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

Billboard also chose not to count those 1 million copies of Jay-Z's album that Samsung bought and then gave to its users, even though the RIAA did.

another example of labels withholding data from billboard to prevent songs from charting was the american idol performance singles

When? Not at the beginning! Some of those debuted at number one.

i feel like rebecca black's 'saturday' can be instructive here vis-a-vis youtube and the chart—it got a ridiculous amount of views the weekend it debuted, but didn't chart until two weeks after the fact (even if you factor in the real week/chart week gap) and charted kinda low

(and yes, i understand the hilarity of bringing her up in this thread)

xp: the week-by-week sales of the songs rush-released to itunes have been held back from bb/ss for the purposes of not encouraging/discouraging voters from supporting their own

another example of labels withholding data from billboard to prevent songs from charting was the american idol performance singles

― dyl, Friday, January 31, 2014 5:56 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

When? Not at the beginning! Some of those debuted at number one.

― Bryan Fairy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, January 31, 2014 5:59 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he means the covers performed during the season that are put on iTunes -- sales figures aren't made public so as not to 'spoil' or screw with the phone voting being the only arbiter of who wins on the show. it's only the official singles released at the end of the season that show up on the charts.

Seattle’s KUBE 93, which has regressed from a balanced Rhythmic Crossover outlet to the terrestrial version of Macklemore’s Pandora station

Oh god, tell me about it. They were perfectly decent through about 2009 or so and then just went completely off the end.

there was this sense, both in music and film, in the 80s and 90s that the mainstream was becoming more diverse and less white and would continue on that path, and then at some point things started to reverse in discomforting new ways.

Yeah, I think one of the reasons I've been so alarmist about this is that I grew up in that culture! Even though I lived in an area with few other black people, I never felt disconnected from black culture because it always felt like it was available, whereas until recently I was back in the same area and felt like I was missing out in a way I never had before. Now I've moved to a neighborhood with a large black population and the sense of relief I've felt has been palpable.

Oh, something I noticed! At least one top 40-ish station here has been cutting T.I.'s verse out of "Blurred Lines". What is this, the early 90s?

the grown ppl 'tom joyner in the morning' atlanta r&b station that has a playlist that is at least 60% oldies does this still iirc. this station is awesome fwiw.

man is anyone from atlanta that listens to kiss fm reading this? cuz i really want to know what monica kaufman pearson's show is like. is it just her in oprah/barbara walters mode or does she play music?

yeah there are amazingly still pop stations that play songs with the guest raps excised. the most amazing one i heard years ago that i've probably posted about before is a mix of Nelly Furtado's "Promiscuous" with most of Timbaland's vocals from the verses taken out -- which is doubly absurd because Tim and Nelly are basically rapping in the same cadence and doing these conversational back-and-forth things, but he's a black man and a RAPPER and she's not, so there are all these awkward bits where she's saying a line in response to an awkward silent gap in the vocal track or two non-consecutive Nelly lines are put next to each other in a way that sounds totally wrong.

xp I'd be much more forgiving of an urban ac station doing that. I wish there was an urban ac station here.

pretty sure I would drive off the road if I heard that Garfield Minus Garfield version of "Promiscuous." I'd think I was going insane.

hahahah Garfield Minus Garfield, damn that was a perfect analogy

loool

"...bring that on.......you know what i mean.......hey is that the truth or are you talking trash?"

Oh, something I noticed! At least one top 40-ish station here has been cutting T.I.'s verse out of "Blurred Lines". What is this, the early 90s?

― raggett neds of your summer dress (The Reverend), Friday, January 31, 2014

jesus

lol i have been listening intently to the hot ac station here to see if they'll edit juicy j out of katy perry's "dark horse" even tho the same station plays flo rida and pitbull often now (a few yrs ago that station edited snoop and kanye out of their respective katy perry singles, but they hadn't hopped onto the pit/flo train yet at that pt)

i'm glad there are actual urban and urban ac stations where i am now. the last place i lived didn't have any hip-hop/r&b stations (except for an 80s r&b station which was admittedly great), just a rhythmic guetta-fest.

Where I'm standing, the Garfield thing never went away - ''Payphone'' without Wiz Khalifa, ''California Gurls'' without Snoop...

where are you standing

i haven't listened to much terrestrial music radio in a few years but the last time i can recall encountering the garfield thing in as blatant a manner as mentioned above w/ ti and 'blurred lines' was the jay-z'less verzion of 'crazy in love' star 94 would play at the time, just these long weird instrumental passages. otherwise everything since i've encountered has been like the odb'less version of 'fantasy' where it's a disappointment but it's ultimately just a normal radio edit of the song, if you didn't know what was missing you wouldn't know it was missing.

let's not call all rapper-less radio edits Garfield Minus Garfield, though, "Promiscuous" was special

the summer "california gurls" came out i was working somewhere with radio on 24/7 and i never heard the snoop verse

balls: "California Gurls" was in Columbus, "Payphone" was in New York, not sure what stations though. Agreed that "Promiscuous" is particularly absurd since it is actually a real 'duet' in the sense that the two performers are characters addressing each other in the plot of the song. Though I always did like the idea that Adam Levine was actually trying to call Wiz Khalifa, explaining why the latter seemed so grouchy in his verse.

Aside from the whitewashing, which is noxious, these edits are also dumb and annoying just because they often wreck the structure of a song, effectively chopping the bridge and dropping you back into an endless verse-chorus rotation. Reminds me of some dude pointing out the "Born to Run" epic effect imparted by the often-omitted portions of "Semi-Charmed Life." The version of "No Scrubs" without the rap always feels like a chore to me for this reason - okay, okay, you don't want any scrubs, we get it!

Oh I just remembered a really wild recent example -- I always heard "The Way," the hit by white R&B singer Ariana Grande featuring white rapper Mac Miller, on pop radio with Mac Miller's verse intact. when the local urban station picked up on the song a few months later, they'd only play it with Mac's verse edited out. the rap station took the white rapper off the song!

I only heard the Snoop-less California Gurls on the Hot AC station.

otherwise everything since i've encountered has been like the odb'less version of 'fantasy' where it's a disappointment but it's ultimately just a normal radio edit of the song, if you didn't know what was missing you wouldn't know it was missing.

― balls, Saturday, February 1, 2014 2:50 PM Bookmark

The ODB version was a remix, the ODB-less version is just the original.

i loved your tweet about that song
https://twitter.com/reverenddollars/status/402614350998827008

last run of posts = wow america is even more fucked up than i knew. boggling at you all. why has there not been a revolution?

give me mac miller verses or give me death amirite

It is quite depressing the state of radio in the USA atm

Revolutionary zeitgeist atm is the exclusive province of white ppl afraid for their guns and with a deep hatred for universal health care

Mac Miller verse perhaps edited out to save audience from having to wince at that line about American Beauty and Bruce Almighty

yeah juicy j is edited out of "dark horse" on the hot ac station

rappers getting edited out of pop songs happened even when music by black artists ruled pop music

when i was a kid i distinctly remember hearing a version of "young'n (holla back)" on the miami pop station that was like 1.5 verses with the chorused looped double the amount of times it appears in the original

hell I even remember the lame rap in Black Box's "Strike It Up" getting excised

america is even more fucked up than i knew. boggling at you all. why has there not been a revolution?

revolution began in seattle last night; will steamroll eastward. until: socialism.

http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1600078.1391405583!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_635/super-bowl-seattle.jpg

rappers getting edited out of pop songs happened even when music by black artists ruled pop music

obviously this is true but i posted that b/c i had made a post wondering about whether he would be edited out of that song earlier upthread, + the hot ac station (that i assume is pretty normal among stations of that format) now regularly plays rap in the form of flo rida and pitbull and yet it still does this w/ katy perry songs, even this one whose production is pretty shamelessly rap-influenced. it's just bizarre to me.

rap in the form of flo rida and pitbull doesn't count

or the black eyed peas

yeah they are like basically saying c&c music factory was rap cuzza freedom williams

I heard "Dark Horse" for the first time today, starting during Juicy's verse and was like "YEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH" and then screwfaced so hard when Katy Perry came in.

that is hilarious

this week is probably the first time there have been 3 black artists in the top 10 (as the main artists, not featured acts) in a while: Beyonce with Jay-Z at #2, Jason DeRule with 2 Chainz at #4, Pharrell at #8. of course, the rest of the top 10 also includes A Great Big World, OneRepublic, Passenger and TWO Lorde songs.

First time since April, when "Stay", "Started From the Bottom", "Love Me" were in the top 10.

And as I noted on twitter, Beyonce is now only the third living black female artist to have a top 10 hit in the 2010s.

goddamn

wha??

rihanna
alicia keys
beyonce
?