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

edm has pretty clearly peaked though - witness gaga flopping (which really shouldn't have been a surprise w/ ke$ha flopping before her and the decline of b.e.p.). maybe if there had been a big a flo rida or kid cudi release this year (and maybe there were and they flopped to i don't know) maybe you would have had an african american artist hit #1. those guys always felt like also rans to me though, hard to imagine a market w/ no place for b.e.p. and gaga but plenty of time for fucking flo rida. i know ppl point to gaga or maybe grudging admit b.e.p. for spearheading that but i've always thought 2007 was obv year zero for that w/ timbaland hitting w/ 'the way i are' and obv 'stronger' standing in for the moment when daft punk were finally actually mainstream. six years is a normal lifespan for a style's moment - by 96/97 the early 90s altwave had clearly crested, by 98/99 the babyface era that you could say was ushered (heh) in by the bodyguard ost was effectively over, by 91/92 the era of hair metal dominance that came in w/ the mid-80s (i know traditionally ppl point to quiet riot but i'd argue homogeneity doesn't set in until slippery when wet) obv died. i'm not sure how to track the early 00s era, it seems to multi-varied to me (even w/ the all hip-hop top ten it's not like it was all crunk), but that might just be cuz i actually liked that era. drake is a very interesting case though, seems like if a music journalist really wanted to look into this a good approach might be to look at what pop stations don't play drake and then figure out why (ie call them and ask 'why don't you play drake'). there's an obv potential downside here though in that it could lead to more drake being played on the radio.

probably bc they're anti-semitic

i don't think you would be able to find a single pop station that hadn't played "hold on we're going home" or "take care" or "find your love" or "best i ever had"

Wait, what? New York has WKTU, which didn't lean on R&B but which has definitely exterminated much of the freestyle that it used to play in favor of (more) Eurohouse clones. (It even had a four-hour block on Sunday nights that was devoted to freestyle, and that was put out to pasture in 2011 or 2012.)

I don't think EDM has peaked, though. Kiss 108 is all "Clarity" and that Avicii song and the Zedd track with Hayley Williams on lead vocal.

Unless we're counting "Harlem Shake" there hasn't been an EDM #1 since January of last year.

yeah, i mean, the year-end pop songs chart has, peppered in among thicke and macklemore and piano ballads: zedd, taylor swift dubstep song, imagine dragons dubstep song, swedish house mafia, avicii, daft punk, calvin harris, calvin harris, lana del rey dance remix...i wouldn't be surprised if the 2014 year-end chart is less EDM but if the trend is on the way out it's not going very quickly.

http://www.billboard.com/charts/year-end/2013/hot-pop-songs

Miles Raymer predicts a "country-EDM boom" in 2014, with "Timber" and "Wake Me Up" leading the way:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2013/11/26/pitbull-prepares-us-for-the-country-edm-boom-of-2014

I feel more that edm, rather than being on the way out, has just infected nearly every song on the charts that isn't a throwback of some kind--sort of the way that in the late 70s-early 80s lots of non-disco songs had disco elements.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXyzOEAJVB4

"His work is motivated purely by profit, and from the start has remained untainted by any apparent ideas about art or urges to express his inner life. Pitbull makes music to make money, and that's pretty much end of story."

this is why I love Pitbull

I feel more that edm, rather than being on the way out, has just infected nearly every song on the charts that isn't a throwback of some kind--sort of the way that in the late 70s-early 80s lots of non-disco songs had disco elements.

― I got the glares, the mutterings, the snarls (President Keyes), Thursday, December 19, 2013 9:28 AM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah...you take something like "Locked Out of Heaven," which is a pretty faithful homage to Police songs from the '70s, also have this four-on-the-floor EDM chorus.

Wait, what? New York has WKTU, which didn't lean on R&B but which has definitely exterminated much of the freestyle that it used to play in favor of (more) Eurohouse clones. (It even had a four-hour block on Sunday nights that was devoted to freestyle, and that was put out to pasture in 2011 or 2012.)

― maura, Thursday, December 19, 2013 1:31 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

u right. my coworker corrected himself.

in that case i have no idea why people haven't realized that the reason black artists aren't on the charts is that they also aren't really on rhythmic which serves as a connective tissue between R&B and/or hip-hop radio and top 40

because a lot of people don't really listen to the radio anymore?

at least in the subset of "people who write about music." even those who do, probably couldn't tell you the exact delineation of radio format besides, I dunno, "this station does things like cut Lil Wayne out of Kevin Rudolf songs"

lmao right now

not sure why that's funny? I mean, sure, the difference between contemporary top 40 and hip-hop is pretty obvious to the layperson, but without a specific grounding in radio, the delineation between rhythmic top 40 or rhythmic contemporary or mainstream top 40 is not completely obvious, let alone the internal politics/pressures that go into those. most people I talk to know radio stations by their numbers and general idea.

'general idea' = format

like, when i was a kid, i knew 'rhythmic' by everything but name—it was chicago's B96, and they played house music/ace of base (and the occasional snoop dogg/skee lo) until about '97, and then it was rap through about '06, and then it slipped back towards edm

but i always knew what kinds of songs i'd hear on rhythmic vs. WGCI which was rap, R&B, and occasionally gospel or old school, or Power 92 which would do street rap, some pop R&B, and juke. Or Kiss FM, which did pop music with guitars included. etc

I don't think radio is nearly as dead as people say. if you grow up in a certain place you still get to know the dial

Miles Raymer predicts a "country-EDM boom" in 2014, with "Timber" and "Wake Me Up" leading the way:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2013/11/26/pitbull-prepares-us-for-the-country-edm-boom-of-2014

― jaymc, Thursday, December 19, 2013 2:24 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

surprised this article doesn't talk about Avicii's current single "Hey Brother" which takes the country EDM crossover as far as I've heard it taken yet. Not to mention Miley's album. Or the "The Spark" by Afrojack, which has somebody named Spree Wilson on it. Except... that hasn't been released in the US it seems??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB3lcPjvWLA

i saw "The Spark" on MTV Hits a while back and was entranced by its awfulness

ime most of the people claiming radio is dead live in big cities and don't drive cars

^^^ indeed

i have no idea if the the buggles drove

roger taylor definitely drove though. he was in love with his car.

it's less that "radio is dead" (it isn't) and more that music writers, on the whole, tend to both listen to music through other means and be the ones talking about this

Raymer mentions Miley.

it's not even whether "radio" is dead entirely - part of the problem with the genre charts is that they now include input from ALL stations, like the Hot 100 does, when they used to only use data from influential stations in specific formats (which is why the "Cruise" remix w/ nelly was multi-week mega number one on Hot Country Songs long after the non-remix had peaked on Country Airplay, which still only features input from country stations). So not only is youtube arguably being overvalued, the value of crossover is also being compounded. Even if everybody in small towns are driving cars and learning about tunes that way, small town stations have always been the lowest rung on the totem pole - the labels smooch large market ass because large market stations are the ones that primarily report to billboard. it's not that radio doesn't matter any more, or that billboard isn't paying attention to it - it's still the difference between one week in the top 40 and fifteen weeks in the top 10 - but that everybody's focused on the "crossover" market, which tends to aim for novelty, mor dance, etc, and its making it harder for someone who's not a country-techno-feat-a-famous-person to break through. the overwhelming whiteness of the year and the sloppy billboard changes are just unignorable evidence of a situation that's been brewing for a while.

kinda torn between cynically accepting this is how pop music's always evolved - styles blending into MOR dance before a technological development or fashion trend disrupts the norm - and fretting that the industry has given up on itself. but then i'm at the age to be doing that.

i'm not trying to make a "see, this isn't the first year the top of the chart was predominately dancin' white people, so stop worrying and the love the bomb" argument because you can't dismiss that this has been a really extreme example of that and that it happened to come with some dramatic changes to the chart's metrics. however, a look at pre-mtv/pre-rap 1980's #1s is worthwhile: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Billboard_Hot_100_number-one_singles_of_1980

pink floyd and billy joel even bringing the "questionable class pride over dance beat" heat

wait it was my understanding that genre charts take airplay from related format stations but sales (and i guess youtube if they factor that into the subcharts) are undifferentiated cuz it's much more difficult to distinguish between markets w/ itunes than it was when you had brick and mortar specialized stores. good lord if what you're saying is write than i can't imagine the charts having any value to any potential market - radio or labels (or nerds). and yeah that immediate post-disco pre-mj era is crazy lilywhite - radio and mtv were pretty openly racist (seriously check out immediately before 'billie jean' - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Billboard_Hot_100_number-one_singles_of_1982)(and mtv's already having an impact there - hello human league)(hall and oates as robin thicke!).

from wikipedia:

The Hot Country Songs chart methodology was changed starting with the October 20, 2012 issue to match the Billboard Hot 100: digital downloads and streaming data are combined with airplay from all radio formats to determine position. A new chart, the Country Airplay chart, was created using the previous methodology (airplay exclusively from country radio stations). Following the change, Taylor Swift's "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together", a pop song whose country remix had been falling from its peak in the mid-teens on the country chart when the change took effect, shot up to number one on the new chart due to the success of the pop version on non-country stations; it would begin the longest run at #1 on the country chart since the 1960s. However, its length of stay at #1 was soon surpassed by Florida Georgia Line's "Cruise". It has likewise remained buoyed by a pop remix featuring Nelly, long after the song fell into recurrent status on country radio); it has had the longest stay at number one of any song in the country chart's history.[3]

and yeah even though those early 80s charts are after the disco bubble popped there's still disco all over them (including yes pink floyd). anyone who's ever read chuck eddy knows it never actually went away but that doesn't mean 'disco' wasn't a joke by the time reagan got shot and the bee gees had to farm their songs out cuz they knew radio wouldn't go near them.

Bill Werde is out, Janice Min is in.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/business/media/new-leader-at-billboard-sees-future-in-visuals.html

I doubt this will lead to a reversal of the genre charts policy but it looks like they'll be big changes ahead, judging by her track record.

*there'll

MEDIUMS

yeah, i don't think there's much in the way of hesitation about recent changes, it is what it is.

in my limited interactions on twitter with Werde regarding this stuff, he did not seem to care for my opinion, but he was definitely a music guy and I respected his opinion -- replacing him with someone from the Hollywood Reporter and US Weekly is a bit worrying, but there's still a lot of smart nuts-and-bolts music people over there.

wait, i don't see anything in the article about him leaving his position at billboard tho

like, he is the editorial director and this article says janice min will be co-president and chief creative officer

oh never mind i just checked his twitter feed and he is indeed leaving billboard

yeah -- everything on their and his end is worded very carefully and he's implying that the company is going to find something else for him to do, but there's clearly a regime change going on

CHRIS MOLANPHY FOR OVERALL GURU

Couldn't you argue though that being a "music guy" is sort of what caused these changes in the first place

Like the adherence to rigid music-nerd 'genre' definitions over demographic considerations

Just spitballin here I don't know Werde at all

i dunno, maybe? those were huge decisions that must've taken dozens of people agreeing, i dunno how much he personally was really behind them. i'm just saying he seem to come to the job as a music lover, not as someone who had fixed US Weekly and was now going to fix Billboard.

Ha yes I particularly like when Werde waxes nostalgic for his days as a '90s raver.

Chris Molanphy talking about this topic on a Slate podcast today (starts at minute 23):

http://player.fm/series/slates-culture-gabfest/the-culture-gabfest-from-now-on-this-gabfest-is-a-space-for-silent-reflection-edition

ugh

http://www.buzzfeed.com/perpetua/no-black-artists-number-one-2013

i knew when i saw perpetua in the link

The backlash to bling is finally upon us.

The only changes to the charts that bother me are the genre chart changes. The inclusion of iTunes and YouTube stuff was inevitable because the chart first and foremost operates for music industry insiders and iTunes and YouTube are huge sources of income for the music industry right now. Still absurd that they counted 30 second "Harlem Shake" video views though.