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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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Appreciation of music is inherently subjective, so I won't argue with whatever makes something garbage to you, but some of the elements you list just don't matter to me. I don't care if the performer wrote the song or not, or if a producer packaged them to be more appealing to an audience. If I like the song I like the song, and I don't have to be a purist about it.
Do you feel the same way about a car or a computer? Would Photoshop have more value to you if it was produced by a single person? Does a car have more authenticity if the body and the engine come from the same team?