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

yeah, i've also been wondering how feasible figuring out who comprises the 'super users' group would be. if identifying them involves finding who mostly buys hip-hop and r&b, it means defining the group would involve coming up with some initial definition of what songs qualify, which billboard has already proven can be quite a messy business for them. maybe could just use id3 tags? in any case my gut is that it's a clever solution that would be harder to actually do than it appears.

your idea about just shifting the airplay-to-everything-else ratio and only allowing songs that achieve a certain amount of urban radio play is interesting too. that actually has a parallel in how billboard did their old 'pop 100' chart, which in retrospect seems like it only existed because certain people were getting uncomfortable with seeing so many hip-hop and r&b acts at the top of the charts all the time. basically they compiled the chart by weighting sales more heavily and by shrinking the radio panel to just top 40 stations, but even then lots of r&b and hip-hop songs were charting highly, so the june after they made the chart, they added an additional rule that songs weren't eligible until they were getting at least 100,000 audience impressions on chr OR they reached the top 10 on hot digital songs. (source: the last question on this ask billboard column, which is honestly a bit cringe-inducing in its use of phrases like 'true pop music' to describe madonna and girls aloud but NOT r&b).

in the end they discontinued that chart after it started becoming irrelevant b/c top-40-leaning, sales-driven hits on the hot 100 became the norm again, but it's pretty interesting that for so long they were actually basically bending over backwards to give 'whiter' music a better chance on their charts.

to be fair the "true pop music" stuff comes from the guy submitting the letter, at least on the record billboard doesn't touch that

'pure pop,' 'vocal pop,' there's a lot of different terms to differentiate things that are pop-as-genre and don't have strong ties to a more concrete genre like rock or R&B, none of them totally ideal.

the phrase "pure pop" always has racialized undertones to me

yep

that would be the not-ideal part yeah

Did Billboard ever have an airplay chart only for radio stations that bragged about not playing Rap?

"Soak Up The Sun" #1 for 400 weeks

Smash Hits used to advertise itself as 100% PURE POP (a 12 year old Billie Piper was the actress iirc) but clearly pure pop means something different over in the US. Or does NV think Smash Hits was racist?

yes

fair enough then

http://youtu.be/x_7tWa-QFpA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_7tWa-QFpA

Did Billboard ever have an airplay chart only for radio stations that bragged about not playing Rap?

this would be the adult contemporary format and related ones (hot adult contemporary, adult pop)... the ones whose program directors say things like "I think the Macklemore & Ryan Lewis version was very well done. However, for a radio station like ours that has the moniker, 'Today's best hits without the rap,' playing that song wasn't an option."

http://www.billboard.com/charts/adult-contemporary
http://www.billboard.com/charts/adult-pop-songs

yes

― Hastings Banter (Noodle Vague), Sunday, 11 May 2014 20:21 (1 hour ago)

pls elaborate ya unlovable old prick

sorry for thread derail guys

you may as well explain why you think Smash Hits was racist since you were asked so nicely.

the phrase "pure pop" always has racialized undertones to me

yep

the notion of "pure pop" is stacked with racial undertones, from its general use to refer to a deracinated genre cut adrift from black musical forms to the worst connotations of the word "pure". thinking about it is a nuanced task bound to draw objections from people who "don't see colour" and who think a lot of racial subtexts are imaginary, and i didn't want to intrude that complex debate into a thread covering somewhat different territory.

the connotations of a concept used by different people in different circumstances certainly aren't reducible to a question as daft as "was this old magazine racist y/n?" my initial response to the rev was just to agree that i shared his instincts, and i didn't want to spin this into a topic i thought was frivolous.

that's what i think, we could start a new thread if we need to discuss whether there are any racial subtexts in pop music reception/criticism. there might be the odd one that already exists.

you should start a new one then because if one exists good luck searching for it.
I still dont think Smash Hits meant it with any racialized undertones though but we can discuss that elsewhere if you start it, NV

whether one means to be racist (or sexist, or homophobic etc) is of literally zero relevance to whether one's words or actions ARE racist (or sexist, or homophobic etc)

"pure pop" (and "perfect pop") are racialised phrases to me in very obvious ways, though i wouldn't single out smash hits are a foremost perpetrator of them. neither would i single smash hits out as a particularly significant vehicle of racism, even coded or subconscious, but i'm pretty certain that if we were to re-read back issues from the 80s a host of phrases and assumptions would be racially dubious, just by dint of the fact that it was a publication with a majority white staff in a society where racism was (and still is) endemic. (this is also true for just about every publication you can think of btw.)

Iggy Azalea has the #1 hit now and as Whiney points out on twitter, the last 4 rap songs to go #1 are all by white people.

ohhhh lord 2pac big please talk to this sucker cause they killing hip hop they taking the pain and struggle of life of hip hop the only thing we coulda express our minds and pain. and these suckers took it and made it look like garbage thats why we get judge so much cause these shit dont be making sence

I guess that's not counting "Timber" but ok fair enough

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bn9Usy-CAAIOXLZ.jpg:large

a bigoted rapper, never thought i'd see the day

diversity hire
btw fuck the direction of all this

i mean fucking pat boone's gonna drop a single with dj mustard next week about his paramours at assisted living right? thats where this is going.

Tbf rap had a good thirty years plus before this moment how long did rock have

Fuck the direction of all this, yes. You can't make me dislike "Fancy," tho.

"Fancy" doesn't exist without the Charli hook though.

when people talk about "Fancy" I get excited for a split second but then I realize they're not talking about Bobbie Gentry

same. bobbie was finer than iggy, too.

when certain people tweet about it i read them as talking about the-dream song

I keep thinking of Drake.

See what I'm willing to bet with THIS post

https://twitter.com/WhitStillman/status/472040503522127872

...is that Whit Stillman only knows white rappers anyway.

there are worst things to be than the Rick von Sloneker of Atlanta hip-hop.

disappointed that out of all the enormously radio-friendly dj mustard and imitation-mustard tracks blanketing urban and rhythmic radio recently, this was basically the only one to instantly cross over to pop and therefore dominate the charts

i will lose hope if "2 on" also fails

It didn't cross over to pop really. Pop radio championed it from day one, whereas Urban is just now picking it up. The same thing happened with Macklemore.

yeah you're right, that was a bad way to phrase it. i'm not exactly sure but based on my own listening it seemed like rhythmic was playing it first, with pop following close behind, and urban starting to play catch-up now. i guess i put it that way to highlight pop radio's aversion to all these other songs even though they have the same sound going for them.

'2 on' the most instagrammed song in brooklyn lol hipstrs

you saying you don't like it d-40?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/06/04/iggy_azalea_fancy_is_no_1_how_did_this_australian_become_such_a_popular.html

speaking of billboard trends (she said in an attempt to make her question relevant), what was the last cover song to hit #1? And I mean a legit cover, not like the demo leaked on youtube or w/e.

ok I checked and I think it was "lady marmalade" in 2001

Before that it was "candle in the wind" in 1997

Then "can't help falling in love" in 1993

Is the cover officially dead? Did sampling kill it? Discuss.

There was also 'I Swear' by All 4 One in 1994.

Wait, I didn't know "I Swear" is a cover.

And Monica's Angel of Mine in 1998

You probably never turned on Country Radio in the mid 90s.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16yarf4ZCwA

Granted when I first heard it I thought that the John Michael Montgomery version came after.

covers still happen they just don't seem to get released as singles or hit #1, would guess the absence this century due to adult contemporary losing it's influence on the #1 spot, except for 'lady marmalade' almost all the covers to hit #1 for several years before that - 'candle in the wind', 'i swear', 'can't help falling in love', 'i will always love you', 'i'll be there', 'don't let the sun go down on me', 'when a man loves a woman' (shudder) - got major play on ac (and the british 'angel of mine' was effectively a demo as far as the us in 1998 was concerned). then again it's not like covers are burning it up on the ac chart, i probably missed something but i think the most recent cover to hit #1 ac that's not a xmas song (which do freakishly well) is sheryl crow's 'the first cut is the deepest'. thought 'ok maybe covers don't really make it to #1 that often', of those i listed above all except 'candle in the wind' (an outlier for obv reasons) come bunched together at the beginning of the decade so it's a pretty long window w/ virtually no covers hitting #1. however a cover hits #1 on the ac chart every single year of the 80s, though generally only one cover hits #1. hot 100 isn't quite as consistent - there are three years at the beginning of the decade w/ no covers hitting #1 - but i think there are actually more covers hitting #1 on the hot 100 overall for the decade, 1987 alone has five covers hit #1, 1988 has four. w/ this data i'm guessing that covers hitting #1 on the hot 100 isn't so much a reflection of ac's influence as some larger factor in the culture, maybe boomers making up such a distorted portion of the market that they're being pandered to (esp by the late 80s where the covers generally aren't remotely as obscure as big early 80s hits like 'bette davis eyes' or 'i love rock n roll'), the #1 covers of the early 90s all crossing over from ac is probably a reflection of that format lagging behind pop, generally being slow to change.

Oh wow, this inspired me to look up the ORIGINAL original "Lady Marmalade" and jesus christ this is terrible. Wow. Thank god Allen Toussaint and Labelle rescued it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeWMdoetN6Y