Billboard has shaken up the country, rap, rock, Latin and R&B/hip-hop music charts. The rankings now infuse Nielsen SoundScan’s digital download sales numbers as well as streaming data from Spotify, Muve, Slacker, Rhapsody, Rdio and Xbox Music and other services. Charts still account for physical sales and radio airplay.
While the changes attempt to give a more accurate reflection of the overall landscape of music listeners, some people are unhappy about them because not every musician has the online fan base as, say, Taylor Swift and Rihanna, who both experienced massive jumps in the country and R&B/hip-hop charts after the makeover.
The new methodology appears to be favoring cross-over artists, and music bloggers are already frustrated.
“Expect even more pop-oriented country songs, more pop songs that call themselves country, and more non-country artists attempting to join the country format in an attempt to gain advantage by the new Billboard rules,” writes The Trigger at SavingCountryMusic.com. “In the long run, this will erode the autonomy the country format has enjoyed since the beginning of Billboard‘s charts.”
Meanwhile, blogger Troy Story at mrldavis.com spoke on behalf of the R&B/hip-hop chart: “What introducing digital sales does is introduce a false sense of popularity,” he argues. “Just because someone downloads a song does not mean they like it, and does not mean they even listened to it more than once.”
| ‘Gangnam Style’ Cracks YouTube’s Top 10
Billboard, on the other hand, describes the tweaks as “perfectly logical.”
“With digital download sales and streaming data measuring popularity on the most inclusive scale possible, it makes perfectly logical sense that the radio portion of the new chart calculations include airplay from the entire spectrum of monitored formats,” Billboard‘s Silvio Pietroluongo explained in a post detailing all of the changes.
To showcase how the new system works, Pietroluongo turns your attention to Swift’s songs:
The immediate beneficiary of this week’s methodology change is Swift, who holds down the top two slots on Country Songs with … “We Are Never”and the title track from her new “Red” album, due October 22 from Big Machine. The pop-crossover No. 1 title ranks at No. 36 on the Country Airplay tally (but also gets points associated with its pop-crossover play) and No. 2 on Country Digital Songs, while “Red” is absent from the Country Airplay list, but ranks No. 1 on Country Digital Songs. Swift ranks at No. 10 on Hot Country Songs with “Begin Again,” which appears at No. 29 on Country Airplay and No. 3 on Country Digital Songs.
Billboard previously created the Digital Songs chart, which ranks the top-downloaded songs, and the Social 50, which ranks the artists attracting the most buzz on social networks.
Billboard‘s main chart — the Hot 100 — had already tracked digital downloads and streaming stats.
Is the new ranking system good or bad? Were the changes necessary to reflect how people listen to music today, or should Billboard have left the genre-specific charts untouched? Tell us your thoughts below.
BONUS: Rihanna’s ‘We Found Love’ Gets Banned, Just Like These Steamy Videos
Banned Music Videos
Read more: http://mashable.com/2012/10/12/billboard-charts-digital-streaming-changes/
Billboard Alters Music Charts to Add Digital Sales and Streaming Data
Billboard, country, Entertainment, music, rihanna, taylor swift
No comments:
Post a Comment