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

to be fair radio HAS learned to ignore songs with iTunes sales bumps for a long time -- if it's a new artist like fun. or PSY then sales helps show the interest, but so far it's rare that some superstar's deep cut that jumps on the Hot 100 purely from sales gets added to playlists (although sometimes sales can help pick singles -- Molanphy had a good column a few months ago how big sales for "Set Fire To The Rain" as an album track contributed to it becoming a single)

Boston's R&B/hip-hop station has been a ClearChannel property for years and has therefore already been on this bandwagon; the interesting thing happening here is the dismantling of all of the alternative stations

Both KUBE and Kiss 106 in Seattle are Clear Channel. It should be noted that as KUBE is playing an increasing amount of pop (although mostly by black artists - Flo Rida, Rihanna et al), Kiss has eschewed playing rap and r&b at all. The Flo Rida brigade is the only music by black artists they play, and only a few such songs at a time. Their playlist is otherwise white white white white white, which wasn't the case ten years ago, when they were playing 50 Cent just like every other station in America. 92.5 the other, non-Clear Channel top 40 station here, doesn't seem as averse to dropping "Mercy" or whatever from time to time tho.

in ten years all commercial radio is either gonna be chr or talk

i think that the genre charts should have remained dictated by airplay on only stations of particular formats. the Hot 100 and various Digital Sales charts already did a good job of showing what was selling even if it wasn't getting airplay. MAYBE the genre charts could have digital sales factored in, but at a much lower rate than they are now, where it just feels like this trump card that overrides all other factors.

― some dude, Thursday, October 11, 2012 4:35 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, obviously there was an irreconcilable problem that the feedback loop had disappeared, right? that radio was just arbitrarily dictating airplay

i mean radio is already fraught w/ payola & etc.

it seems to me the real problem is that online sales produce no demographic information.

like, genre used to be determined by audience, now it's determined by ... the billboard people guessing based on ???

yeah, that's a huge problem

D-40: as i was arguing earlier, just by how the artist in question came up and/or what the song sounds like (often contradictory)

ie Rihanna is and R&B artist so everything she does now is R&B.

*is an

I kind of get the impression payola is actually less of a problem in the post-Act world, because playlists are much more likely to be dictated by some suit at the top then by a radio dj who may be more amenable to an envelope full of bills. Not that that is a case for allowing corporations to buy up 1,000s of stations.

billboard's always pulled this shit though, i can think of twice in the past 15 years where they modified the hot 100 calculation effectively cuz it was skewing too r&b.

thanks to mergers there are no local morning zoo deejays getting paid off.

yeah huge lol at payola being anywhere near as big a problem now as it was ten, twenty, thirty, etc years ago

Glad to see this thread. My own area of special concern, Latin radio, is probably going to be severely affected in similar ways to the problems you guys have identified with R&B and country: first, superstars with with new releases are going to crowd out everyone else; good if you want more Shakira #1s (which I selfishly do), bad if you want to hear any reggaetón besides Daddy Yankee or W&Y or any bachata besides Royce and Romeo (both of which I really, really do). Second, it'll mean that Mexican regional music will be increasingly shut out of the main Latin chart, since airplay is the bread and butter of banda, cumbia, etc. And there'll be a LOT more J.Lo and Pitbull regardless of language or audience embrace. Pap

I think one thing people are forgetting here tho is that the charts aren't the only data radio stations have for determining what is popular. iirc, radio stations (especially better-financed ones) do a TON of focus-grouping. Also, call-ins.

in hip hop radio i can promise you payola it is still a big thing

yeah urban and country radio are VERY driven by call-in requests

xpost

mention of 50 cent & "in da club" is interesting too -- apart from all of this accountancy, different genres do wax and wane in creative power and popular appeal. it's not a stable equilibrium of li'l genres pumping out the same stuff to the same people every year

very true. and to me that's a reason that the genre charts SHOULD have stayed as they were, those genres need to be able to keep defining themselves by what the core listenership likes rather than what's crossing over to whatever genre is doing bigger business at that moment.

YES

yeah it's just bad datagathering plain and simple. it's not like the r&b audience or country audience and the networks catering to them just disappeared (ok the record stores have obv been going, so argument for incorporating itunes exists but calibration is beyond fucked), but the data of what is succeeding in those markets isn't being captured.

so much contempo-country sounds like AOR rock that I wonder what this forced iTunes mash-up will do to Nashville A&R.

this is an unmitigated disaster

Bill Werde of Billboard seems very comfortable with the changes in that tumblr post above. Like its no big deal

"we are never ever..." was probably going to be tswift's first single (from an album release) not to go at least top 10 on the country chart, which is probably an accurate representation of how country audiences received the song. and now it's suddenly #1 due to a lots of pop/crossover downloads. i always found the genre charts interesting because they offer a glimpse into what more specific audiences are hearing through focused radio formats.

i cant believe he refers to wikipedia as determining what is hip hop w/ a straight face

On twitter Werde says he will engage in respectful discussions of this

i guess flo rida will be getting #1s on rap songs with these rules in place (his only song so far to do this was "low")

wtf wtf

well, one thing that hasn't been mentioned so far is that the Rap Songs chart already factored in airplay from non-urban formats, so Flo Rida and Pitbull etc. had been mainstays on Rap Songs already

but nobody ever really paid much attention to that chart, R&B/Hip Hop Songs was always the barometer of a rap song's success

I recommend everybody jump ship from all forms of popular music

man why would you kick me out, man, i wasn't hurting anybody

anyone here still involved w/ college radio: do cmj charts still matter a great deal or even at all anymore? i can remember thinking when the cmj payola thing happened that it would be a perfect opportunity for pfork to start their own college radio chart and finish supplanting cmj. as it happened they didn't need to and it definitely seems like 'best new music' has supplanted the cmj charts in terms of being the macro table setter for indie rock. at the same time college radio promotion companies like team clermont, etc are still going strong so college radio must still matter on some level which could mean that cmj still matters on some level. does it?

i can't imagine it happening w/ rural country radio but i do wonder if r&b radio could ever go the way of rock radio where it's replaced as an option by ipods, spotify, etc to the extent that a deep disconnect sets in (aided by innacurate billboard charts) leading to station losing more listeners leading to station changing format. i can't imagine this happening in atlanta, too huge a buppie community, but at the same time i was still shocked when the last two atlanta rock radio stations (well there's one left that's low wattage) switched to chr and talk.

anyone here still involved w/ college radio: do cmj charts still matter a great deal or even at all anymore?

It does only insofar as belonging to CMJ gets you "access" to shit.

Emphasis on 'shit.'

I know our radio station bases a fraction of its programming on CMJ charts, most notably what it places into the loop for rotation shows. But there's such a thing as "recurrent" play and "Midnight City" and a track from This is Happening and Malkmus' "Tigers" are on it (I know because I'm constantly telling them to change that shit).

CHR = christian hit radio?

"no less an authority than wikipedia" jesus fucking christ

contemporary hits radio

haven't had a chance to read this thread yet but rev you have a story here you could/should pitch IMO

so is PSY not a rapper?

alfred: ah ok

ok, found one of my twitter rants (their archiving system is terrible obv). from late August:

Right now, there are only three songs in the pop top 40 that are on the R&B chart AT ALL. #marginalizationofblackmusic

#19 "Mercy", #28 "No Lie", #32 "Work Hard Play Hard". All rap songs by male artists. No R&B. No women.

Is there any precedent for this? I know from 1965 when they reinstated the R&B chart to 2009 there was at least one dual chart topper per yr

And there hasn't been in the three years since, but this is ridiculous.

EZSnappin: @reverenddollars Rhianna and Nicki are on there - Nicki has 2 in the top 40. And Usher. Not at same time as R&B charts, though.

@EZSnappin None of those songs are in the the R&B top 100.

@EZSnappin There are actually two Usher songs in the R&B top 10, but neither is "Scream".

frogbs: "wikipedia" didn't think so particulary, until one guy two weeks ago changed the article name.

kinda think also that nobody in america's really taken advantage of ppl streaming stations on their iphones and disregarding geography. i know at work only local radio we listen to is sportstalk, npr, and maybe clark howard on wsb (and even then we stream it cuz the sound is much better), seems like there's a way to make alot of money setting up a bbc one for america. there are a few commercial stations - wfmu the big one - that seem to grasp this opportunity but so far, beyond half measures like 'i heart radio', nothing big on the commercial front as far as i can tell.

Other than Big Sean guesting on a Justin Bieber single, there are no black musicians in the top 10 this week. When was the last time that happened?

Hot 100 top ten, obv

yo rev check yr emailz

here's Rev's other twitter rant from June that i referred to earlier:

Black women are becoming increasingly marginalized in pop.

Other than Billboard changing the rules to let Whitney in, only Rih and Nicki have had top 10 hits as lead artist this DECADE.

And then people wonder why they make crossover songs?

Re: Marginalization of black women in pop, by this point in the last decade, the following black women had had top ten hits as lead artist:

Whitney (for real that time), Missy Elliott, Blaque, Destiny’s Child, Macy Gray, Sonique, Toni Braxton, Aaliyah, Janet Jackson, Erykah Badu

Samantha Mumba, Mya, Debelah Morgan (who?), Tamia, Lil Kim, City High, Eve, Blu Cantrell, Mariah Carey, Alicia Keys, Mary J. Blige, Brandy

Brandy, Tweet, Ashanti, and Truth Hurts

As compared to this decade so far: Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, zombie Whitney.

That's 25 to two (or three if you count Billboard changing the rules so Whitney could have a hit posthumously)

@theilliterate tastes change but you don't think it's odd that (with 2 exceptions) black women are being excluded from top40 radio entirely?

@theilliterate when even someone as universally beloved as beyonce can't even get on rhythmic radio, let alone pop stations?

@theilliterate sure, but if it was only beyonce, that would be one thing.

@theilliterate kube's playlist - rhythmic not even top40 - 1st appearance of a black woman other than Nicki/Rih is #51 http://www.kube93.com/iplaylist/playlist.html?net=41

@theilliterate I didn't say that though- "increasingly". I'm of the opinion that itunes inadvertently destroyed Black American pop music tho

@theilliterate And the start of that dates back to around 2005

@GracieLoPan @theilliterate lol. the problem was that the audience for black music was less likely to purchase itunes & the market adjusted

Itunes destroyed Black American pop music.