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

it's also a matter of whether you want to reflect direct revenue generation based on sales of actual product (mechanical royalties), or if you want to have a reflection of the reach and penetration of your song. the latter is much harder to quantify and in turn, harder to generate value from. i agree this whole new methodology is ridden with holes tho

let's not forget that billboard exists for record labels and music biz folks, and not really for regular people, so they have to cater to the people footing the bill

the thing to me was that the genre charts were valuable BECAUSE they weren't simply "the top 5 country/R&B/etc. songs are whatever the top 5 songs on the Hot 100 are this week," that there was a demonstrable community or network arranged around that genre that existed more or less apart from what parts of that genre made it into the big crossover tent. making these charts more like the Hot 100 instantly renders them less interesting, less valuable, less able to measure any kind of success besides top 40 crossover.

xpost -- i'm not really sure how this move benefits anyone in the music biz at all, to be honest

i mean it's "good news" primarily for the Rihannas and Taylors of the world who already have more impressive stats on more general charts. being #1 on additional genre charts won't help them sell records or seem any more impressive, but it will definitely diminish the accomplishments of the artists who would've topped those genre charts before this move without being a major presence on the Hot 100.

not disagreeing at all, just making some probably-not-very-good points is all. agreed totally, especially with the last post

yeah, i mean you may not be wrong -- Werde's tumblr thing referred to discussions Billboard had w/ labels etc. about this decision so it's possible for some reason or anything people in the biz were jumping for joy at this change

Has anyone tried to engage Werde on his tumblr or via twitter?

the thing to me was that the genre charts were valuable BECAUSE they weren't simply "the top 5 country/R&B/etc. songs are whatever the top 5 songs on the Hot 100 are this week," that there was a demonstrable community or network arranged around that genre that existed more or less apart from what parts of that genre made it into the big crossover tent. making these charts more like the Hot 100 instantly renders them less interesting, less valuable, less able to measure any kind of success besides top 40 crossover.

so otm

also, billboard arbitrarily determining what songs (or really what artists, it would seem thus far) belong to what genre is just shameful

don't they test out new chart rules for at least a few weeks before they officially implement them? i am surprised they didn't realize what a shitshow it would be. but i guess they see nothing wrong with "diamonds" topping the r&b chart. i guess they'll see nothing wrong when taylor swift's album comes out and the entire country top 10 (probably even more than that) is taylor swift songs.

To be honest I don't have a problem with Diamonds topping the R&B charts at all. Crossover or not, Rihanna makes R&B and the divide between R&B and pop was definitely bridged as early as with So Sick. That pop-friendly style has been a part of R&B and somehow trying to exclude it smacks of purism. So I really think that part of the argument is a little shaky since it seems as if personal taste is shining through. As for the larger implications though, I totally agree. Just not sure if Rihanna is the best example to sell this with. The Gagnam Style one is infinitely more painful.

I've yet to hear the current number one Hot R&B/Hip-Hop single on any of Detroit's R&B/rap stations.

Does anyone know why tunein no longer publishes radio-station playlists?

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.

― Cap'n Hug-a-Thug (The Reverend), Thursday, 11 October 2012

speaking almost entirely from ignorance here but tho the above is doubtless right, i feel like ppl are quite well-connected generally these days (evidence: WSHH, datpiff, livemixtapes, youtube, "black twitter", bossip, necolebitchie etc.) Seems like internet has increasingly become a spending priority across classes, almost like tv. so i think a bigger distinction has to do with youth access to credit & access to credit generally: "i'll buy this on my credit card", "hey mom can u put this on yr credit card". that's what unlikely when $$$ aren't spare. round my way a lot of people who like music don't have even bank accounts (tho pre-paid disposable cards are becoming popular).

thats a good point

Yeah, that's something I hadn't considered at all, actually.

of course i agree that rihanna has recorded many r&b songs (especially in the vein of "so sick") but "diamonds" does not strike me as one of them (and i don't say this because i don't like the song -- i appear to be one of the very few on here who does like it). i'm not hoping for the exclusion of strongly pop-influenced r&b and i'm, by my own estimations, hardly a purist for r&b or any other genre. i just don't think it's appropriate that a song that was hardly doing anything on the radio format that actually caters to the r&b-listening audience shoot suddenly to #1 after incorporating sales (and airplay, actually, which is even more ridiculous) from much larger and generally separate crossover audience.

yeah, without being too ageist, since they obviously have adult fans as well, i think the huge iTunes receipts for Katy Perry, Taylor Swift etc. singles has a strong whiff of 'mom's credit card.' also the part of the urban audience that's 'plugged in' to the internet is also already used to getting most of their new music on mixtape sites, blogs, etc. the idea of most fans of non-crossover superstar rappers and R&B acts going to iTunes to buy that act's new single en masse on the release date would probably seem absurd to them (although to that audience first week album sales are still kind of a big deal).

Well I think that since So Sick, these white/black pop/r&b delineations (feel free to add mom's credit card/authentically consumed music to the pot) just aren't the best compass anymore. With Rihanna being who she is, and having held a certain position for some time now, it just seems obvious that she is also renegotiating what r&b is, reordering it from within as it were - in ways that cannot simply be written off as external or wholly negative or even the evil plot of corporate interests. R&B must have room for Diamonds too. It will sit just fine on her greatest hits vol. 1, whenever that will appear.

here is Rihanna's whole pre-"Diamonds" single catalog, broken down by the Hot R&B Hip Hop Songs peak (the first number) and Pop Songs peak (the second number):

pon de replay: 24, 2
if it's lovin' that you want: 99,15
sos: -, 1
unfaithful: -, 2
we ride: -, 84
break it off: -, 6
umbrella: 4, 2
shut up and drive: -, 11
hate that i love you: 20, 7
don't stop the music: 74, 2
take a bow: 1, 1
if i never see your face again: -, -
disturbia: -, 1
live your life: 2, 1
rehab: 52, 19
run this town: 3, 8
russian roulette: 49, 21
hard: 14, 9
rude boy: 2, 1
rockstar 101: -, -
te amo: -, -
love the way you lie: 7, 1
only girl: -, 1
what's my name: 2, 4
who's that chick: -, 33
raining men: -, 48
all of the lights: 2, 38
s&m: 48, 1
california king bed: -, 18
man down: 9, -
cheers: -, 11
fly: 35, -
we found love: 54, 1
you da one: 60, 19
take care: 26, 8
talk that talk: 12, 26
birthday cake: 2, -
princess of china: -, 24
where have you been: 56, 3

only 8 times out of 39 has a song been as big or a bigger R&B hit than pop hit, and most of them involved a rapper (or a more overt R&B artist like Chris Brown).

it's not like Michael or Janet or Prince or Mariah where their pop success was so huge that they kind of transcended R&B while R&B radio still faithfully played them. Rihanna came to urban radio kind of late in her career -- only one of her first 10 singles was a big hit on the R&B chart, and it was the one with Jay-Z.

if being #1 on a genre chart isn't going to help tswift or rihanna sell any more records, then why has this change happened? afaict charts and radio are all about 1) breaking records and 2) selling more of the records that have already broken. if this change isn't accomplishing either of those two things, then why? what's the rationale?

radio doesn't care about selling records, they care about selling ads

right but labels put massive amounts of pressure on stations to make their records hits, mainly by playing them a million times a day, and it sounds like this move does nothing to further that.. or maybe it does? i dunno

i guess what i'm trying to ask is: who benefits?

yeah I was trying to figure out the economic aspects of this as well

Maybe the labels want to concentrate it to a few artists from across some genres to be megastars; selling their albums to a core audience plus the pop crossover instead of having some semi successful stars on genre charts as well as the "big" artists they hope to sell 10 million albums of. By combining it they hope to get 80s/90s style megastars selling shitloads? rather than having hundreds of ok selling acts.

I don't know if that's the case, but it's plausible. Major labels already carry a lot less mid-level acts than they did pre-collapse.

what are the economics of being a #1 download on iTunes vs. say, having an album going gold in the old days?

but yeah algerian's point was what I thought of - the size of the pie is getting smaller, so they're trying to give megastars a larger slice.

It will sit just fine on her greatest hits vol. 1, whenever that will appear.

it will for sure!

but still. it seems like billboard's decision when it comes to whether a song counts as part of a certain genre is based on whether the artist has recorded songs of that genre before. i'm not so naïve that i'll pretend that who the performer is never has anything to do with how music is classified, but it seems to me that "genre" really has to do with a certain set of slowly evolving aesthetic qualities, lyrical themes and so forth that are collectively valued by distinct audiences. and yes, while many of the people in these audiences are "purists," i don't think these charts should just ignore them. "we are never ever getting back together" and "i knew you were trouble" were both somewhat jarring and alienating to the people who listen exclusively to country music -- the songs' performance on country stations will certainly reflect that, but this week "we are never..." is the #1 and "i knew you were trouble" certainly will be next week after the absolutely monstrous sales it's getting right now.

man i don't know, it's just so boring that the r&b songs chart is going to be "list of songs on the hot 100 that are recorded by artists generally maybe considered part of the r&b genre in the exact order that they appear on the hot 100"

the megastars idea is interesting -- the bill werde tumblr post says that the genre charts never before showed the level of dominance that the pop charts occasionally did (w/ the beatles and bee gees and so on). but that's not really true -- the r&b charts reasonably often would have several of its top slots commanded by certain huge artists (recently drake in particular)

anyway i am not holding my breath but it's not completely unprecedented that billboard cancels certain chart experiments; they shut down the "pop 100" after only 4 years (and what a shady chart that was, seriously -- like, by all appearances the formula may have been "take hot 100 data for the week then subtract several chart points from everyone who isn't white")

The R&B chart was shut down in 1963 back when artists like Elvis and the Beach Boys were scoring R&B hits, and then it was reinstated in 1965 at which point black music seemed to get funkier. It also seems rock music got whiter from that moment on, never again to converge with R&B as it seemed to be doing around 1963. Of course, in the mid-1960s you still had a lot of black-oriented record shops and radio stations, so it wasn't so easy to kill the concept of R&B; the framework of it was too strong - as opposed to the more perilous situation today. But I suspect that this older episode and the one we're talking about now just have to do with Billboard attempting to make the music-selling business more streamlined and efficient, damn the consequences.

It will sit just fine on her greatest hits vol. 1, whenever that will appear.

unless "Diamonds" tops the Hot 100 (which i doubt it will) there probably won't be any room for it on her greatest hits!

Great thread. This may have already been noted upthread, but one of the things that makes me uneasy about the new methodology for the genre charts is that, instead of determining a song's genre by which radio formats play it, Billboard itself is now making judgment calls. Chart director Silvio Pietroluongo has said, "Determinations on genre are decided based on the sonic make-up of the song." Which just seems like a can of worms.

plus they're very clearly often making these decisions on something other than the sonic make-up of the song (like who the artist is, what their previous songs have sounded like, their skin color, etc.)

yeah the general impression that the majors' strategy here is to consolidate their promotion into an even smaller number of artists is otm, in part because the staffs at majors have all gotten smaller, and in part because the long tail of pop music matters less when that audience is so much more likely to pirate. my guess is that this will mean not only a different (prob less interesting) range of artists being played on hip hop stations, but also a smaller one, as though that were fucking possible.

i think the emerging importance of asian markets also has something to do with this. prob needless to say that labels think hot 100 topping artists have a much better chance of selling in asia than r&b and hip hop specifics, so it's another reason for majors to care less about development and promotion of artists relatively on the fringe. this in turn puts pressure on billboard to adopt a methodology aims for the same level of consolidation.

^^^great point

I can't really give you any actual *reasons* or *facts* to back up my opinion but I really feel that Drake destroyed hip hop musically & culturally, and it just feels true to me

otm

if you think drake destroyed hip hop musically & culturally that actually means you think that lil wayne destroyed hip hop musically & culturally (and i won't argue w/ you)

*otm

eh, even as much as Lil Wayne has jumped the shark and I dislike Drake, I don't really agree with either of those things

Not sure what yr rationale is for saying Drake destroyed hip hop musically and culturally, but what about Black Eyed Peas? Or Flo Rida?

Or perhaps nothing is destroyed? Nothing is ruined? The world won't end? We just get slightly suckier hit lists?

@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.

i hate to get all reactionary/reductionist, but i've always wondered what the hell happened the so completely freakin awesome rap/r&b scene of the early thousands, seemingly overnight, and this makes a certain amount of sense.

http://tasteofcountry.com/billboard-chart-changes/

I wonder how this petition drive by country fans opposed to the changes is going?

i dunno but it wouldn't surprise me if it gets more momentum than any other response to this, country fans/industry definitely seem to care more about the singles charts than rock/urban/latin/etc.

Have not seen followup alt-weekly, magazine, or blogposts re the r'n'b change (just ones froma few days ago announcing the change)

you realize alt weeklies and magazines generally need more than 6 days to react to news right?