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

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

royals is #8 on r&b/hip-hop airplay this week. surprised they didn't decide to randomly add it to the main chart the way they decided to remove train et al from the rock chart mid-run.

one thing about "Get Lucky" is that it's literally all black musicians playing/singing except for the quiet orchestral bits + synth parts which are present for less than half the song

wait, sorry, that's not really true. the piano & electric piano are played by chris caswell.

xps Also note that no living American-born black woman has had a top ten hit this decade.

Muttered this over on FB just now but Chris Molanphy saw this paragraph in a new Billboard newsletter -- asterisked emphasis his:

"MUSIC: NOT THE SAME OLD RAP
More than half of millennials call hip-hop/rap one of their favorite music genres, with females offering the same amount of support as males (see chart, page 2). While artists like Eminem, Drake, Lil Wayne and Jay Z continue to score much higher with males in their teens and 20s, what explains the universal enthusiasm? “Hip-hop/rap has a defined identity, a point of view that’s clear and easily identifiable to young people,” Callender explains. “The genre is full of recognizable names and media-savvy personalities. This kind of ambassadorship no doubt gives it a leg up.” ***Hip-hop has also been so big for so long, it has surpassed its traditional boundaries. “Especially among our target, songs formerly considered pop or even EDM could credibly be considered hip-hop/rap.”***"

biggest revelation from this newsletter: there is an act called Sad Clown with the Golden Voice

xps Also note that no living American-born black woman has had a top ten hit this decade.

― when a real whiney hold you down, you sposed to drown (The Reverend), Thursday, December 12, 2013 7:28 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

whaaaaaatttttt

the magnitude of rihanna and beyoncé's fame really masks a lot, huh

Rihanna's had plenty of top 10 hits, but she's not American-born.

If billboard gives Rihanna credit for #1 singles when she takes 5 min to drop a chorus on someone else's song then I assume Janelle Monae gets credit for that horrible "fun" song that went to #1 too tho and that didn't come out that long ago...her name was on it at least, I've managed to block it out of my mind so someone else will have to confirm

that's a good point, i forgot about JM even being on that. what a depressing caveat anyway, though.

i've only ever heard that fun song outside ie not paying attention to it and i've never worked out where janelle actually is on it

I think she does that "carry me home tonight" part.

yeah that's the part, i think i had to watch the music video to tell where she was in the song

rihanna decidedly more prominent in her 'here, i'll sing the chorus for yr shitty song' appearances than janelle is on that fun song.

Just looked at Billboard's year-end chart. Only one song in the top 20 is by a black performer (as primary artist): Rihanna's "Stay" (at #13):
http://www.billboard.com/charts/year-end/2013/hot-100-songs