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

jesus fucking christ

do people care about the album charts?

oh wait i misread, its 10 tracks = an album ... that's still weird

xp the industry seems to care a lot, i mean we have a lot of highly anticipated albums getting pushed back to no end b/c some label people are worried about the albums not being likely to do well enough

it's pretty crazy. there are SO many albums where people only buy/stream the one big single in significant numbers, and they already have a bazillion singles charts to measure that stuff. now those albums are going to jump up the chart too? seems like a matter of time before the next "Harlem Shake" type meme pops off and whatever random indie EP it's on that's only sold 200 copies suddenly shoots up the album chart.

it's just downloads for the 10 tracks though right? you only download a song once

SoundScan and Billboard will count 1,500 song streams from services like Spotify, Beats Music, Rdio, Rhapsody and Google Play as equivalent to an album sale. For the first time, they will also count “track equivalent albums” — a common industry yardstick of 10 downloads of individual tracks — as part of the formula for album rankings on the Billboard 200.

the other big winner would seem to be albums full of short songs/interludes/skits? #hiphopconspiracy

I've always understood Billboard as functioning as a way to demonstrate what's popular and being listened to a lot. So introducing streaming made some sense to me for the Hot 100. But this just seems to go against that. So if people don't really care for an album enough to buy it, but they do buy the one big single from it, every 10 of those purchases gets treated like an album purchase? This only obscures the shrinking market for album sales and lack of interest in albums, it doesn't actually fix the problem of no one buying albums.

a digital purchase/play of Donuts or Double Nickels counts fourfold lol

spotify streams take Dilla to #1 in 2016 after America legalizes Weed #markmywords

billboard should retroactively award flo rida four number 1 albums

heh

typical number of streams in a week for a big hit song: 3 million via subscription services + 7-8 million via youtube
typical sales in a week for a big hit song: 150,000

so an album with only one big hit on it would only have like 2-3 thousand weekly 'copies' added to the itunes/retail sales tally... unless youtube is also incorporated in which case it would add about 6-7 thousand. that's obviously not trivial in an industry where albums by artists with actual hits are now routinely debuting with less than 50k in sales and current albums are often selling less than 10 thousand weekly, but not enormously earth-shattering either? idk.

i wouldn't be surprised to see some annoyingly long runs at the top and fewer albums debuting at #1. and 'albums artists' not doing as well as before, lol.

I keep waiting for a mention of disposable income (people's lack thereof) in discussions about The Way We Consume Music Now and it never comes

^otm

there was some talk about this and a rather astute comment about access to credit upthread but I agree it is horribly underdiscussed

I'm not sure the level of disposable income has shifted that radically but the competition for that income has definitely increased. Teenagers spending, conservatively, $50 a month on phone contracts and maybe $500 - $1000 a year on new tech aren't going to have as much cash burning a hole in their pockets.

i really have no idea how young pop fans - the ones who actually buy music to support the artist, tickets to shows etc - afford it

Selling plasma

Part-time job at Hot Dog on a Stick and living with their parents?

Well, about the whole rap starting to do well on the Hot 100 again cause of viral streaming hits...

Also of note: Effective this week, the methodology for the Hot 100, along with Billboard's genre hybrid songs charts, has changed slightly to rebalance desired chart ratios for sales, airplay and streaming, as the chart's streaming component has often been above its desired average ratio, and download sales noticeably below, in recent weeks. Such adjustments to these multi-data pool charts are common (and have been implemented on the Hot 100 when, for example, sales had increased exponentially).

Bobby Shmurda tumbled 8 spots down the Hot 100 this week, but most of the other rap songs in the top 40 seem pretty unaffected by the changes

Ask Billboard: Why Is There No R&B/Hip-Hop in the Hot 100's Top 10?

Still … it's hard to pin R&B/hip-hop's recent exclusion from the Hot 100's top 10 completely on chart chance. Edison Research VP/music and programming (and Billboard contributor) Sean Ross has long theorized that pure R&B/hip-hop has been usurped by what he's dubbed "turbo-pop" (uptempo, R&B/hip-hop-leaning pop) as top 40 radio's go-to sound for rhythm.

"Top 40 long stopped looking to mainstream R&B/hip-hop stations for titles," Ross wrote early this year, as "Happy" began its run to No. 1. "A few years ago, 'turbo-pop' allowed Rihanna, Usher and Chris Brown to have a separate body of [top 40] hits [concurrent with singles released specifically for R&B/hip-hop radio].

Meanwhile, "Drake scored one hip-hop hit after another, but was welcome at top 40 only with his occasional ventures into R&B like 'Take Care' and 'Hold On, We're Going Home.' "

https://twitter.com/ernestbaker/status/553263768176984064

This probably has zip to do with anything, but I stumbled upon it while working on something and wanted to share:

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/the-rolling-stone-interview-phil-spector-19691101?page=8

omg thanks for posting that interview it's amazing

definitely some worthwhile historical context in terms of the subject of this thread, and dude just dropped an almost 50-year-old bomb in my head re: "like a rolling stone"

the ask billboard link i posted in december mentions that billboard was preparing a feature on this topic for their print magazine. i wonder if that feature has since been published. idek if ppl still read the print edition of billboard anymore...

x-post off topic regarding Spector on ""Like a Rolling Stone"--Wow. "La Bamba" chord changes reworked! Is that right?

You can def sing the La Bamba chorus over the How does it feel? part...

Its a i iv v progression isn't it?

My style is that I know things about recording that other people just don't know. It's simple and clear, and it's easy for me to make hits.

Yeah it's a i iv v you could say it's also Bob Dylan's "Da Doo Ron Ron".

picked me up at seven, looked so fine, in your prime, doo ron

omg thanks for posting that interview it's amazing

co-sign

local hip hop & r&b station played "partition" today and a woman i work with who will almost always turn on one of the top 40 stations was kind of confused because she hadn't heard it before. like, she knows who beyonce is and recognizes her voice and asked me about it and all i could offer was "uh, beyonce doesn't really get played on those stations anymore." :(

shit

in my town I guess we don't even have a top 40 station--just a couple of "Hits" stations that are, I guess, Rhythmic. Anytime I go in for a haircut it's always Beyonce alongside Katy Perry, Lorde, T.Swift.

Pre-Grammys Azalea think pieces:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/white-echoes-rap-race-and-iggy-azalea/2015/02/04/992a93d2-abe9-11e4-abe8-e1ef60ca26de_story.html?tid=trending_strip_1

Chris Richards:

As for her delivery, it’s a needling imitation of a black Southern voice, with syllables that twang in the wrong direction and vowels that curve into sour shapes. It’s pantomime devoid of personality. An empty white echo.

As hollow as it feels, it’s important to remember that Azalea has every right to strike this pose. But when the industry-folk who draft the Grammy ballots sanctify that pose as an emblem of excellence, we should all feel a twist in our stomachs.

http://www.vulture.com/2015/02/please-dont-let-iggy-azalea-win-best-rap-album.html

Lindsay Zoladz: I believe we’re finally on the cusp of a moment in which female rappers are commanding unprecedented respect, and I would love a Rap Album win that feels in step with this shift. But the thought of Iggy Azalea being the first woman to reap the rewards of this transformation fills me with the same kind of dread I had in the darker days of the 2008 presidential campaign; Iggy Azalea is basically the Sarah Palin of rap. Next year’s list of eligible nominees is already looking promising and more female-friendly: Nicki Minaj’s Pinkprint and Azealia Banks’s Broke With Expensive Taste both deserve to be serious contenders — and how perfect would it be if Missy Elliott’s hopefully forthcoming comeback album nabbed the award? I’ve got my fingers crossed that a woman will finally win that golden shotglass soon. Just not this year.

Part of me feels like I should seek out and hear some IAz finally. The other part is fine with continuing on in blissful ignorance.

yeah, i'm okay with know her as the annoying part of "fancy" that isn't the other annoying part

Eminem won best rap album in an award given out before the tv portion. Kendrick Lamar won for best rap performance of I and best rap song for the same.

Thus we were spared the Iggyocalypse

somehow thought this was where the grammy discussion might be happening

Just on twitter.

Or maybe its on a metal thread cuz of this:

http://loudwire.com/2015-grammys-tenacious-d-best-metal-performance-award-dio-last-in-line/

i think twitter just killed off most ilx award show liveblog threads.

There was a Grammys thread last year iirc

Twitter feed taught me tonight that:

1. Everyone hates Iggy
2. Not enough people hate Sam Smith

did kanye actually do something objectionable or are ppl just being racist