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

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?

Yes, I mean that some post stuff on their own blogs sooner. Chicago Reader just had something about Mumford & Sons itunes and Billboard success.

billboard reports:

Due to its pure pop, even dubstep-leaning, sound, "Trouble" does not appear on the newly-revamped Country Songs chart, which, as of last week, now blends airplay, sales and streaming data; it's also not being promoted to country radio. "Never" spends a second week atop the tally

so their main criterion seems to be whether it's promoted to that radio format?? at least that is what i'm figuring because i don't see how "we are never" is any less 'pure pop'

well there's a country mix are "We Are Never" that was sent to country radio -- it was a moderate country radio hit before the chart changes. i wonder if this means not all Rihanna singles will be on the R&B chart, because the overtly dancey stuff like "We Found Love" generally isn't promoted to urban radio -- although to me "Diamonds" doesn't seem to have significantly more appeal there, aside from being midtempo.

the Mumford & Sons album has been out for 3 weeks btw

published my first rant on the topic:
http://www.splicetoday.com/music/meet-the-new-charts-worse-than-the-old-charts

that was great al, good work

Seriously. Great piece, cuts right to the heart of the problems.

great article! i think there's a story yet to be told about who benefits, and what those ppl did in order to get thid change in place

thiS

Agreed, and you wagged a finger at Billboard editor without losing your cool.

wagging a finger without losing his cool is really the essence of al ship

ha ha

Well done btw.

billboard should just get rid of every chart except the hot 100

is billboard 'too big to fail'? should billboard be nationalized for the benefit of the public?

thanks y'all

tagged werde on twitter, not thrilled w/ his response but i didn't expect much anyway, i just wanted to be heard

Bill Werde ‏@bwerde
@alshipley I respectfully disagree w much of your logic. But I've also addressed virtually every point already on twitter.

Bill Werde ‏@bwerde
@alshipley I'll add: you say "listeners" decided genre in old way. Not true. Only radio did. Now listeners do, via iTunes, Spotify etc.

And did he address said points or is he blowing smoke?

that's pointedly ignoring the fact that itunes and spotify have certain demographics and userbases that mean their results are skewed in important ways

some dude vs old dude

from his picture i imagine he's maybe around my age or not a whole lot older

my piece was finished a few days ago so there ARE some things he's said to other people since then that address my points. am prob going to direct some specific questions to him on twitter tonight or tomorrow, will probably bring up m@tt's point and if anyone else has anything they'd like addressed

It seems he has not addressed the difference between itunes demographics and r'n'b/rap radio demographics

Would it be possible to think noz's pitchfork piece in conjunction with this?
http://pitchfork.com/features/hall-of-game/8969-record-sales-and-digital-scales/

I've got to admit that I find it a bit more problematic than shipley's piece though.

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis are in the r&b top 5.

errr top 25, it ain't that bad.

but still, goddamn

can somebody explain the relationship between the genre charts and radio playlists? cause i feel like there's something crucial i'm still not understanding. like, if a genre chart gets swamped by crossover/pop megastars, what's the impact on, say, the playlist of a radio station that specializes in that genre? why does it have to have any impact at all?

I haven't seen anyone arguing that radio playlists are going to change as a result of the new chart methodology, but I suppose if stations are using Billboard charts as a tool to tell them what's hot in their genre then those charts could have an impact.

well, given that the change is a week old, it's hard to say what the long term effect will be on radio, if any. my fear is that a lot more stations will start to sound like the one awkwardly straddling urban and pop playlists in D.C. that i described upthread: Itunes, Billboard, and the marginalization of black music and black audiences in America

Some of Werde's tweets seemed to imply that he does not recognize, as was noted upthread, that r'n'b/rap radio stations receive calls and communication from their listeners; and that simply dismissing the old way as "radio" dictating, is not fully accurate. He also does not get into how itunes and spotify listeners make their selections.

http://www.spin.com/blogs/how-did-psys-gangnam-style-become-the-no-1-rap-song-in-the-country

yeah i saw that the other day, nice of brandon to give me a shoutout

i tweeted a bunch of follow-up questions to Werde (including about why the R&B/Hip-Hop chart includes any popular R&B of any kind but pop rap like PSY and Flo Rida is still excluded) but dude seems to be actively ignoring me while engaging w/ belligerent Carrie Underwood fans

i mean i have a lot of respect for what he and billboard do, and he seems to be friendly w/ some of my people (maura, whiney), so maybe i got off on the wrong foot w/ him, it's a shame

He seems to be defensive in general, so it might be hard for anyone to get him to address this further

NYT article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/27/arts/music/billboards-chart-changes-draw-fire.html?pagewanted=1&ref=arts

Salt-n-Pepa's Legends of Hip Hop Tour featuring: Salt-n-Pepa, Doug E. Fresh, Big Daddy Kane, Right Said Fred, Kool Moe Dee and Kurtis Blow.

i mean i have a lot of respect for what he and billboard do, and he seems to be friendly w/ some of my people (maura, whiney), so maybe i got off on the wrong foot w/ him, it's a shame

It's not like you were abrasive.

The weird thing is that "Diamonds" is on the R&B chart while "Let Me Love You," which is right behind it on the Hot 100, isn't -- even though the latter, while having dancepop leanings, sounds much more in line with the R&B format. (The other night I heard a live version of it -- dude's band is unbelievably tight.) Would love to know how the decisions as far as which songs go on which charts are made.

Also I didn't realize that all the format-specific charts now use total radio airplay stats (hence "Diamonds" barreling up to No. 1 from No. 66 on the R&B chart and staying there and ugh I loathe that song so much, it's so DREARY). That seems to eliminate the need for genre-specific charts in my eyes. Or maybe it's a leading indicator in the way radio is going -- music formats that aren't top-40/Hot AC/primarily old songs are certainly on the wane here in NYC (the merger of Kiss-FM and WBLS so that ESPN Radio could get the 98.7 frequency, the recently resurgent alt-rock station at 101.9 FM imminently being taken over by sports chat). It's depressing, especially given that the discovery tools on digital-music services are for the most part pretty poor.

Six R&B (or "R&B") songs entered the R&B/Hip-Hop chart in October. Six.

Ciara - "Sorry"
Faith Evans - "Tears of Joy"
Whitney Houston - "I Look to You"
Rihanna - "Diamonds"
Avery Sunshine - "Ugly Part of Me"
The Weeknd - "Wicked Games"

did they randomly change their minds about including train on the rock chart or did it just drop so much that i can't see it on the online version of the chart? i am guessing it's not the latter considering some of the things located in the 10-25 region of the chart rn

lmao yup, looks like they removed the song from the chart after one week, when it debuted at peaked at #4. that they are actually changing their minds about what songs merit inclusion on a chart shows how much of a mess this shit is. shameful.

considering that I didn't see anyone else make the point about Train publicly before my piece, i'm very tempted to take some credit for that

i mean i have a lot of respect for what he and billboard do, and he seems to be friendly w/ some of my people (maura, whiney), so maybe i got off on the wrong foot w/ him, it's a shame

Twitter has basically allowed every semi-major dude to treat any legit critic of their actions as the equivalent of the worst twit-trolls they've encountered.