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

which of these seems different than the others

This week's most-streamed songs:

1. @AintGottaDollar Rich Men North of Richmond
2. @MorganWallen Last Night
3. @DojaCat Paint The Town Red
4. @1GunnaGunna Fukumean
5. @lukecombs Fast Car

— billboard charts (@billboardcharts) August 28, 2023

This week's most-heard songs on the radio:

1. @heisrema & @selenagomez Calm Down
2. @lukecombs Fast Car
3. @taylorswift13 Cruel Summer
4. @sza Snooze
5. @DUALIPA Dance The Night

— billboard charts (@billboardcharts) August 28, 2023

This week's top-selling songs:

1. @AintGottaDollar Rich Men North of Richmond
2. @AintGottaDollar I Want To Go Home
3. @AintGottaDollar Aint Gotta Dollar
4. @Jason_Aldean Try That In A Small Town
5. #PaulRussell Lil Boo Thang

— billboard charts (@billboardcharts) August 28, 2023

ultimately i don't think rap music's status as the dominant musical cultural force in america is in peril

the freakout surrounding “rap’s cold streak” on the hot 100 always conveniently ignores “kill bill (remix)” (starts with a full 16 bars from doja) and latto’s duet with the bts guy

The Doja Cat version is not the one I hear on the radio.

yeah but the doja remix is what put the song over the top on the hot 100

the freakout surrounding “rap’s cold streak” on the hot 100

it also puts far more importance in the hot 100 than is warranted at a time when it means less than ever. there's this weird feedback loop happening where the hot 100 reflects less monoculture than it ever has -- and so understanding the charts requires more cultural literacy than perhaps it did before -- and yet its being used by people who aren't doing that kinda contextualization work to make grand monocultural statements about music

and by nicki minaj stans who believe that her “super freaky girl” being the last pure rap song to top the hot 100 is yet more proof of her perfection

Extremely anecdotally (on the Taylor/Beyoncé thing) – when Swift was coming to town (and then actually here), my work Slack was full of ppl trying to get tickets... now that the Beyoncé shows are coming up, there are many folks selling/trying to unload Beyoncé tix (including on behalf of others). Kind of strange, not sure what's behind that... there was plenty of Beyoncé buzz when her album came out (and I never saw anyone mention Midnights).

that lines up w/ my experience too ... at the beginning of the renaissance tour there were those articles about people flying to sweden bcuz it was cheaper/easier to buy airfare + that ticket than to get into one of the USA shows. meanwhile fast forward to now and i have multiple friends flying to new orleans because resale tickets for those shows were sub-$200 (upper deck but still). i just talked to a friend yesterday who decided on a whim to fly to LA for the shows this weekend bcuz the tickets had dropped like crazy on the secondary market. so it does seem like something is happening there but i also don't really know why. there were those early reports about how she wasn't moving/dancing as well as she typically does but i've heard glowing reviews from everyone who has seen the show. then again they all paid like $600 to get in so maybe not unbiased sources, but i don't detect any backlash to the shows so it's not clear to me why the enthusiasm seems to be waning

in my mind taylor hadn't toured in years whereas beyoncé has been out on the road a lot. but i looked up their touring schedules from 2015 on and that's not really the case, they've done the same number of tours. but the demand feels very different. the only thing i can think of is that a. swift has released a lot more music in between her tours than beyoncé has b. perhaps the marketing/structuring of the show as comprising all of her "eras" is really genius marketing, ppl feel like they're seeing a career spanning megashow as opposed to simple a tour attached to a new album

does it feel like the Beyonce resales are markedly more than any other non-Taylor Swift show? i guess that'd be the question. not that a Beyonce show isn't an "event", but these Taylor shows are essentially the most "can't miss" type gig to roll through, at least at this particular scale. it doesn't feel like the type of thing people are going to start to say "eh i don't really feel like going..." as it approaches.

A couple things with Swift too was it seems like she was <this> close to announcing a Summer tour for 2020 when Covid happened, so there was pent-up demand from that, and it seems like she picked up a lot of new fans during the quarantine times. Like I know a number of people who were casual fans before then who are diehard Swifties now (dropping $$$ on tix, vinyl even though they don't own turntables etc.)

xp I'm seeing resales for as low as $300 (that one's in Vegas, though); Row 2 of some "VIP" section for $750; Row 7 on on the field "Open to Best Offer (original price w/ fees is $1500 per tix)"... etc. Definitely on the higher side as concerts go, but not the crazy prices that Taylor tix were being offered at.

XPS I suspect the Beyonce resale market suffered from over-speculation from resellers hoping Eras lightning would strike twice.

(OTOH, a coworker told me about a friend who has literally gone bankrupt from seeing 7 or 8 dates on the Beyoncé tour, in locations ranging from New Jersey to Paris. The friend has a ticket for another, and my coworker says he's trying to convince him to sell it, so he can pay his rent...)

Beyonce is definitely not catering to the casual audience with her setlists, where Swift's tour seems like it's kind of the perfect greatest hits type tour for everyone?

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/beyonce/2023/allegiant-stadium-las-vegas-nv-33a50c75.html

no single ladies, halo, irreplaceable, baby boy etc....seems like she's trying a real specific vibe with this tour

xxp
this whole convo reminds me of the old joke about a guy saying he thought he really wanted to be a boxer until he fought someone who REALLY wanted to be a boxer. I mean I thought I loved music until I got to ilm and heard anecdotes like flying across a country or even to another country just to see a gig, let alone falling into bankruptcy. insanity.

https://x.com/nytimesarts/status/1696611433641877507?s=46&t=u2ZSlsY3trRV36IPP6jNDQ

On this week’s Popcast, conversations about the consonances between Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour, the way Swift does (and does not) deploy dance and the thrills of seeing her perform for the first time.

could part of it be very simply generational. That median beyonce fans are slightly older

bump

The Billboard charts are broken, they’ve been hijacked by a media conglomerate

Wow.

jeez

I dont understand that article. can someone find the '''nut graf''' for me i think im too dumb

"Since the purchase [of Nielsen], Luminate has purged its indie retail accounts. The rules, regulations, the gerrymandering, the onboarding process, it has all throttled our ability to report. It’s the corporate equivalent of redrawing a district map when you don’t like what the voters have to say. Walmart and Target are still reporting, but are they really record shops? Amazon is a reporter. As is Spotify and any streaming service that provides full-length albums. How that is reported on a subscription service, I have no idea."

also:

"Luminate recently stated that 95% of independent retail is being accounted for on their charts. I am one of the owners of the Coalition of Independent Music Stores. We represent over 40 of the top independent record stores around the country. I can tell you there isn’t a storefront in our coalition that is reporting to Luminate. "

^are those things really contradictory? I thought SoundScan didn’t claim to catch all sales, but weighted the sales they did sample or something (like a survey).

RTFA

also maybe think about how every single time something like this comes up, your kneejerk response is to be an apologist for late-period capitalism

Damn(!)

the point is that soundscan has apparently recently purged independent record stores from its tracking completely, so what is reported about physical sales is going to be pretty skewed. the independent stores hate this, of course

This article gets a little more into the details (like, why more stores don't report): https://www.joyofvinyl.com/luminates-decision-could-hurt-the-vinyl-record-industry/

It's not exactly that they've purged them, it's that they are no longer using mathematical extrapolations from the ones who do report to estimate the ones who don't report. So only the ones that do report will be counted.

Thanks, that answers my question…

(If it matters, I was trying to figure out how they may have been weaseling the “accounts for 95%” claim, but sounds like it’s unclear to that other writer as well)

ah not extrapolating the data seems equally bad yeah

but good to have that clarity

Yeah it's all murky. I took it to mean that the biggest stores account for an outsize share of the indie market. But I don't see any reason to believe any of the numbers they're throwing around. Definitely a transparency problem with the charts and the data collection being owned by the same company.

FWIW, I ran this article privately by someone I trust when it comes to chart calls. I won't speak directly for said person, but the response was pretty clear that 1) reporting of physical items IS indeed terrible this year but 2) there's no simple solution and the article has blown things up into a near-conspiracy-theory level narrative.

It doesn’t change the fact that Green Day was ROBBED of a number one

Having famously never charted at all over decades now. A shame, really.

I took it to mean that the biggest stores account for an outsize share of the indie market.

i spoke to someone who knows a bit about this stuff bcuz that article confused me too and one thing they mentioned is that along w/ stopping the practice of extrapolation luminate is also requiring indie stores to provide a lot more data when reporting than before i.e. not just "we sold x copies of y album" but further information about the purchases or purchaser that may be beyond the capabilities of many small indie stores. so a net result of that is that larger or more corporate indies i.e. rough trade, amoeba etc who are willing or able to report now have outsized influence in that data tabulation.

i'm not being vague about the "data" to shroud what i'm actually trying to say here, my convo w/ this person didn't get into the specifics of the nature of that data. how much of this dynamic is ideological vs technological (i.e. needing to integrate a certain software or something) i can't really say. but it is alluded to in that guy's statement when he mentions "the rules, regulations, the gerrymandering, the onboarding process." he compares it to redrawing of a district map to box out true indies; perhaps that's true i don't want to undersell the cynicism of a large company just as a rule. but i would point out that luminate is ultimately a company that monetizes data and billboard is not its only client. luminate is used by all record companies, publishers etc anyone whose business is staked on or involved w/ the accurate reporting of streaming and music sales is or may be a customer. those clients are constantly pushing luminate to provide as much data as possible on the consumer. that's not to excuse luminate in any way i'm just trying to provide some context for the utility of this data beyond just the tabulation of charts, historical records etc i prob don't personally buy the more grand ideological conspiracies here i would view it more so thru the lens of tech and data collection. that may be cold comfort or perhaps worse than wanting to destroy indie music depending on your POV but yeah

or i guess luminate/billboard/MRC are all one company now which actually puts a finer point on what i'm saying. billboard isn't even a client for luminate, chart data is useful to them almost as like a loss leader bcuz it generates interest in charts and of course billboard makes some level of money but i'd imagine a much larger and more profitable part of their business is selling subscriptions to clients in the music industry (people like me!) who need their data in order to their jobs. it's essentially bloomberg-ian

Billboard has revised its system of removing songs from the Hot 100 singles chart once they've gotten too old to qualify as contemporary hits. The measure, intended to shorten the amount of time successful songs spend on the Hot 100, knocks 10 tracks off this week's chart — including Swims' "Lose Control," which spent more than two years on the Hot 100 — and in the process cements a record that could take a decade to surpass.

Interesting

https://www.npr.org/2025/10/22/g-s1-94489/billboard-hot-100-chart-changes-songs

Relevancy to this ilx thread is in here I guess--
So be sure to take a moment, light a candle and pause to reflect on such once-immortal, now-vanquished eternals as… [lights dim as a screen bears the words "In Memoriam"] Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars' "Die With a Smile" (60 weeks), Benson Boone's "Beautiful Things" and "Sorry I'm Here for Someone Else" (89 and 32 weeks, respectively), Morgan Wallen's "I'm the Problem" and "Just in Case" (36 and 29 weeks, respectively) and Kendrick Lamar's "Luther (feat. SZA)" (46 weeks), as well as songs by sombr and BigXthaPlug. We'll never know how long they might have lasted under the old system — except in the case of "Lose Control," which we can state with virtual certainty would have left the Hot 100 sometime after the next Ice Age.

Should’ve been done years ago.

i thought this bump was gonna be about the recent articles abt how there were no rap songs in the hot 100's top 40 for the first time since 1990

chartwatchers will celebrate these new rules as they nudge the chart slightly closer resembling those from the times when they enjoyed watching the charts and most of the music on them. at the end of the day tho the changes will do very little to fix the underlying problems causing hits' glacial movement into and out of public consciousness, particularly but not exclusively in the stagnating american market

x-post-- re no rap songs in the top 40 songs of the hot 100 is related to the Billboard change re how long songs can be in that chart as Kendrick Lamar w/ SZA song "Luther" got removed

https://www.billboard.com/music/rb-hip-hop/alchemist-no-rap-songs-hot-100-top-40-since-1990-1236103005/

Billboard article above referenced this 2023 article with reasons why there's less rap on top of charts

https://www.billboard.com/music/rb-hip-hop/hip-hop-no-number-one-albums-singles-charts-reasons-why-1235350404/

Also this 2022 paywalled article

https://www.billboard.com/pro/hip-hop-music-most-popular-genre-dominance-slipping/

From above current Billboard article-

In 2023, there weren’t any rap albums to top the Billboard 200 or rap songs to top the Hot 100, until Lil Uzi Vert‘s third album the Pink Tape in July and Doja Cat‘s song “Paint the Town Red” in September, respectively. Right now, the highest-charting rap song is “Shot Callin” by NBA YoungBoy at No. 44, followed by Cardi B‘s “Safe” (featuring Kehlani) at No. 48 and BigXthaPlug’s “Hell at Night” (featuring Ella Langley) at No. 49.

And from the other Billboard October 2025 article-

At its peak in 2020, hip-hop as a genre accounted for nearly 30 percent of U.S. music consumption. That number dipped to just over 25 percent by 2023 and has hovered around 24 percent through October 2025. For comparison, the same chart week in 2020 featured 16 rap songs in the Top 40; two years ago, there were eight.