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Music Charts No Longer Make Sense (qz.com)
American rapper Future's back to back new albums have created a stir among music enthusiasts and the studios alike. Billboard today refreshed its weekly US Top 200 chart, and the American rapper officially became the first artist to ever knock his own album out of the #1 spot with another one of his albums. Future released the self-titled FUTURE on Feb. 17. One week later, the artist then dropped a second album HNDRXX which is the new champion. What does it mean, though? Confusion, some say. From a report on Quartz: Up till December 2014, Billboard's Top 200 chart -- which pulls its numbers from data juggernaut Nielsen -- measured new music in the US only by album sales. As music streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, came into the mainstream, Nielsen and Billboard revamped their system to be based off "units." How does is work? One "unit" is equivalent to either one album sale, 10 track sales, or 1,500 song streams. In other words, listeners on a streaming platform would need to stream a Future song 1,500 times for it to count the same way a single album purchase does.
While that number may seem high, consider that it costs (more or less) $9.99 a month to stream tens of thousands of songs, as opposed to dropping $10-15 on a single album to own it, either physically or digitally. That means people who subscribe to online streaming services aren't taking out an additional cost to listen to every new Future song or album or the same ones over and over again -- it's essentially free. It becomes an odd, if necessary, way of calculating charts, because it means people who pay the most for an artist's music count for the least when sales are tallied.
Never hear of the guy. Proof music charts are ridiculous.
Rap is fucking garbage. People talk over a 8 second music loop and win Best Artist because they look good and dance around. There's no music being created anymore, it's all a sad performance for poor black people.
It are Music Charts, what has rap to do with music? As much as a first post has to do with the subject.
People just 'paid' for radio plays by listening to advertising. So why does streaming need to be considered but radio play does not?
Nothing in TFS explains to me why, "Music Charts No Longer Make Sense". Is it because an artist overtook himself on the charts? Is it because they've had to change their chart system to keep up with technology?
Maybe charts don't make sense anymore, maybe they still do, but I have no idea whether they do or not from reading TFS.
There seems to be a deliberate attempt to destroy the sensibilities, intellect ,morals of the population by putting out of all of this out of tune, profane, creepy, depressing, dismal, tasteless, trashy, low grade music that appeals mainly to crackheads, deadbeats stoners, self obsessed and arrogant millenials, sado-depressive types and the like. Pop, rap, rock, its all garbage. Real music disappeared long ago, Now we have this bleak, dystopian nonsense that seems to be designed to destroy the minds of those who listen to it. So, nothing worth buying here, I advise everyone to not purchase this garbage and put hollywood out of business for good. It would do our society a big favor.
shows how little artistic talent and work is required to produce a rap album. About as much effort as producing a bowel movement. YMMV
Future released the self-titled FUTURE on Feb. 17. One week later, the artist then dropped a second album HNDRXX which is the new champion. What does it mean, though?
It mean's he's clumsy for dropping his own album just a week after finishing the first copy. Also, a week to make a second copy is just absurd. Microsoft should really fix that buffer underrun problem with CD burners. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Each month (30 days) has 43200 minutes (30 * 24 * 60), and each song is about 4 minutes long, give or take. I could only listen to about 10,000 songs if that's all I did 24/7. But, you know, I sleep, I talk to people, I read, I work. So my music listening accounts for a much smaller part of my day. Maybe 4 hours worth (but in reality, much less because I tend to spend more time listening to podcasts). So I listen to 10-15 songs a day. I'm not a teenager, but even a teenager has to turn the music off at school.
So, yeah, math...
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
which is why it's weighed so much. very few people are paying $10 for these album things anymore. even fewer are paying $80 or whatever it costs for a vinyl now
No record labels means no need for charts. These charts started out as an industry metric that was turned into a marketing gimmick.
I know in the US the slang is to "drop an album" but I would much prefer if slashdot would use the more widely understood "pooped out an album". ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Given the pay to play nature of radio, charts only ever really showed who paid the most money for airtime.
They've been meaningless for a long time now.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
So first TFS states that an album got bumped from #1 by another album from that same artist, then it poses the question of "what does it mean?", while finishing off with something that has nothing to do with the question it just posed.
One “unit” is equivalent to either one album sale, 10 track sales, or 1,500 song streams ...
It becomes an odd, if necessary, way of calculating charts, because it means people who pay the most for an artist's music count for the least when sales are tallied.
But consumers don't really care which songs earn the artist the most money, they care which ones are the most popular songs. When I buy an album I rarely listen to it more than a few times after the purchase (but I'll come back to it later). I don't understand the 1500:1 ratio for streams to albums when computing rank. It seems like 10:1 or 100:1 would be a more fair representation of how much people like it. Even for songs that I really like, if they come up too many times in rotation in my playlists, I'll vote it down because I get tired of the same song over and over.
And if I buy a track, it's because I really like that track and didn't want the album, so why does it take 10 track sales to equal one album sale?
I guess the answer is that the Billboard Charts aren't meant to reflect popularity, but just revenue, which certainly has value to the industry, but not so much to individual listeners.
This is NOT news for news. This is NOT stuff that matters. For fucks sake Slashdot
...crap. Proved mathematically.
From the summary:
While that number may seem high, consider that it costs (more or less) $9.99 a month to stream tens of thousands of songs, as opposed to dropping $10-15 on a single album to own it, either physically or digitally. That means people who subscribe to online streaming services aren't taking out an additional cost to listen to every new Future song or album or the same ones over and over again -- it's essentially free.
This is kind of bullshit. It's not "essentially free", it's essentially $9.99/month. To take me as an example, I had pretty much stopped buying music entirely until Spotify came along. I didn't buy new music anymore, and I didn't buy old music anymore. I was spending $0/month for a few years. Now I subscribe to Spotify, and I pay $9.99/month.
Now guess what happened: I surprising amount of the time, I listen to albums on Spotify that I already own. It's just easier to listen to them in Spotify than to keep them separate. When I'm listening to albums that I haven't purchased, I'm often listening to the same albums or playlists over and over again. To be honest, it's possible that I'm just not even getting my money's worth, that if I'd gathered up all those $9.99/month payments, I could have purchased all the music that I listen to.
On a side note, maybe you think that's foolish, but a big part of why I subscribe is that I don't want to spend time doing that math. I don't want to not-listen to a song that I like because I'm not sure whether it's worth the money. I'd rather just pay my $10/month and not have to think about it. But that's not the point of my post here.
The point is, I pay every month. Sometimes I'm paying to listen to stuff I've already paid to listen to, so it's not "essentially free". It's continually paying for the same content over and over again. Even when I listen to new music, that's no "essentially free", because last month's $10 went toward listening to last month. Everything I listen to this month is being paid for by this month's $10. That's how this works.
So no, I'm not taking out an additional cost for each individual song I listen to. Then again, people who purchase albums are not taking out an additional cost for continuing to listen to the same album they've already purchased. Therefore, calculating ratings based on sales may be a less accurate measure of a song's popularity. In sales, older songs and albums would be under-represented, since people who already own the album but continue to listen to it aren't being counted. Streaming services would be more likely to distinctly show a resurgence in popularity.
Nielsen should count the number of fucks we have to give.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
It stopped being anything to do with actual musical talent and started being all about marketing to gullible teenagers like 50+ years ago.
Mediocre black movie gets awards the year after the event is boycotted for not having enough black nominees. Affirmitive action for the win, at the cost of actual talent.
Digital has made it effectively free to the consumer so the revenue model is back to advertising. Yeah and weird beards collecting vinyl but whatev.
Interesting that most of the first comments here are standard alt-right racist wanking about rap being garbage. We get it, the only culture you like is your own. Except generally racist whites in the USA haven't had much to offer since ... uh ... Garth Brooks? /. 2017 yo.
Autotuned voices, corporate-created-idols (usually some pretty teenaged kid with a previous 'career' as a Disney 'talent employee'), new stars with a pre-baked 'image' (naturally built/provided by the studio), lyrics that are focus-group-tested and written by someone else, a catchy tune usually ripped-off from some unknown who got paid a pittance for it...
Most *music* these days is fucking garbage. Okay, some of that may be the 'get off my lawn' syndrome on my part, but honestly, in the past the musician and/or band usually had to come up with everything themselves: lyrics, chords, composition, image, vision, etc. Even as late as the 1990s or so, there were still artists who did it themselves, and the quality tended to show through more readily. Yes there were pre-baked 'stars' in the past as well, but their appeal tended to die off pretty quickly, or their star faded long before their second album... much like, well, today. It's just that the signal-to-noise ratio went to hell of late.
Nowadays, it all seems, I don't know... not crafted, so much as assembled. Disposable talent would be a good way to put it, I think. Nowadays, to find the good stuff, you have to cast a really wide net, to local up-and-coming independent artists (pre-contract), obscure bands in Europe, Asia, etc.
Don't get me wrong entirely, though - some of it, intentionally assembled (e.g. Electronica) can be pretty damned good; but then, underneath it, you find independent artists who carefully crafted what they themselves produced.
I can't be the only one who thinks this...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Wait.
I don't mean the mainstream music industry.
I don't stream music. I have a band I really like I have pre-ordered their last few CDs because they kick ass. (Clutch)
For the most part, I have been finding new/old music on Youtube. I can find channels I like, find artists I like, get recommendations, etc. I can also rip channel playlists from youtube, burn them to a CD as mp3 so I can listen in my car. I have found plenty of stuff I like that way, and if I really like them I can buy their album on whatever site they list it on and support the artists. Hell, they might be in some other country. Or if it's old stuff, I can usually find the whole album on youtube and get it with tools like youtube-dl.
So I like the music industry that the internet created, the one that actually promotes music and supports artists.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I think I see the problem here, and might know just what you need. Here at Cajun Hell Enterprises, we have developed a proprietary unit of measure which fits your case perfectly.
We call it "Dollar" (TM). Instead of counting arbitrary "units" and then defining various other sub-unit types as being equivalent to a fraction of a unit in proportion to their revenue, we just measure the revenue itself. We can them combine measurements of these dollars from various sources, into a total for the time period in question, using a special arithmetic operator developed just for this task.
If you think you already have Dollars, please contact our sales department.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
I couldn't care less what any music chart says or claims or shows. Why would I? I listen to things I like, not to what other people think is popular. In fact, if masses of people like it then I'll probably find it a crashing bland bore.
Sing along, consumer: "Oooh ooh yeah baby ooh yeah yeah autotune me baby, ooh yeah pop a cap in that nigga, womenz be hoes, make dat' money ooh ooh slap dat bish, ooh yeah Justin Bieber, ooh yeah"
Look for that on the Top 100 in a day or so. Oh, wait, that IS the first 50 songs on the Top 100!
Now if you'll excuse me, Matlock is on!
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
This is not ironic. This is not a joke. It is very disturbing to see grown people have such strong feelings over something that is subjective art. I grew up on rap music. I enjoy rap when it is about drugs and guns and violence. I enjoy it when it about social issues and the voice of a disenfranchised people. Yes there is a certain degree of misogyny and glorification of violence but that is the same as assuming that all metal is about devil worshipping. There are negative stereotypes associated with everything but you have to look beyond that. All art that connects with people has merit. Whether it be sonically or lyrically or for whatever reason (here I include the modern mumble rap too, much to the chagrin of rap purists who insist mumble rap isn't "real hip-hop") that connects with the listener. The top comments remind me of the 15 year old high school kids who decide who to make friends with based on their taste of music. There is a certain kind of elitism and definitely passive racism associated with the disparaging of an entire genre that has replaced rock and rock as the mainstream genre for more than two decades now. Stay classy, Slashdot.
Streaming is not necessarily devoid of commercial influence. Steamed songs are not necessarily requested or otherwise searched for. The providers often provide some sort of links or lists to some sort of "suggested" content.
Its not a perfect fit but the radio analogy is a good one and streaming may deserve no more influence than radio. A "listen" does not necessarily suggest a "like", while a "payment" for a specific album/song can be strongly correlated with a like. A person may listen to a song once or twice and then decide it is nothing special. Perhaps adding it to a playlist would be a better metric than a mere "listen", or of course numerous "listens" by an individual.
Only band that mattered. Go fuck yourselves.
Sadly, a lot of the same shit on it though. :-(
Music titles being "top" because they sell stopped making sense since they invented the payola.
There was a time when music from all corners of the world could be "top". That time is long gone.
This post is certainly bringing out the racists on Slashdot. Sad!
"Get off my Lawn" is the mantra. Every previous generation crows about how their music was better than current garbage. Your parents said the same about your 80s music. And now you are doing the same with your children's music.
Welcome to the beginning of your grave's bed.
I wanted to know what the Stream option could translate into Album Sales, so I did some quick math:
If you streamed music 24/7, your activity could be counted as 9.6 album sales per month.
Assumptions:
A month is 30 days
A song is 3 minutes long