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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.
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?
No, it's because the chart system is not made to deal with this marketing gimmick. The artists clearly had both albums recorded and mastered at the same time, there is no reason they couldn't have been released as single double-length album. He set this up specifically to take the title of "first artist to displace himself at the top of the chart" and get all this free publicity.
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.