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

spotify makes its numbers public https://spotifycharts.com/

Only two songs in that entire 200 are climbing - both by Drake.

everything has been pushed down in position by drake except drake

Be nice to see weeks/days available (if not just weeks in the 200).

The #1 song being streamed over twice as much as the #4 song - just...how/wow (was hoping that would be far less of a thing in this era)

all you need know is we'll be hearing that Ed Sheeran song for a while yet

it's silent to folks above a certain age

Yeah, thanks for the suggestions, guys. The kind of stuff I'd be very interested in knowing would be, for instance, how much the inclusion of a song on Spotify's RapCaviar playlist affects its performance over time. Like, what does the streaming data before something like, say, iSpy or Chill Bill goes on there (including youtube hits, I guess) look like? When does it enter the charts in relation to that, when does that start to have an effect on actual mp3 sales, radio play, etc. I understand that it usually goes something like soundcloud/youtube -> official spotify playlist -> billboard -> radio -> prolonged presence in the charts, but having a few case studies would help enormously in just figuring out how variables, general rules, anomalies, etc. Filter in shazam stats in that as well and you should be good to go. I'm guessing there's a lot to be learned if only these numbers were made available and searchable in some meaningful way.

Sonically, the entire track is blown out to a level that feels assaultive, but strangely, “Look at Me!” doesn’t seem to exist in our physical reality. Good luck hearing it in the club, on the radio, out the cracked window of a passing Chevy Malibu, or anywhere else in three-dimensional space. But there it is at No. 65, enjoying its sixth week on the charts, breathing down the neck of Ed Sheeran’s “Galway Girl.”

It’s all thanks to the fact that Billboard now compiles its weekly marquee singles chart by measuring online streaming alongside sales and radio airplay. So to land its current spot on the Hot 100, “Look at Me!” racked up 10.9 million streams across seven days, according to Nielsen Music — enough to compensate for the fact that radio hasn’t really touched it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-brutal-distortion-of-xxxtentacions-look-at-me-is-changing-the-sound-of-the-hot-100/2017/03/24/fa6a3e8e-0fe9-11e7-ab07-07d9f521f6b5_story.html?utm_term=.0e7bface8e50

the idea that heavily streamed songs are not actually being heard 'in three-dimensional space' is bizarre but weirdly pervasive

also that heavily streamed songs w/o much support from radio, even ones w/ tremendous longevity, are mere 'memes' (i suppose one could soundly argue that all songs are memes, but you know what i mean)

well black beatles' streams surged because of the mannequin challenge right?

Good luck hearing it in the club, on the radio, out the cracked window of a passing Chevy Malibu, or anywhere else in three-dimensional space.

yeah, you might have to stream it along with several million other people

also: aux cords?

that is true maura re: black beatles. (tho the song was doing well/gaining strongly even before that.) idk tho it just feels weird when ppl write off the success of e.g. "bad and boujee" or "mask off" as being solely attributable to memes as if the songs aren't the memes themselves. i mean, the 'meme' that catapulted "bad and boujee" to the top was basically 'ppl quoting/riffing on its most memorable lyrics on twitter' so it seems so wrongheaded to dismiss the song itself when the song *is* the meme.

oh i agree with you. i think there's a lot of confusion over what "pop" means because of filter bubbles and it results in conclusions like these.

man I love "mask off" didn't know there was a meme

well black beatles' streams surged because of the mannequin challenge right?

― maura, Friday, March 31, 2017 6:13 AM (fifteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

from what i understand they were just beginning a full court radio press when that happened and it was already building in the top 40, so it was well on its way. that meme just nudged it over the top

tbh i haven't seen any "mask off" memes except for someone syncing it to the crying piccolo girl, ppl just seem to be flocking to it because they like it (myself included)

Future' FB page posts a ton of them.

oh lol i'll check it out

But can anyone get near the amount of spots on a chart as Ed Sheeran?

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/nylpm/2017/03/datapanik-in-the-year-sheero/

drake apparently

all you need know is we'll be hearing that Ed Sheeran song for a while yet

― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, March 20, 2017 10:00 AM (two weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've only heard this from my roommate karaoking it

^^^speaking if songs I only hear when I'm streaming them...

http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1487-will-the-mainstream-support-more-than-one-rap-queen-at-a-time-a-charts-investigation/

"Consider this: In the entire history of Billboard’s Hot 100, solo female rappers have fronted a No. 1 single just twice—Lauryn Hill’s 1998 half-sung “Doo Wop (That Thing),” and Iggy Azalea’s 2014 Charli XCX–backed “Fancy.” (That paltry number rises from two to 2.25 if we count Lil’ Kim’s equally billed verse with Christina Aguilera, Mya and Pink on their 2001 remake of “Lady Marmalade.”) And female rappers aren’t even guaranteed proper credit when they do support a chart-topping hit. On “No Diggity,” the classic 1996 BLACKstreet smash, Dr. Dre and Queen Pen rapped on virtually equal bars, but only Dre was listed on the single; Pen went unmentioned on both the CD-single cover and the Hot 100. Even Remy Ma herself has experienced a buried credit. As part of Fat Joe’s Terror Squad crew, she rapped on the summer 2004 chart-topper “Lean Back,” but despite equal billing with Joe on the single, only the group name was credited on the Hot 100."

Sad! Do US pop hit stations all just take orders from I heart Radio corporate algorhythm types?

the ones owned by iheart do. the ones owned by cbs take cues from cbs data. etc.

http://www.kingdomnubia.com/2017/05/23/8-reasons-why-rb-has-died-in-the-black-community/

A southern soul dj I know on Facebook was circulating this.

The writer doesn't provide many facts to support some of the allegations there

That article uses every possible "kids these days!" cliche.

yeah. i'm also not sure what was implied in pointing out that "in the Billboard issue dated Nov. 23, 1963, when Black artists were still struggling to break out of being viewed as 'race' music, just under half of the Top 10 on the Hot R&B Singles chart were white acts." was it a favorable comparison with billboard's heavily white-dominated r&b charts in 2013, or an attempt to show that the dynamic hasn't really changed all that much in all these years? (also, a nitpick, but i'm pretty sure in 1963 that 'race music' was already considered quite an unsavory and embarrassing term + that the commercial and artistic importance of r&b was pretty well established given the emergence of rock & roll in the prior decade.)

in any case, using billboard's 1963 r&b charts as evidence for just about any industry phenom (other than what the charts themselves were like) is misguided at best; that chart had such a massive problem with sensitivity during that year that it was dropped from the publication without explanation by the year's end. in other words, the dataset forming the basis of the chart was not specific enough to the actual r&b market: of the four white artists in the top 10 of billboard's chart that week, exactly zero were on the analogous r&b chart from trade mag rival cash box -- not just missing from the top 10, but also from the entire 50-position chart. (in fact, none of those 4 singles *ever* cracked cash box's top 50, including jimmy gilmer's "sugar shack" which was (probably embarrassingly) listed at #1 on billboard. for comparison, of the remaining 6 billboard top 10 singles that week, all were currently or had previously been top 10 cash box r&b singles.)

anyway sigh i'm rambling too much AS I SOMETIMES DO RE: THE CHARTS. i think there is really important and incisive discussion to be had here about the marginal corner r&b has been forced into on the commercial landscape but this ain't quite it, and no 'kids these days' cliches would even need to be invoked imo.

http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/08/09/541951925/kehlani-and-r-bs-women-of-color-struggle-to-be-heard-in-pop-market

"In a recent interview with The Guardian, Tinashe caused an uproar when she talked about "colorism," and her worry that, as a black woman of mixed race, "sometimes I feel like I don't fully fit into the black community." While the comment seemed to address her personal experiences, some fans took it as sour grapes over her seemingly flailing career. Regardless, it was a moment of frustration for a wildly creative artist facing limited options. "There are hundreds of male rappers that all look the same, that sound the same, but if you're a black woman, you're either Beyoncé or Rihanna," she said."

The moderate success of SweetSexySavage has reignited conversations about whether the music industry is devaluing R&B artists and, specifically, talented women of color. Kehlani's not alone: Sevyn Streeter, SZA and Mary J. Blige have also released superior major-label projects this year, only to find a muted reception on the pop charts.

Wonder what it will take to change pop radio programming

as much as i love the song, i was surprised to see "love galore" doing as well as it has been at urban radio considering sza is pretty new to the mainstream + a woman. even after it broke at urban i was expecting rhythmic stations to stupidly pass it up, but apparently they started playing it as part of the iheartradio on the verge payola program. unfortunately i expect mainstream pop stations' response to be minimal at best -- the most 'urban' songs my city's top 40 is currently playing are liam payne's imitation of 2014-mustard, halsey's imitation of "needed me" + the traffic ticket lawyer commercial -- but it will be interesting to see how far it goes.

also have my eye on: dej loaf's "no fear", which definitely seems to be aiming right down the middle in terms of its sound and mood and is surprisingly cutesy for her. most illuminating of all, i think, will be cardi b's "bodak yellow", which was well on its way to becoming a streaming smash even before it started breaking at any radio format. given how quickly it's gaining now and how much more room it has to grow at radio, i honestly wouldn't be surprised if it challenges for #1 on the hot 100. maybe pop radio will touch a song by a non-rih black woman if it's a #1 hit?

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-rb-women-20170901-story.html?curator=MusicREDEF

“For some reason, people are consuming male-based entertainment on a much greater scale,” Tinashe said. “You look at the pop charts and there are no black women. And it looks like that on rhythmic and urban charts. Perhaps it's a subject matter issue? Maybe it's the gatekeepers? I can't put my finger on it.”

the gatekeepers have hated women for many years

women being relegated to features plays into this (probably the reason why SZA is on a Maroon 5 song, among the more ?!!!?!?!? developments recently but not *surprising* per se)

i'm glad to see artists in the industry acknowledging the issue for what it really is. industryites are so entrenched in the ways that the industry has organized itself into formats (that are implicitly or sometimes explicitly based on social categories like age/race/gender) that they actually think that these arbitrary categories like 'rhythmic' and 'urban' actually have some objective meaning! it often seems to me so hopeless that anything will actually change until radio and its various formats just crumble and cease to be relevant, and even then i'm not sure that would solve it.

that quote from the exec trying to explain the discrepancies by pointing to 'beauty standards' and whatnot is really awful for so many reasons. (and then to top it up with "it really, always, comes down to the song" is so insulting! that's also the go-to excuse from country radio programmers trying to explain why they play women only like 5% of the time, as if the inability to choose good songs is inherently endemic to women or something.)

broke my heart to see sevyn's quote about being stuck in depression and contemplating suicide :(

And her latest single, doing quite well on adult R&B and even regular R&B stations, is fabulous.

i hope when "bodak yellow" reaches #1, which should be soon, possibly even next week, that writers who comment upon it place it in its proper context as the astonishing achievement that it is

it might get leapfrogged by that logic song

a supertramp cover??

lol

i wish man

writers who comment upon it place it in its proper context as the astonishing achievement that it is

if you're talking about the invention of the wonderful word "arrove" as the past tense of "arrive" i agree but otherwise idgi tbh so i would welcome such comments

i didn't mean astonishing achievement artistically

(altho i like it very much)

I think that song is pretty much perfect.

it... yeah i'm not going to get into it

i guess it's nice that a woman had a hit with a trap by numbers boast too, yay equality

I think that song is just ok?? Don't really understand the adoration. It's obviously tied into ppl's overt identification w her but there are tons of female rappers who had buzz also doing no flocking freestyles, that this is the Kodak freestyle above all others is a neat bit of pr finesse