I was thinking more in the early stages, just to push it towards hot counts where it might get featured on the front page or suggested videos
― in a chef-driven ambulance (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 21 February 2013 03:36 (eleven years ago) link
I mean, sure, never underestimate the power of people to throw money at things (well, some things), but that's the unspoken wink behind all the fan-activation stuff, premieres, etc.: "support view-spam the shit out of this!" and obviously I don't have raw numbers / more certainly couldn't hurt, but it seems kids with too much spare time do a pretty good job of this on their own.
come to think of it, I'd probably be more surprised if labels weren't already doing this / just now started.
― katherine, Thursday, 21 February 2013 03:45 (eleven years ago) link
"support the artist! AS MANY VIEWS AS YOU CAN HANDLE!" that is.
yeah i mean before "Gangnam Style" the most viewed music video on YouTube of all time was Bieber, and i think that was less 'he has the most fans/they watch his video over and over' and more 'his fans are so rabid that they're hell bent on driving up his views and making him #1'
― some dude, Thursday, 21 February 2013 03:49 (eleven years ago) link
I definitely had a friend who had a temp job that involved phoning in requests to TRL back in the day. soooo...
― maura, Thursday, 21 February 2013 04:04 (eleven years ago) link
haha wow
― The Reverend, Thursday, 21 February 2013 04:35 (eleven years ago) link
Is this the first big instrumental hit since Crazy Frog? Why is Thrift Shop still listed as #1 at billboard.com?
― wk, Thursday, 21 February 2013 04:39 (eleven years ago) link
Is Harlem Shake an instrumental track? If so, it might be the first since ... I wanna say Miami Vice Theme? ... to hit number one.
― jaymc, Thursday, 21 February 2013 04:59 (eleven years ago) link
it has vocal samples but yeah i'd consider it an instrumental
― J0rdan S., Thursday, 21 February 2013 05:03 (eleven years ago) link
Yeah, so is "The Hustle."
― jaymc, Thursday, 21 February 2013 05:09 (eleven years ago) link
yep, miami vice. http://tunecaster.com/charts/music/instrumental-top-10-4.html
most of those last big instrumental hits were tied to movies or tv shows too. axel f, miami vice theme, & chariots of fire. kenny g was pretty much the last big non movie related instrumental hit. kenny g killed the instrumental for 25 years!
― wk, Thursday, 21 February 2013 05:15 (eleven years ago) link
(spitballing below, I really should formulate this into an actual pitch or something)
yeah, like I said, no fucking way labels aren't already (at least) implicitly encouragingthis / nurturing fan communities to explicitly encourage this. like calling into radio, maybe, except people on that end who can theoretically give a shit / run QC are replaced with automatically generated viewcounts that don't (and programmers who, let's be honest, have no real incentive to care, even if they didn't also overlap with the sort of person who'd be into the idea of baauer / macklemore hitting no. 1. which is a stereotype yes but probably true.)
honestly I don't really have a problem with this in principle -- I'm no Luddite*, if you just look solely at the medium it really is the same thing as calling in requests or whatever, in a way -- but it's the sort of variable that probably, in practice, adds far more weight to virality/memedom than actual musical popularity**. which is of course from a business perspective a feature, not a bug -- and not even new with these changes (gotye, carly rae jepsen, etc) -- but yeah, it is kind of fucked that Baauer has a No. 1 hit when 75% of the people responsible for doing this for him have no idea who the sam hill Baauer is. not even on a "oh, the girl who did 'Call Me Maybe'" level --- not at all. which makes for an excellent chart for measuring the best ways of emulating OK Go videos, but as a music chart, or at least something that tries to be one...?
now! when the bigger problems will happen is either if/when this takes on more weight, which, who knows; or when it jumps to the genre charts. which you know it will.
* was trying to google an old tumblr post of mine and I came across a very angry, very evangelical tech-blog guy accusing me of this, which, lol
** I mean, I can see the argument that some audiences/genre audiences listen to their music solely on YouTube, and that this will benefit them, but I just can't see that being statistically significant on a Hot 100 scale. anyone who reaches that sort of critical mass tends to find other streams open up to them to supplant YouTube.
― katherine, Thursday, 21 February 2013 05:18 (eleven years ago) link
I just want to post this, I know it's not on topic or anything. ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U15HQJwqslo
― jaymc, Thursday, 21 February 2013 05:29 (eleven years ago) link
it is kind of crazy that gangnam style never hit #1. how is that not the most popular song of 2012?
― wk, Thursday, 21 February 2013 05:36 (eleven years ago) link
wait, this counts all music featured in some random dudes youtube vid? it seems like it wouldn't be hard to just include the views on the official videos, which makes more sense. otherwise you might as well count the music you hear blasting out of car stereos or w/e, its not intentional listening
― chilli, Thursday, 21 February 2013 06:20 (eleven years ago) link
the music blasting out of car stereos has always been counted (via radio airplay being factored in)
― wk, Thursday, 21 February 2013 07:40 (eleven years ago) link
Most of the views for "Harlem Shake" aren't even the whole song, it's just for the first 30 seconds. How much of the song has to be on the video for it to count? I really don't understand why Billboard isn't just limiting this to official videos.
― justfanoe (Greg Fanoe), Thursday, 21 February 2013 11:38 (eleven years ago) link
Billboard is counting 30 second videos, and starting it this week, precisely to capitalize on "Harlem Shake" and show off how 'with it' they are for being able to measure its popularity. i was reading a Billboard.biz article a few days ago about how the technology for recognizing whether a copyrighted song is used in just-uploaded YouTubes is really advanced now so Baauer's been generating instant royalties every time one of these videos gets made.
― some dude, Thursday, 21 February 2013 12:53 (eleven years ago) link
smh is billboard gonna change its rules with every new meme to show how "with it" they are
― lex pretend, Thursday, 21 February 2013 13:09 (eleven years ago) link
Damn I just realized that "Friday" would have been a top 10 hit if this had been in place at that time.
― justfanoe (Greg Fanoe), Thursday, 21 February 2013 13:36 (eleven years ago) link
it even made the bbchttp://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/21534066
― Vote in the ILM 70s poll please! (Algerian Goalkeeper), Thursday, 21 February 2013 14:02 (eleven years ago) link
― justfanoe (Greg Fanoe), Thursday, February 21, 2013 7:36 AM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
God I didn't think of that
― in a chef-driven ambulance (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 21 February 2013 14:20 (eleven years ago) link
all pop music is just a menagerie of memes set to the illusion of music iirc
― I'm on Picasso's side here. (crüt), Thursday, 21 February 2013 14:30 (eleven years ago) link
Rebecca Black definitely would've been #1
― some dude, Thursday, 21 February 2013 15:07 (eleven years ago) link
hopefully there will be another rebecca black event to showcase how absurd billboard is now
― 乒乓, Thursday, 21 February 2013 15:18 (eleven years ago) link
billboard should be nationalized and taken over by the government so this shit doesn't happen
― 乒乓, Thursday, 21 February 2013 15:19 (eleven years ago) link
it'd be a good time in history for somebody to get serious about making a competing chart tbh. It's weird to me that this idea of Billboard as the immoveable object of popularity measurement is so instilled - that it's "The Chart," still? get w/it people who give a shit about this stuff
― available for sporting events (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, 21 February 2013 15:28 (eleven years ago) link
Let's do it.
― the little prince of inane false binary hype (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 21 February 2013 15:28 (eleven years ago) link
let's just go straight to the source
http://www.youtube.com/channel/HCp-Rdqh3z4Uc?feature=gb_ch_rec
― 乒乓, Thursday, 21 February 2013 15:30 (eleven years ago) link
there's no competiting chart because what billboard used to do isn't practical anymore. I think 'people who give a shit about this stuff' are limited to this thread.
― iatee, Thursday, 21 February 2013 15:40 (eleven years ago) link
i was reading a Billboard.biz article a few days ago about how the technology for recognizing whether a copyrighted song is used in just-uploaded YouTubes is really advanced now so Baauer's been generating instant royalties every time one of these videos gets made.
idgi who's paying him the royalties?
― just sayin, Thursday, 21 February 2013 15:43 (eleven years ago) link
youtube I think
― 乒乓, Thursday, 21 February 2013 15:44 (eleven years ago) link
people watch ads on youtube, youtube makes money from ads, youtube gives some of that money to people
― iatee, Thursday, 21 February 2013 15:44 (eleven years ago) link
o yeah
― just sayin, Thursday, 21 February 2013 15:47 (eleven years ago) link
Yup, pretty much says as much here
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/17/meet-baauer-the-man-behind-the-harlem-shake.html
The “Harlem Shake” videos, meanwhile, have totaled over 175 million YouTube views and counting. And, according to Billboard, Baauer and the label that put out the track, Mad Decent, stand to make quite a pretty penny with it since they, through various deals, will collect revenues for each and every one of these YouTube views.
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 21 February 2013 15:57 (eleven years ago) link
How much royalty are they getting per view? Much much less than 1 cent, right?
― This beat is TWEENCHRONIC (DJP), Thursday, 21 February 2013 16:00 (eleven years ago) link
they are getting one shake of a white person's butt per view
― 乒乓, Thursday, 21 February 2013 16:01 (eleven years ago) link
― 乒乓, Thursday, February 21, 2013 10:18 AM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
imo "Harlem Shake" at #1 is dumber than "Friday" at #1 would've been
― some dude, Thursday, 21 February 2013 16:01 (eleven years ago) link
What's today's exchange rate on white booty shakes to the dollar? Is it something like 75,000 WBS = 1 USD?
― This beat is TWEENCHRONIC (DJP), Thursday, 21 February 2013 16:02 (eleven years ago) link
yeah though the WBS exchange rate goes down exponentially in canada
― 乒乓, Thursday, 21 February 2013 16:03 (eleven years ago) link
http://www.thecmuwebsite.com/article/gangnam-style-generated-8-million-in-youtube-ad-revenues/
It was estimated last month that the six month old novelty track and internet phenomenon had generated about that much in total, including download revenues and sync deals in addition to YouTube revenues. The Google figures would suggest Psy’s big hit may have been even more profitable to date, though it’s not clear how much of that $8 million in ad income went to the artist and his business partners.
With ‘Gangnam Style’ having been viewed 1.23 billion times to date, that stat suggests the video was earning about $6.50 for every 1000 streams, which would suggest ads around the promo were being sold at a premium, which figures given just how big a hit the cheesy-k-pop+silly-dance phenomenon became last year.
― iatee, Thursday, 21 February 2013 16:04 (eleven years ago) link
so roughly $1m probably at this point
will never look at william bloody swygart's name the same way again xp
― some dude, Thursday, 21 February 2013 16:04 (eleven years ago) link
I think gangnam style being kept out of the #1 spot already proved how absurd billboard is. unless you think that a maroon 5 song with a tenth of the youtube views of GS is really more popular just because clear channel plays it more.
― wk, Thursday, 21 February 2013 16:15 (eleven years ago) link
can we leverage the internet to get old memes like "Chocolate Rain" onto the Billboard charts?
― This beat is TWEENCHRONIC (DJP), Thursday, 21 February 2013 16:26 (eleven years ago) link
"Nyan Cat" was robbed.
― EZ Snappin, Thursday, 21 February 2013 16:42 (eleven years ago) link
http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/webdr01/2013/2/19/16/anigif_enhanced-buzz-22020-1361308248-10.gif
― 乒乓, Thursday, 21 February 2013 16:42 (eleven years ago) link
hate u
― This beat is TWEENCHRONIC (DJP), Thursday, 21 February 2013 16:55 (eleven years ago) link
http://i.imgur.com/SMYgWps.gif
― 乒乓, Thursday, 21 February 2013 16:58 (eleven years ago) link
u are not tricking me again
― This beat is TWEENCHRONIC (DJP), Thursday, 21 February 2013 17:05 (eleven years ago) link