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Post by matt on Jun 4, 2011 9:18:06 GMT -5
In light of the discussion regarding the 6/9/73 show and the changes in the compilation of the Hot 100, it sounds like an interesting topic to throw out there. Here are some questions for anyone that knows or has information as to what happened, etc.:
1) Were there any other times during AT40's run that Billboard changed the way they acquired and compiled chart data each week for the Hot 100 besides 6/9/73 and 11/30/91?
2) Maybe more so, what was the "game changer" in November 1991? We all know Billboard started using Nielsen Soundscan for chart data, but why did this cause such a seismic shift in the charts? It seems that the Hot 100 became more sales heavy again, but people were buying less singles than ever at the time. Were the sales of each song's albums considered a sale of the single at that point? And how come rap and hip-hop all of us sudden gain such a presence on the charts, when the Hot 100 is not meant to favor any one particular genre? Clearly there is more to it than merely the way data was gathered--perhaps the most significant evidence being that even American Top 40 stopped using the Hot 100 and went to the Radio Monitor chart instead...it sure seems like this was about more than just improving the accuracy of the Hot 100.
Finally, this change seemed to have an influence on popular music that contributed to the splitting of genres and formats in the early '90s. Sure, that was starting to some degree anyway, but was the Hot 100 change the chicken or the egg?
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Post by Mike on Jun 4, 2011 9:31:49 GMT -5
I have to think that AT40 knew in advance that the Hot 100 would be changing, so they'd have been ready in advance to switch what chart they used for the show. I don't see how they'd have kept going with the Hot 100 all the way up until the very last week under the old method otherwise. The splitting of genres was already happening and was clearly already having enough of an effect that Billboard decided to change their methodology in the first place; I have to think that consequently, that just made the divisions even more apparent than they were before. As for why rap and hip-hop made such a presence...well, those genres received and continue to receive a LOT of airplay from the big cities. Big cities = LOTS of audience, and when your chart methodology incorporates monitoring how much of the general public is listening...well, do the math.
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Post by Hervard on Jun 4, 2011 9:53:47 GMT -5
I have to think that AT40 knew in advance that the Hot 100 would be changing, so they'd have been ready in advance to switch what chart they used for the show. I don't see how they'd have kept going with the Hot 100 all the way up until the very last week under the old method otherwise. They probably would have kept going with the Hot 100 up to November 23 regardless, since that was the last week of the 1991 chart year. Then again, I don't know; they changed charts the first week of 1993 and I don't think that was the first week of 1993's chart year. Of course, the change in the chart wasn't quite as dramatic as that of the 1991 change.
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Post by jaxxalude on Jun 4, 2011 10:30:53 GMT -5
You're right in the assertion that the statff probably knew that the new methodology would bring about changes in the Hot 100. Before the changes became effective in the November 30 chart, Billboard had been publishing their separate test sales & airplay charts in the magazine. And anyone who was aware of the whole Hot 100 maths (as the staff of AT40 most probably did) must have known that things wouldn't definitely be the same from then on. One of the big changes was the fact that what might be called "traditional Top 40 music" wasn't as popular as one would think and that what were previously thought as "niche" genres such as hip-hop, straight-up R&B, hard(er) rock, alternative and country were actually in favor with the singles-buying audience just as much (if not more) than mainstream pop/rock. This obviously wouldn't sit very well with all the CHR/Top 40 PD's, who would protest at all the music (especially the hardcore hip-hop/R&B and heavy rock) their stations didn't play being so prominently featured on the show and thus drop it from their schedules. Faced with this, AT40 decided to switch to the Airplay Monitor chart (the predecessor to the Hot 100 Airplay, which at the time only incorporated Mainstream Top 40 stations in its panel) as soon as the Hot 100 integrated the methodology changes full-time. Did it work in the long run? We all know the answer to that, right?...
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Post by dukelightning on Jun 4, 2011 11:36:25 GMT -5
The rap, hip-hop thing was the beginning of the generational change that obviously took hold in the rest of the 90s and 2000s whereby young people were more interested in those genres than what the record buying public had been interested in the 70s and 80s.
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Post by artsmusic on Jun 4, 2011 16:48:06 GMT -5
The charts had always been based on "reported" airplay and sales. Said reporting was subject to distortions like the reporting of items that were not selling as well as the reporter said or choosing not to report a song as selling when it was "over" and no longer being promoted by the record company as the current single.
As we all know, many songs receive airplay for months and months as popular songs despite chart position, and the songs in "recurrent" rotation many times are more played and popular than the ones "charting".
As of 1991 an independent label rap song with a bunch of sales due to street cred, video play and actual interest could more fairly compete with a "reported" seller by an artist whose time had passed but whose industry stature continued to afford them promotional push that was not reflected in actual sales.
On a practical level, many people choose to buy one song vs. an album, so a greater percentage of the r&b and rap sales may have been the result of choosing single over album.
Radio was already split/splitting. Pop stations in some markets continued to exclude HUGE sales records with a harder, more rap edge like Humpty Dance, Geto Boys-My Mind's Playing Tricks on Me, etc.
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Post by artsmusic on Jun 4, 2011 17:01:03 GMT -5
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Post by jaxxalude on Jun 4, 2011 20:09:27 GMT -5
The charts had always been based on "reported" airplay and sales. Said reporting was subject to distortions like the reporting of items that were not selling as well as the reporter said or choosing not to report a song as selling when it was "over" and no longer being promoted by the record company as the current single. As we all know, many songs receive airplay for months and months as popular songs despite chart position, and the songs in "recurrent" rotation many times are more played and popular than the ones "charting". As of 1991 an independent label rap song with a bunch of sales due to street cred, video play and actual interest could more fairly compete with a "reported" seller by an artist whose time had passed but whose industry stature continued to afford them promotional push that was not reflected in actual sales. On a practical level, many people choose to buy one song vs. an album, so a greater percentage of the r&b and rap sales may have been the result of choosing single over album. Radio was already split/splitting. Pop stations in some markets continued to exclude HUGE sales records with a harder, more rap edge like Humpty Dance, Geto Boys-My Mind's Playing Tricks on Me, etc. "My Mind's Playing Tricks On Me" was just one among many cases of non-traditional Top 40 music that benefitted from the new (more accurate) methodology. Not to mention how certain records which seemed to be on the way out had some of the most unbelievable bounce-backs imaginable! On the other hand, the "industry stature" thing you alluded to was also very much present here. #'s 40, 43 and even 66 were certainly cases in point, as those songs never bounced back during the rest of their chart runs. November 30, 1991 Hot 100 chart
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Post by dukelightning on Jun 5, 2011 13:10:07 GMT -5
Here is what I did after the hOT 100 change. After several months, I noticed that the frequency of new #1 songs had decreased dramatically. I also noticed that Mariah Carey, after hitting #1 with her first 5 releases, peaked at #2 with her 6th after the methodology change. She was going after Whitney Houston's record 7 straight #1 singles. I thought it was a bit unfair since the bar had been raised for hitting #1 because of not only the less turnover at #1 but the increased representation of rap, etc. So I looked for other charts that I thought still were tabulated the way the HOT 100 was before Dec. 1991. And I came up with Cashbox. So for a few years into the 90s, I kept track of that chart. FYI, Mariah did hit #1 with her first 10 releases according to Cashbox. BTW, I did not use R&R because it was based just on airplay. So that is how I handled this change for a few years until I think Cashbox folded.
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Post by jaxxalude on Jun 5, 2011 19:51:02 GMT -5
And why would you want to look up to other less accurate charts, dukedeb? I'm sorry, but that doesn't really make much sense.
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Post by dukelightning on Jun 5, 2011 21:20:37 GMT -5
It was more about being consistent and liking the old system better than the new. That said, if they had been able to implement the new system 30 years earlier, then I would have been fine with it. Billboard alluded to the inconsistencies between pre and post 1991 charts in its 50 year HOT 100 anniversary issue in 2008. They made adjustments to the chart in coming up with their top 100 songs in HOT 100 history. I would like to see more done in that regard. They took a lot of flack in an earlier issue when ranking the top songs of the rock era, the top 10 were all from the 90s and 2000s only because it was a lot easier to amass 11, 12 ,13, 14 and 16 weeks at #1 after 1991. So they took that into account when tabulating that top 100. Making the chart more accurate was an obvious choice. But it came at the price of continuity.
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Post by jaxxalude on Jun 6, 2011 8:21:40 GMT -5
Well, it's like they say: nothing nor anyone is perfect. And if anything, any issue one might have had with the Hot 100 during most of the 90's had more to do with two factors:
1) When changing to the new methodology, the genre-splintering some posters already alluded to should have been addressed immediately by incorporating radio stations of every music format imaginable, bar the ones primarily based on nostalgia (Classic Rock, Rhythmic Oldies, Classic Hits, etc.), instead of just doing it in late 1998. Which brings us to... 2) While it's true that Billboard was already discussing this as early as 1995, the inclusion of radio-only tracks should have been made more or less at this point. 1993 & '94 already had its fair share of correspondent occurrences, true. But 1995 was when it all became clearer. And in that respect, Billboard should have been much more pressurous towards labels in order to find a methodology that both worked and satisfied them.
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Post by artsmusic on Jun 6, 2011 10:42:00 GMT -5
Continuity across the years as we all know has been out the window for quite some time.
The way people are presented with music (jukebox, radio play, streaming) consume music (configuration preference), how they've been allowed to (radio promotion, configuration availability, label scheduling), and how it's been compiled (chart policy) over 55 years have been through so many iterations....
One of the results of the combination of airplay from all music formats is why I don't like the current Hot 100 top 40. There's country songs that may generate enough country format play to hit top 40, but that aren't true crossovers like Lady Antebellum, Restless Heart, Freddie Fender, Lynn Anderson. So an artist like Kenny Chesney who has never really crossed over has several more top 40s. We can't go back in time to do-over the old charts to match.
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Post by dukelightning on Jun 6, 2011 11:59:20 GMT -5
Wow whoever started this thread really opened up a can of worms because there are so many angles to this issue. The time of this methodology change also seemed to coincide with by my calculations, the third generational shift of the rock era. In the early 90s, the record buying public was moving away from AC and mainstream/hard rock and into rap, hip-hop and alternative. Back in the mid 60s, the move was away from early rock era stalwarts like Paul Anka, Pat Boone and the Everly Brothers to the Beatles and the mainstream rock groups of the day. Then in the early 80s, there was the shift from disco and soul to new wave and harder rock even heavy metal. I think that is why some of us myself included were not to keen about the result of the change in methodology because it amplified the aforementioned early 90s music preference changes. AT40 and CT40 catered to that same age group that liked 70s and/or 80s musical styles and went or stayed with charts that mirrored those styles.
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Post by Shadoe Fan on Jun 6, 2011 13:10:23 GMT -5
I stopped following the Hot 100 when the change occurred, because like the posts above me say, it no longer represented what I like. Here in Indiana, it didn't represent what I heard either in many cases. The first few weeks of the new Hot 100 also had a ridiculous recurrent rule, where songs were removed from #20 after 20 weeks.
I'm also not a fan of "audience impressions", which is used in computing the Hot 100. Yes, I am aware of the statistical validity of those impressions, but I prefer raw numbers, like spins. One reason why AT40 switched to the Top 40/Mainstream chart was because of some of the songs hitting the top 40 of the Hot 100 Airplay chart were only hits in major cities and were unfamiliar in parts of the USA.
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