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

Once the dust settles on this whole dubstep Harlem Shake meme, more people will have learned about the actual Harlem Shake. Will the original dance make some kind of comeback? Will youtube uploaders start refining their Harlem Shake dance styles? Will G Dep see a significant boost in sales? Just some things I'm thinking about. I didn't even learn about this meme until yesterday.

the whole "how dare they use the name of a dance to describe an editing gag" thing is weird

i mean it's totally ok to find some viral nonsense stupid but the self-righteousness is ott

Well, I mean, hip-hop has appropriated and recontextualized things from other genres and mediums on occasion, yes.

the cheap stunts begin

the stunt has everything to do w/ the fact that they make money from those youtube views (+ it's free publicity) and 0% to do w/ billboard

are they only counting views of the official Youtube or do they include all the fan videos and "with lyrics" ones? I ask because I tried to click on some of these "Harlem Shuffle" Youtubes to see what this is all about and a lot of them have been removed.

not to be all fact-check police but the Carly Rae Jepsen thing is almost certainly unrelated to this, considering it happened in 2012: http://www.carlyraemusic.com/2012/10/make-your-own-lyric-video-and-win-a-skype-call-and-signed-goodies/

(different song, of course, but same idea.)

I assume they count any videos where an artist/song has been recognized by YouTube.

yeah that seems to be the gist, any recognition is registered and paid for. i'm just curious if there is or ever will be a statute of limitation.

the whole 'lyric video' thing seriously is out of control though. Justin Timberlake is on-camera, occasionally mouthing words of the song, in the "Suit & Tie" lyric video, but because the words are on the screen and it's not a super high budget production that's just the lyric video, and the 'real' video was something else.

A board member of yore weighs in

http://t.co/YYHOtAKK86

pretty sure this lyric video was made by a 12-year old

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6S-0SbIVgs

that's my niece you're talking about!

watching 2 seconds of a 4-minute YouTube always counts towards its views and always has, though. Lex bringing that up raises a whole other issue about all this.

― D4y0 (some dude), Friday, February 22, 2013 6:03 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is not actually true from what I understand

ha well you def know more about YouTube than me, i thought all view-based traffic was measured by the "open the page and you're counted" rule. what is your understanding?

Looks like some dude is right?
http://www.quora.com/YouTube/How-far-into-the-video-does-a-user-need-to-watch-for-YouTube-to-count-it-as-a-view
http://www.atlantaanalytics.com/practicing-web-analytics/how-does-youtube-video-view-count-work/

Anyway, I wonder how many songs this year are going to come with dance moves attached.

you say that like half the songs out there don't have dance moves attached to them already

think the thing that annoys me most is the 30 sec thing? even if you ignore the fact that checking a song out on youtube doesn't equate to actually LIKING it, at least limit it to people consuming the actual full song

being forced to listen to a song over and over again on the radio doesn't equate to actually liking it either! also looool that you want to limit it to people listening to the "actual full song."

Maybe they'll somehow work YouTube Likes and Dislikes into the system.

this harlem shake song. does it really only last 30 seconds? (i only heard about it yesterday sorry if im asking a dumb question)

someone 'liking something' and something being popular aren't the same things regardless

ie like the billboard chart never strictly reflected 'the most liked' music

anyway related to this: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/02/21/172644482/tv-ratings-agency-nielsen-will-begin-measuring-online-streaming

this harlem shake song. does it really only last 30 seconds?

it's normal length (4 mins or something) but some of the meme videos that are being monetized / counting toward it's #1 chart position are that short

it's 3:18

ahh ok. I did wonder.

is it really less than 4 minutes, it felt like it went on for 10

Has there ever been a song as short as 30 seconds at #1? Or is there a minimum limit? I know in the UK in the 90s they changed the maximum to 19mins 59 secs because the orb,fsol etc were releasing 40 min singles and charting.

Looks like some dude is right?
http://www.quora.com/YouTube/How-far-into-the-video-does-a-user-need-to-watch-for-YouTube-to-count-it-as-a-view
http://www.atlantaanalytics.com/practicing-web-analytics/how-does-youtube-video-view-count-work/

― marc robot (seandalai), Friday, February 22, 2013 10:15 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ahh interesting—it does say in analytics you can see what point people stop watching

that feels a bit creepy

I would assume that billboard is smart enough to count the views per week, not just the cumulative total. In which case they must be getting data directly from youtube I would think. And if so there's no reason they couldn't also get U.S. only data, filter out the plays that are too short, etc.

The shortest ever #1 hit in the US is "Stay" by Maurice Williams & The Zodiacs. Something like a minute and a half.

or about three harlem shakes, which is the new convention for measuring time

3 malted harlem shakes please

and one shamrock shake

https://twitter.com/McDonalds/status/303230001342472192

being forced to listen to a song over and over again on the radio doesn't equate to actually liking it either! also looool that you want to limit it to people listening to the "actual full song."

feel like this is as good a place as any to confess than, on purpose, my iTunes is set to only count plays that play 100% of the song/track

Been waiting for that. xp

tbf don't most radio programming surveys only play the first ten seconds of a song to ppl surveyed to see if a track is 'known'?

so is that why so many songs start with a chorus now?

that's not why, but a lot of songs do do that to try and hook people as quickly as possible

also while i can totally believe (and assume) billboard's methodology here is off in principle this move is an obv good thing, in terms of trying to capture snapshot datapoint of a song's popularity, relative popularity of songs for a certain week in time right? it's a move toward greater accuracy (and unlike weighing sales v airplay ratio, youtube and streaming is obv under airplay and the only question is how you calculate and weigh it in that number), unlike the moves w/ r&b, country, etc charts.

starting songs w/ chorus is old as the hills
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoF-7VMMihA

also a good move in that it simultaneously dilutes the weight of radio airplay, reflecting the greater culture (something radio itself has been reflecting increasingly for a little while now - hello fm talk radio, goodbye rock radio).

there's no such thing as greater accuracy, there are just different ways of defining 'popularity'. and the old ways of defining it are becoming increasingly absurd.

yeah obviously it's a standard way to do a song, i'm just saying people writing big budget pop these days have openly said there's pressure to go straight for the hook. xp

personally i think any argument for this move just highlights how silly it was that they never made MTV and other video channels a factor

there's no such thing as greater accuracy
defining terms is kind've a first step, pretty sure billboard has an idea of what they mean by popularity. also will let everyone else in the lab know we can feel free to just go by guesstimates and eyeballing stuff, who needs assays and a280s.