-las-vegas-nv-33a50c75.html

no single ladies, halo, irreplaceable, baby boy etc....seems like she's trying a real specific vibe with this tour

xxp
this whole convo reminds me of the old joke about a guy saying he thought he really wanted to be a boxer until he fought someone who REALLY wanted to be a boxer. I mean I thought I loved music until I got to ilm and heard anecdotes like flying across a country or even to another country just to see a gig, let alone falling into bankruptcy. insanity.

https://x.com/nytimesarts/status/1696611433641877507?s=46&t=u2ZSlsY3trRV36IPP6jNDQ

On this week’s Popcast, conversations about the consonances between Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour, the way Swift does (and does not) deploy dance and the thrills of seeing her perform for the first time.

could part of it be very simply generational. That median beyonce fans are slightly older

bump

The Billboard charts are broken, they’ve been hijacked by a media conglomerate

Wow.

jeez

I dont understand that article. can someone find the '''nut graf''' for me i think im too dumb

"Since the purchase [of Nielsen], Luminate has purged its indie retail accounts. The rules, regulations, the gerrymandering, the onboarding process, it has all throttled our ability to report. It’s the corporate equivalent of redrawing a district map when you don’t like what the voters have to say. Walmart and Target are still reporting, but are they really record shops? Amazon is a reporter. As is Spotify and any streaming service that provides full-length albums. How that is reported on a subscription service, I have no idea."

also:

"Luminate recently stated that 95% of independent retail is being accounted for on their charts. I am one of the owners of the Coalition of Independent Music Stores. We represent over 40 of the top independent record stores around the country. I can tell you there isn’t a storefront in our coalition that is reporting to Luminate. "

^are those things really contradictory? I thought SoundScan didn’t claim to catch all sales, but weighted the sales they did sample or something (like a survey).

RTFA

also maybe think about how every single time something like this comes up, your kneejerk response is to be an apologist for late-period capitalism

Damn(!)

the point is that soundscan has apparently recently purged independent record stores from its tracking completely, so what is reported about physical sales is going to be pretty skewed. the independent stores hate this, of course

This article gets a little more into the details (like, why more stores don't report): https://www.joyofvinyl.com/luminates-decision-could-hurt-the-vinyl-record-industry/

It's not exactly that they've purged them, it's that they are no longer using mathematical extrapolations from the ones who do report to estimate the ones who don't report. So only the ones that do report will be counted.

Thanks, that answers my question…

(If it matters, I was trying to figure out how they may have been weaseling the “accounts for 95%” claim, but sounds like it’s unclear to that other writer as well)

ah not extrapolating the data seems equally bad yeah

but good to have that clarity

Yeah it's all murky. I took it to mean that the biggest stores account for an outsize share of the indie market. But I don't see any reason to believe any of the numbers they're throwing around. Definitely a transparency problem with the charts and the data collection being owned by the same company.

FWIW, I ran this article privately by someone I trust when it comes to chart calls. I won't speak directly for said person, but the response was pretty clear that 1) reporting of physical items IS indeed terrible this year but 2) there's no simple solution and the article has blown things up into a near-conspiracy-theory level narrative.

It doesn’t change the fact that Green Day was ROBBED of a number one

Having famously never charted at all over decades now. A shame, really.

I took it to mean that the biggest stores account for an outsize share of the indie market.

i spoke to someone who knows a bit about this stuff bcuz that article confused me too and one thing they mentioned is that along w/ stopping the practice of extrapolation luminate is also requiring indie stores to provide a lot more data when reporting than before i.e. not just "we sold x copies of y album" but further information about the purchases or purchaser that may be beyond the capabilities of many small indie stores. so a net result of that is that larger or more corporate indies i.e. rough trade, amoeba etc who are willing or able to report now have outsized influence in that data tabulation.

i'm not being vague about the "data" to shroud what i'm actually trying to say here, my convo w/ this person didn't get into the specifics of the nature of that data. how much of this dynamic is ideological vs technological (i.e. needing to integrate a certain software or something) i can't really say. but it is alluded to in that guy's statement when he mentions "the rules, regulations, the gerrymandering, the onboarding process." he compares it to redrawing of a district map to box out true indies; perhaps that's true i don't want to undersell the cynicism of a large company just as a rule. but i would point out that luminate is ultimately a company that monetizes data and billboard is not its only client. luminate is used by all record companies, publishers etc anyone whose business is staked on or involved w/ the accurate reporting of streaming and music sales is or may be a customer. those clients are constantly pushing luminate to provide as much data as possible on the consumer. that's not to excuse luminate in any way i'm just trying to provide some context for the utility of this data beyond just the tabulation of charts, historical records etc i prob don't personally buy the more grand ideological conspiracies here i would view it more so thru the lens of tech and data collection. that may be cold comfort or perhaps worse than wanting to destroy indie music depending on your POV but yeah

or i guess luminate/billboard/MRC are all one company now which actually puts a finer point on what i'm saying. billboard isn't even a client for luminate, chart data is useful to them almost as like a loss leader bcuz it generates interest in charts and of course billboard makes some level of money but i'd imagine a much larger and more profitable part of their business is selling subscriptions to clients in the music industry (people like me!) who need their data in order to their jobs. it's essentially bloomberg-ian