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

I don't think it's an unreasonable thesis but it's not presented very well in that article.

i met meshell ndgeocello--this was maybe 3 years ago, maybe longer--i remember her saying that exact same thesis to me (as the RS article)

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Tuesday, October 17, 2017

yeah she said something similar at EMP a couple years ago

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-pop-diva-identity-crisis-1508348017

"In the age of hip-hop, female pop stars are facing an identity crisis.

In July, R&B/hip-hop surpassed rock for the first time to officially become the biggest music genre in America, according to Nielsen Music, which tracks online streams and digital and physical albums. As of Oct. 12, R&B/hip-hop has driven 24% of music consumption in 2017—more than rock’s 21% and double pop’s 12% share."

Imagine if pop radio was open to even more r'n'b. Can't access full WSJ article. Does it propose a new business plan for Taylor Swift?

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/20-best-pop-albums-of-2017-w513516

Am pretty sure that all of the critics who wrote for this like r'n'b and rap (and I like their writing), but the definition of pop used here seems kinda rockist and blue-eyed

I guess Bruno Mars was a late 2016 release, so that's why he wasn't included.

what would you have swapped in that doesn’t?

also have you seen the jingle ball lineups

he was on the 2016 list
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/20-best-pop-albums-of-2016-w455459/bruno-mars-24k-magic-w455593

i mean i understand your point but pop as it is currently staked our in the us is very white (with some latinx tinges). there was no rap or r&b artist on the lineup for the jingle ball i went to sunday in boston and the only mcs on the nationwide bill were logic and g eazy

(and last year there were r&b and hip hop lists too)

i wish pop radio played more r&b. it is criminal that beyoncé needed to hop on a freaking ed sheeran song in order to top the charts for the first time this decade

So pop 2017 is just jingle ball emo, guitar strum & tasteful dance beat, retro rock, and Sam Smith paying homage to old soul singers?

The list finds space for Amber Coffman, Blondie and Aimee Mann who are not topping the charts these days, but doesn't find room for retro focused or similarly artisinal African-American artists, or African-American artists who are in the charts redefining pop

can you name some? not being confrontational just genuinely curious

Curtis Harding, Daniel Caesar, Ms. Jody, Miguel, Stokley Williams and can't the rap that makes the chart count as pop

How about Mary J. Blige too

as i noted earlier this likely isn’t the only genre list

so maybe wait until they’ve all rolled out and then nitpick

going to check out ms jody though, thanks

No problem.

I get that they're defining "pop" as music that is sung and includes melodic hooks, it's just interesting who in 2017 both on and off the charts gets to be included in that definition and who does not.

well it's also defined in part by label and radio and streaming-playlist siloing. like kelly clarkson probably won't make the r&b list, you know?

And Aimee Mann gets to be pop, rock and probably Americana too.

Not exactly related, but did you see this article

http://www.vulture.com/2017/12/defining-the-decade-in-pop-music.html

It’s about Antonoff style pop and its weaknesses

If Kelly Clarkson could sing like Teena Marie she could probably be pop and r’n’b.

i did see that piece and i agree with a lot of it. pop radio this year was mostly boring - the combined influence of those big songwriting camps and the ever-more-concentrated creation of radio playlists has been deathly

and yeah the term "adult album alternative" (where any putative mann singles would line up) does a lot of heavy lifting as far as positioning

Ms. Jody btw appeals largely to over 50 poc who like to line dance and are at the top end of the adult r’n’b listening bracket even if some of their synth and entendre filled southern soul faves don’t get played on such outlets.

Such an audience I'd say is as pop as an Aimee Mann one

sure and i’m sorry i didn’t hear it earlier in the year

i’d recommend eric weisbard’s TOP 40 DEMOCRACY if you haven’t read it yet

Have heard of it, but haven't read it yet. Thanks.

the Aimee Mann record is actually quite lovely if anyone wants to actually engage with it rather than using it as a prop in an argument

it is very good!!

I want to read more about the Antonoff-ization of pop music.

jack antonoff produced three albums, only one of which (Taylor Swift) came close to getting play on mainstream pop and particularly pop radio -- and even it isn't doing so phenomenally -- and a handful of songs in 2017. that's it. that's all. compare to someone like my nemesis Benny Blanco, who genuinely is unescapble: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Blanco_production_discography

other people with far more influence on pop music in 2017 than everything Antonoff has done in the past decade combined: Ali Payami, Julia Michaels, Sia, as much as I hate to say it the Chainsmokers

yeah benny blanco's persistence has been pretty amazing to me. i guess he's super-chameleonic, which helps

so katherine would you say that antonoff is like pop's equivalent of a prestige tv auteur

Man, does that make Benny Blanco Chuck Lorre?

sure, why not

Beginning in 2018, plays occurring on paid subscription-based services (such as Amazon Music and Apple Music) or on the paid subscription tiers of hybrid paid/ad-supported platforms (such as SoundCloud and Spotify) will be given more weight in chart calculations than those plays on pure ad-supported services (such as YouTube) or on the non-paid tiers of hybrid paid/ad-supported services.

https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8006673/billboard-charts-adjust-streaming-weighting-2018

Seems like this change will not be helpful to most black musicians

NY Times Popcast discussed this back in October 2017 I see.

On this week’s Popcast, Mr. Caramanica discusses the text and subtext of the Billboard Hot 100, and how the rule changes might punish certain audiences and genres, with Joe Coscarelli, pop music reporter for The New York Times, and David Turner, senior staff writer at Track Record.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/arts/music/billboard-chart-streaming-rule-change.html

Beginning in 2018, plays occurring on paid subscription-based services (such as Amazon Music and Apple Music) or on the paid subscription tiers of hybrid paid/ad-supported platforms (such as SoundCloud and Spotify) will be given more weight in chart calculations than those plays on pure ad-supported services (such as YouTube) or on the non-paid tiers of hybrid paid/ad-supported services.

They should just publish separate charts. "Here are the most-streamed songs. Here are the most-streamed songs from people with paid memberships to streaming services. Here are the physical CDs and downloads that sold the most copies this week - and by the way, we're including catalog titles alongside new releases now, so yeah, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and Metallica's Black Album are the most popular records in America, again."

"this change will not helpful to most black musicians" has been the common intuitive interpretation, and that was certainly my own gut feeling, but in light of a few findings published here-n-there i actually don't think it's likely to be correct.

exhibit a:

Mind you, there’s not even evidence that overindexing paid streaming would hurt hip-hop: A source at Spotify told me rap dominates the paid side of the service, too, even more strongly than the ad-supported side. I will wait to comment in full for when the new rules take effect, but in the meantime we might want to decide if we are rooting for or against our new robot overlords.

exhibit b:

... on-demand subscription (paid) audio streams took an 80% share [by volume], while ad-supported streams claimed 20% of the market.

so paid-tier streaming users are even more likely to be consumers of 'urban' music + their combined streaming activity far outweighs that of those who only do 'free'/ad-supported streaming... if anything it seems such a rule change would give a boost to rap music (with the exception of the sort that gets most of its streams on youtube, i.e. dancing memes and such).

it's odd that billboard announced that impending rule change so far in advance. i figured they would implement it early in the year, but so far nothing else has been said about it.

oh and chris molanphy's comment was specifically about spotify, but it's safe to say it's fairly generalizable: the charts for apple music, which is subscription-only, are even more heavily skewed toward the urban side of things than spotify's charts are.

yeah apple is alllll hip hop

Interesting. Thanks.

On a different subject-- the Grammys and rap --seems like its a catch 22 situation right now-- The voting membership and the academy head seem little interested in rap (and r'n'b). Even though many in the rap and r'n'b worlds (engineers, producers, artists ) could qualify to join the academy and could then vote, they probably don't consider it or want to, due to the way the genres get treated.

The gender issues too, of course.

So taking a look at top 10 singles this year brought this whole thread and its assorted arguments to mind. Whatever the impacts of the various changes have been, it doesn't seem like marginalization of either hip-hop or black artists has been the effect in 2018: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Billboard_Hot_100_top-ten_singles_in_2018.

marginalization of the distortion pedal more like it.

not that I'm crying for it.

it's an interesting and unusual situation this year, and in the past couple of years in general. in one sense, black music is doing wonderful numbers, making lots of money for the industry, and placing prominently on the record charts, due in large part to its superlative performance on streaming services. but on the other hand, despite this fortune, the vast majority of black musicians, regardless of their level of success, are being kept at arm's length by top 40 radio -- white artists, meanwhile, continue to enjoy privileged access to airplay, not only if they record what reads as traditional-sounding 'pop' (max martin productions etc.) but also if they record music within the black idiom (post malone).

some figures to help illustrate: of the 39 singles to reach the top 10 of billboard's pop songs airplay chart this year, just 3 (7.7%) originated at black radio. in 2008, this figure was 16%, and in 1998 15%. (source: my own number-crunching, so unfortunately for now you'll have to take my word for it.)

to be clear, it's terrific that black artists don't need pop radio's support to do great business. at the same time, though, it must be beyond frustrating that when they do try to make those inroads, they often go nowhere:

Promotion is not the only challenge faced by non-white rappers. Anthony Saleh, who manages Future, said his team tried pushing “Mask Off” to pop radio but hit an immediate wall. “We spent real money (on promotion), and it didn’t work,” he says. “Pop radio doesn’t support us.”

("mask off" went quintuple-platinum and reached #5 on the hot 100 in 2017 but, despite this concerted push from his management, did not even crack the bottom of billboard's 40-position pop radio airplay chart.)

a concerning trend, for me, is not only that the gulf between the black and pop radio formats has widened, but also that pop radio (and, really, every format other than 'urban' and rhythmic) is delivering an image astonishingly racialized as non-black in recent years. in the past, one could be a black artist on pop radio without having to cross over from black radio! among 1998's pop top 10s, in addition to the 15% crossing from black radio, you also had janet jackson, will smith (multiple hits), and eagle-eye cherry delivering hits without strong (or any) r&b radio support. in 2008, in addition to the 16% from black radio, you had rihanna (multiple), ne-yo, estelle, sean kingston, wyclef jean, jordin sparks (multiple), chris brown (multiple), leona lewis (multiple), kardinal offishall, beyoncé, and akon delivering such hits.

in 2018, in addition to the 7.7% from black radio (two by drake, one by cardi b), the black artists pulling the same trick are halsey (lol) (multiple hits), the weeknd/kendrick (same hit), khalid/normani (khalid scored a second hit in collaboration w/ benny blanco and halsey), and juice wrld. but unlike in 2008 and 1998 when these artists were either breaking directly at pop radio or crossing from dance and rock formats, all of the 2018 batch crossed from rhythmic radio. this rhythmic-to-pop pathway in 2018 also served as the means by which numerous non-black artists scored their hits, including nf, g-eazy, bazzi, post malone, and dj khaled. this pathway was not so frequently exploited by non-black artists in the past: in 2008 colby o'donis and m.i.a. were the only non-black artists to do so, and in 1998 zero non-black artists did so.

what does all this mean? in addition to accepting much fewer hits from black radio, pop radio now accepts just as many hits from non-black artists from the one pathway available to black artists for crossover as it does black artists (and has ZERO pop-native hits by black artists unless you count fucking halsey). instead black artists are primarily valuable to the pop format in a subservient role as featured artists to help juice white pop artists' paltry streaming stats (and often enable the more racist of these stations to edit the guest verses out -- i know i've picked on maroon 5 a million times for this, but they are easily the most shameless offenders).

on some level, both top 40 radio and the wider industry know that consumption patterns are changing and would prefer if hits on the radio were also hits at the streaming services. there's only so many non-selling, non-streaming duds like max's "lights down low", lauv's "i like me better", nf's "lie" and bebe rexha's "i'm a mess" that they can keep taking a chance on if they want to hold onto their (declining) ratings, and i'm sure the labels aren't especially fond of having to work songs like this to radio for ages that can't even stream halfway decently in the end, even with all the exposure on the airwaves.

so, are black artists doing really well for themselves? absolutely. but is black music still being kept in its margin? without a doubt.

"sicko mode" just reached #1 on the hot 100 the other week. it's been a streaming monster ever since its debut months ago, and on the back of excellent rhythmic and black radio play, it even managed to reach the all-format radio songs top 10. but many pop stations, especially those with extra-tight playlists like the one in my midwestern city (which, for much of its history, was 'rhythmic-leaning'!), still are electing not to play the song AT ALL.

when it comes to closing the gap between what gets good radio audience feedback and what actually streams, the industry knows radio's sound is going to have to inch closer to the black idiom. but so far it seems they would much prefer that its olive-skinned, racially ambiguous white stars be doing that work. black artists? thank u, next!

damn son - thnk you

Great analysis and explains the difference between what I hear on the local “pop” and “urban” stations. (And why my middle-school son will only listen to the urban station — it plays the stuff his peer group actually listens to.)