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

(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.

I just want to post this, I know it's not on topic or anything. ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U15HQJwqslo

it is kind of crazy that gangnam style never hit #1. how is that not the most popular song of 2012?

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

the music blasting out of car stereos has always been counted (via radio airplay being factored in)

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.

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.

smh is billboard gonna change its rules with every new meme to show how "with it" they are

Damn I just realized that "Friday" would have been a top 10 hit if this had been in place at that time.

it even made the bbc
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/21534066

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, February 21, 2013 7:36 AM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

God I didn't think of that

all pop music is just a menagerie of memes set to the illusion of music iirc

Rebecca Black definitely would've been #1

hopefully there will be another rebecca black event to showcase how absurd billboard is now

billboard should be nationalized and taken over by the government so this shit doesn't happen

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

Let's do it.

let's just go straight to the source

http://www.youtube.com/channel/HCp-Rdqh3z4Uc?feature=gb_ch_rec

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.

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?

youtube I think

people watch ads on youtube, youtube makes money from ads, youtube gives some of that money to people

o yeah

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.

How much royalty are they getting per view? Much much less than 1 cent, right?

they are getting one shake of a white person's butt per view

hopefully there will be another rebecca black event to showcase how absurd billboard is now

― 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

What's today's exchange rate on white booty shakes to the dollar? Is it something like 75,000 WBS = 1 USD?

yeah though the WBS exchange rate goes down exponentially in canada

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.

so roughly $1m probably at this point

will never look at william bloody swygart's name the same way again xp

hopefully there will be another rebecca black event to showcase how absurd billboard is now

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.

can we leverage the internet to get old memes like "Chocolate Rain" onto the Billboard charts?

"Nyan Cat" was robbed.

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/webdr01/2013/2/19/16/anigif_enhanced-buzz-22020-1361308248-10.gif

hate u

http://i.imgur.com/SMYgWps.gif

u are not tricking me again

I vented a bit.

re: the static nature of the Spotify charts, I notice that AWOLNATION's "Sail" is still at #15 as of today

who's crying the most right now...psy, rick astley, antoine dodson or rebecca black

and does this mean fewer "this video has been deleted per sony/bmg/random label" occurrences? does having random lyric videos and fanvids of watson/sherlock set to an adele now mean enough eyes and ears and billboard impact that it changes how they manage the dissemination of their ip on youtube and in general?

i'm not a fan of this but i suppose it seems like logical progression. i'm old school and think of billboard charting as more of a "statement" vs an actual snapshot of what's going into people's ears, incidental or not. so what gives me pause is that it takes a lot of the agency and intention out of what drives the chart...when you buy/stream a song or a radio station chooses to play it it's about the specific song; a song charting because it was the bg music in a video of skateboarding injuries that was posted on reddit is giving it credit for a secondary and not indispensable role.

there was 'agency and intention' driving the chart?

more so than a song is getting a bump on the chart because it's part of a viral video that people are clicking on w/ zero aforethought to what song was included. traditionally someone was making a decision based on the song, someone was buying it or streaming it, a radio station chose to play it (involved in some cycle based on listener preferences), so the previous iteration of the chart was based more on active listening preferences than passive.

but sales still factor in, and harlem shake is selling. there's a lot more intention involved in somebody deciding to put that song in their video, a friend deciding to forward it to you because you might like it, you deciding to click on it, etc. than in a song getting added to a corporate radio playlist.

Sales factor in, but Billboard says that "Harlem Shake" is at 3.5 times the chart points of the current #2 hit (Thrift Shop), which has more sales than "Harlem Shake". I'm 99% sure that even if "Harlem Shake" had no sales at all it would still be #1 by a comfortable margin. That's my main problem, that the YouTube views seem to be weighted too high.

it's really dumb to equate youtube views with an itunes sales, it's a whole different level of engagement with a listener, an itunes sale is saying "i like this song and i want to listen to it repeatedly", youtube can be anything "i like this song" to "what the fuck is this?" "this is so stupid" "eh this is kinda funny" etc etc

you're talking about intention re: the video aspect, i'm talking about intention re: the song. you're clicking on "guy gets hit in the groin" because you want to see a guy get kicked in the crotch, the fact that "hurts so good" is playing in the bg is neither here nor there to the viewers. songs get added to radio playlists because stations and listeners have a symbiotic relationship so they supposedly drive each other's decisions.

i'm not a pollyanna, i don't harbor any misconceptions about charts perfectly and fairly capturing the zeitgeist. but doesn't mean that this isn't a step down.

on the other hand, 2 Girls 1 Cup would have made a pretty awesome #1

omg