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

I should sit down and figure out what it is about Lorde that is shielding me from my normal phobic reaction to stuff like this, particularly when everyone else I know who tends along similar taste lines is hating the fuck out of her and my main reaction is "her big song is eh but these other songs RULE"

i just mean, lorde sounds like she would fit in on R&B radio easily. vs. say miley cyrus, whose shit—politics aside—sounds more like a mainstream pop record

Noticed there are two Eminem songs super high on the hip-hop/R&B charts this week. Do your rap stations ever play Eminem? Mine never, never never never does. (tbf It has a very long history of NOT playing Eminem, but still, it's an interesting example of a station ignoring the charts).

― Evan R, Friday, October 25, 2013 4:30 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah if you wanna see the hip-hop/R&B chart without all the itunes/YouTube stuff factored in, there's still an airplay-only chart:
http://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-r-and-b-hip-hop-airplay

definitely no Eminem on there, only songs of his that have gotten any rap radio play the last 10 years were the one with Rihanna and the one with Drake/Kanye/Wayne.

improbably, i remember the one with the haddaway sample being big for like ten days, but you may dismiss that fairly as anecdotal

Radio has all-around been ignoring Eminem this year. He's being kept afloat by his very big, very dedicated fanbase buying his songs.

yeah "No Love" was a very minor urban radio hit (#59 on hip-hop/R&B) and did slightly better on pop radio (#20 on Pop Songs). "Berzerk" is starting to get some pop radio play but not a ton.

Eminem is on the very shortlist of rap artists (along with Lil Jon and Dr. Dre circa Chronic 2001) whose old hits are still played constantly on my Kiss FM station, with otherwise almost completely avoids music made before 2012. Not sure if that reflects a local preference or if there's some L.A. Clear Channel CEO who just really rides for those old songs and makes all stations play them

they've been playing "royals" on hot 97 for a few weeks now

they played the Weeknd remix of "Royals" on one rap station for a sec but have since moved onto the original

in baltimore, i mean

weeknd seems like one of those dudes all ppl in urban industry know about & care about but sorta, in the abstract, rather than playing on the radio say

well i mean those stations all played the shit out of "Wicked Games" and "Crew Love." but yeah the remix of "Royals" seems like something they strategized to help break the song in that format but in the end the original had such wide appeal that it was a moot point.

"her big song is eh but these other songs RULE"

tbh I haven't heard any of her other songs

between the top 40 and rhythmic stations in my city i am actually hearing "berzerk" a decent amount. the actual hip-hop station hasn't touched him tho (unless he's featuring on someone else's track). but yeah "royals" is getting A LOT of play on that station now :\

i had assumed that maybe it was solicited to that format but the billboard article says that these are unsolicited plays. i really am wondering how this happened.

i will laugh/cry if billboard decides to add her to the main r&b chart, where she would debut at #1.

my local radio top ten consists of "Royals," "Berzerk," Avicii, and uh "Still Into You."

Only four songs in the top ten, that's Florida for you.

if billboard hadn't fucked up their charts you could actually get a good reading of 'royals' dispersal on r&b radio. curious whether two years ago they would've had to make any call at all or if it would've just shown up on the r&b charts due to it's success in the r&b markets. i'm guessing someone at billboard back in 1974 didn't just decide 'bennie and the jets' was r&b, r&b djs and listeners decided it was and even then it peaked at #15 r&b while it went to #1 pop. just incompetent methodology and i'm not convinced that the death of black record stores or consolidation of radio stations really made billboard's job here more difficult, don't buy for a second there's less data now about the markets and listenerships of tracks than there was forty years ago.

Any connection? http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/24770319

Katy Perry has topped the US album chart in its worst week for sales since the early 1990s.

Prism, the singer's fourth studio album, went to number one in the Billboard 200 chart on Wednesday despite overall sales for the week being the lowest since 1991.

The album sold 286,000 copies in its first week, according to figures from Nielsen SoundScan.

It is the biggest sales week by a female artist this year.
Album sales have generally been lower this year compared with last year, partly because of listeners finding new digital platforms to consume music and often for free.

Katy Perry's album came ahead of Miley Cyrus' Bangerz, which sold 270,000 copies in its first week earlier this month.

Prism, the singer's fourth studio album, went to number one in the Billboard 200 chart on Wednesday despite overall sales for the week being the lowest since 1991.

weird sentence. isn't it easier to go number one against a bunch of low selling records?

Yeah, the "despite" is the problem.

Why is it the lowest since 1991? Would think that would be more sales than now

91 is when they started keeping track.

Any connection?

Only really as far as the collapse of the industry has caused them to rely on the safest bets (mainstream pop, country) to the exclusion of other genres. How many rap albums have even come out on major labels this year? A dozen? Ten years ago it had to be around 100 if not more.

Another factor there is that I think we're seeing a change in thinking regarding how songs make money and how they break, those genres are safer but maybe more importantly more friendly to being used in ads or licensed for TV or like you know Carrie Underwood just replaced Hank in the are you ready for some football thing before Sunday Night Football

Major labels ignoring a LOT of styles so yes playing it very safe and whilst actual music will not suffer the charts inevitably will as no one will hear about it apart from actual music aficionado's who will dig deep. It will work against the majors I'm sure. Pathetic they need to gerrymander specialist charts to keep the same few artists in them at the top.

Swearing is a factor too, used to hurt your radio & marketability but helped sell records & tapes to kids in their teens, now no one buys anything so it's mostly a detriment

Is the album dead? US album sales slump

eminem #1 on r&b/hip-hop songs this week, will prob be there for quite a while (his song w/ rihanna)

tila tequila's new nazi rap song charting seems like the inevitable end of this nonsense

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/10/how-tila-tequilas-warm-new-embrace-of-adolf-hitler-is-going-down-at-stormfront/

maybe the invocation of godwin's law is what billboard needs to change their Top 40 metrics

haha OTM

i just keep staring at that url

goole otm there's no way i'm clicking that link

esp. not at work, but probably ever

I'll just assume the answer is "not very well".

oh you'd be surprised

Bloody hell "Jewluminati"

sorry but lol:

“She’s got 2 million followers. People will listen to her. The Zionist veneer is finally crumbling.”

So.... as the end of the year is approaching, is it still true, as Rev writes on his tumblr that "Rihanna and Nicki Minaj are the only black women to have top ten hits so far this DECADE" or have there been developments?

xp but this made me lol

“It’s insulting to Adolf Hitler to have that promiscuous, degenerate, mongrel defending him. She makes me want to vomit.”

So.... as the end of the year is approaching, is it still true, as Rev writes on his tumblr that "Rihanna and Nicki Minaj are the only black women to have top ten hits so far this DECADE" or have there been developments?

― longneck, Thursday, December 12, 2013 6:27 AM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

with the exception of "I Will Always Love You" charting after Whitney died (as Rev has noted), yeah this is still true. put it this way: Beyonce hasn't had a top 10 hit since 2009, and who else can you think of that might've had one lately?

Not many. One thing I don't understand though: why is Lorde's Royals charting on the Airplay chart but not on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop chart? Where is the logic in that?

i mean...if they'd counted it as R&B a few months ago when it was only being played on pop radio and alternative radio, it'd be pretty ridiculous for it to top the R&B chart just off of downloads, etc. same thing goes for when other big pop hits that aren't exactly R&B start to get some urban radio play (like "Get Lucky" a while ago). but now that "Royals" is top 10 on R&B Airplay, that does raise the question of whether it might get grandfathered onto the main chart at some point if it's a big enough hit. i'm not sure that it should, though? maybe, i guess.

this'll be the first year in history with no hot 100 #1 by a black artist as the lead artist (t.i., pharrell and rihanna are all features).

+ the first year where lead white artists have spent longer at number one throughout the year on the r&b, rap and r&n/hip-hop charts

wow

Billboard's year-end charts should be out soon (they use data from December of the previous year through the end of November), it'll be interesting to see the contrast between the R&B/Hip-Hop year-end chart that may be almost entirely Robin/Justin/Macklemore/Eminem and the Airplay-only chart.

Get Lucky is disco, so I would assume back then a lot of the r&b chart was disco right?

yeah i just mean, it's by a 'dance' act, it's biggest on 'pop' formats, etc. obviously there's all sorts of weird crossed wires with older R&B styles becoming retro and then something like Cee-Lo's "Fuck You" basically functions as pop and R&B radio doesn't play it.

one might say there are a lot of blurred lines