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

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

a pop ballad!

Y'all are dumping some depressing facts for a Friday evening. Jesus.

The "Jesus" part being for the facts, not for the good work you folks are doing itt.

Top song by a black artist without a white guest artist is #27 (Rihanna again, "Diamonds")

I think it's interesting that not only has this been a precedent year without a black performer as main artist receiving a #1, but that some of the most successful songs of the year have heavily featured black performers. T.I. and Pharrell on Blurred Lines, Aloe Blacc on Wake Me Up, Wanz and Ray Dalton on both of Macklemore's big hits, now Rihanna on The Monster. In particular for Macklemore's hits, these artists provide the hook and most memorable parts of the song, but are completely invisible in wider discussion of the runaway success of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis.

relevant: aloe blacc uncredited on "Wake Me Up"

Jody Rosen had the best "instantaneous" response: he pointed out which songs sounded like garbage.

relevant: aloe blacc uncredited on "Wake Me Up"

― katherine, Friday, December 13, 2013 7:28 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

there are no credits on the avicii album tho for whatever reason

i had heard that aloe blacc was on some hit song but i didn't realize it was that gigantic EDM mumford & sons shitpile

Haven't had time to update myself w/ the Beyonce thread yet but any chance Bey gets a song to #1 on the Hot100 before Jan? I know there haven't been official single releases yet + single sales from the album don't start til the 20th

i think some of the songs will chart soon, at the very least. some of the the 30-second previews on her youtube channel are getting a lot of views, and we know from the harlem shake thing that only a short duration of a song actually needs to be streamed in order for it to count to billboard. don't think anything would go #1 though.

yeah -- i think it'll be like the Eminem album, several songs in the top 20 after the release, but one will only go to #1 if radio gets behind it like "Monster."

in fact, now that i think of it, the "superstar release new single to iTunes, it goes straight to #1" phenomenon that used to happen several times a year may be coming to an end. the last #1 debut was T-Swift over a year ago, and this year the biggest debut only got "Roar" to #2 and then it took a couple weeks to get to #1 when airplay and stuff gave it that last little boost.

this is probably related to the YouTube/streaming metrics on the Hot 100 and the fact that iirc iTunes singles sales have finally stopped growing every year.

"Best Song Ever" also debuted at #2 but then fell right away.

heh

yeah -- unlike "Roar" or "Monster," it never got higher than the teens on the Radio Songs chart (One Direction really have only had one big U.S. radio hit, everything else has been driven by iTunes/YouTube).

Why does US radio not play stuff thats actually selling then?

in the case of an act like one direction, it's not that the singles are selling a ton and not getting played -- it's that they have hugely frontloaded but ultimately moderate sales. looking at the first-week sales of a new one direction or justin bieber single has almost always been misleading, so it's not a huge surprise to me that radio is reluctant to hop on board fully w/ these songs. the bieber songs that actually got real radio support (the first 3 singles from believe) managed it partly b/c the sales managed to hang on decently even after the initial surge.

Also, U.S. commercial radio usually only plays what's been actively promoted by record labels. "Get Lucky" put up huge streaming/sales numbers after its release, but the radio stations around here (Chicago) didn't touch it until its radio add date, which was at least a month later, IIRC. (That said, plenty of other stations in the U.S. did recognize the song's popularity and started playing it earlier.)

Chris Molanphy wrote a good thing last year about how radio has always been reluctant with teen pop: http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2012/06/carly_rae_jepsen_justin_bieber_charts.php

Yeah, I hadn't seen that before, but that's a good piece.

the One Direction album is actually not bad -- the best boy band album since 2000.

yeah i enjoy it, but then i was always into "What Makes You Beautiful."

as far as the #1-debut phenom coming to an end... maybe. it seems like promotional schedules are shifting accordingly now that streaming is a big thing for the charts -- more and more singles debuting simultaneously w/ their music videos and so on, or only separated by one week. of course "best song ever" did the simultaneous single/video thing and could only manage #2 despite huge sales numbers and streams, but i think it's only inevitable that some of these will go #1 at some point. like hell, "wrecking ball" was able to jump from #22 to #1 well before it had actually established much radio support.