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Post by matt on Jun 6, 2011 14:13:19 GMT -5
dukedeb--I would be the guy that opened up this can of worms. But it has been fun to read everyone's take on it. Thanks to everyone that has responded to this thread--great discussion and insight. I have followed the Billboard charts since the mid-80s and the change to the Soundscan system in 1991 has always been one of the more fascinating events to me in that time. My first realization of the differences in the charts was in late 1992--after years where most #1 songs would usually stay there for 2-3 weeks at the most, a 5-plus week stay was rare, and the record for over 30 years had been "Hound Dog" at 11 weeks--then we get two #1 songs out of three that break the 11-week record (Boys II Men's "End of the Road" at 13 weeks and Whitney's "I Will Always Love You" at 14 weeks). Then we had all these random odd-ball acts that would spend 7-8 weeks at #1 with regularity. Didn't really make sense at the time and to this day, it still seems strange to me. I will always think it was really unfortunate that so many of the old chart records have been broken--several rather unjustly IMO--and there is no real apples-to-apples comparison between the chart runs of songs of today and that of songs that charted pre-Soundscan.
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Post by jdelachjr2002 on Jun 6, 2011 14:20:26 GMT -5
The first few weeks of the new Hot 100 also had a ridiculous recurrent rule, where songs were removed from #20 after 20 weeks. How long did that last? Of course, R&R and Mediabase would eventually have this recurrent rule (although I think Mediabase now has songs falling recurrent from below the Top 15 if I'm not mistaken, no?)
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Post by mkarns on Jun 6, 2011 16:52:16 GMT -5
From the Pulse Music Boards regarding what goes recurrent:
There are two main criteria to consider to know if a song is going recurrent: - Number of weeks: the song has been inside the Top 40 for TWENTY (20) WEEKS. - Position inside the chart: the song has slipped outside of the Top 15.
Note that this is used for the official Mediabase chart, but not for AT40 as counted down by Ryan Seacrest, where songs can stay on indefinitely. I'd prefer the approach used by Casey during his Radio & Records AT40s, when songs were dropped after they surpassed 20 weeks on the chart and fell below a set position. That made the countdown more interesting and allowed more songs to become big chart hits.
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Post by jaxxalude on Jun 6, 2011 17:04:27 GMT -5
To call it a can of worms might be a bit stretching. The OP posed some valid questions and, this being a message board (i.e., the virtual equivalent of a debate team), all manners of possible answers and points of view were presented in a considered, reasonable way. Just. Now on with the discussion. As antsmusic said, continuity has been out of the window for a long time. I'd even say it started going that way as soon as the very first adjustments to the Hot 100 were applied. And it's only natural. Not only music changes, but most importantly it's the way it's delivered/consumed/promoted/etc. that prompt those very changes to the charts. If anyone told your 50's poodle skirt-wearing, Elvis-worshipping teen girl, that we'd be primarily enjoying a thing called psychedelic rock music on devices such as vinyls bigger than 7", cassette tapes or radio stations located on a dial band dubbed as FM, she'd think of you as a raving loon! And it goes from there, right to the point where in 2011 there's such a concept as music in a cloud. What I said now also serves as a great kick-off to address artsmusic's contention over the fact that Billboard now incorporates most other formats besides Mainstream Top 40 in its Hot 100 rankings. Let me put it to you this way: think about the evolution of TV itself. Once there was a time when you only had three national networks and a few, almost marginal, local stations. In those days, of course the networks grabbed a lot of audience and/or share percentage; there wasn't practically anything else. Then one day, cable came. And although it wasn't immediate (so much so that a fourth national network could impose itself), this new TV delivery system got to the homes of the majority of American residences over time. And once it did, of course the major networks would suffer and not be as dominant as they were before, as consumers now not only had more viewing options at their disposal, most of those were specialty channels catered to specific needs and interests. Same with Top 40 radio. In many ways, the splintering started as early as the late 60's, when the introduction of the FM dial, together with the changes in popular music itself, brought about new formats such as AOR and Urban Contemporary, the consolidation of pre-existing ones like Country or the evolution of Easy Listening into Adult Contemporary, among many others. And so on. And like network TV, Top 40 would lose its undoubted dominance as the all-encompassing mass-appeal format, as it now had to share more space in the dial. I mean, Top 40 itself, from the mid-80's onward, would splinter into subformats, with Hot AC/Adult Top 40 and Rhythmic being the most prominent. Even in an age where Mainstream Top 40 is enjoying its best phase since the late 90's renaissance, we can't honestly say that this is the music radio format that rules supreme over all others anymore. In many ways, Top 40 became a niche format itself, just like network TV is also becoming niche over time. And to go straight into your Kenny Chesney example: while he might not get arrested at Top 40 or even Hot AC, he's the kind of artist whose albums always manage to go at least Gold and who, more importantly, does very solid business on tour, sometimes playing for audiences of 10000+ plus in some American cities. By any person's account, that's big success. Furthermore, while I get HotACChartGuru's point, one of the main reasons why Billboard uses audience impressions in their Hot 100 tabulation is because spin detections are much easier to manipulate, especially in radio stations (most of them, really) where graveyard slots are made of nonstop automated music, with just the occasional station ID thrown in for legal reasons. Audience stats, on the other hand - especially in light of PPM -, take much more sophisticated (re: expensive) methods for third parties to distort.
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Post by artsmusic on Jun 6, 2011 19:30:10 GMT -5
Agreed on the points/magnitude of Chesney, what was of most concern is the lack of comparability that the same kind of chart performance could not then be awarded to George Strait, Alan Jackson, Reba McEntire as other country stars with impressive runs of #1s which didn't have the same chance to use their country airplay dominance to chart as many top 40 Hot100 songs as Chesney has.
If I remember correctly regarding impressions, there were concerns in the early days of BDS that labels could place ads on smaller/cost-effective reporting stations for an album. They could feature enough of the promoted single in the ad to perhaps register as a "play". Don't know if that was disproven or not, but it might have been a consideration.
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Post by jaxxalude on Jun 7, 2011 7:47:28 GMT -5
They did count as plays. I once read this interview with Journey's former manager, Herbie Herbert, where at one point he discussed how he managed to effectively promote the band at a time (1978) when disco was king & queen and acts like Journey had sort of a hard time being played on Top 40. He said, point blank, that one of the tactics was to place those ads on radio ("in those days radio was cheap, cheap, cheap to buy", he said) and make them as long as possible, since those plays counted as impressions. And since we're on it, he also discussed other tactics; in particular, how he got hold of those companies specialized in providing background music for retail chains of all kinds and made deals with them. This and touring, he said, was how he got to make Infinity a platinum album in the space of a year and a half without really having any hit singles to speak of.
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Post by Shadoe Fan on Jun 8, 2011 8:37:40 GMT -5
The first few weeks of the new Hot 100 also had a ridiculous recurrent rule, where songs were removed from #20 after 20 weeks. How long did that last? Of course, R&R and Mediabase would eventually have this recurrent rule (although I think Mediabase now has songs falling recurrent from below the Top 15 if I'm not mistaken, no?) I'm not sure, but I think the Hot 100 20/20 rule only lasted a month or two (I see a song at 21 weeks below #20 on the 1-25-92 Hot 100). It then moved to #30 or #40 before finally settling at its current #50 by the summer of '92.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 8, 2011 9:07:54 GMT -5
Maybe I misunderstood something earlier in this thread, so if my first point is not relevant I apologize. Changing to a new chart, or keeping the Hot 100 wouldn't have mattered with American Top 40 continuing into the future. It died in 1995 not because of it's chart method, but because radio itself had fragmented and fewer and fewer stations were putting on every radio show as they used to.
The other thing I would like to say. Personally, I have always felt radio airplay is the primary focus of what a charted song is. You may or may not go out and buy the album or single. You may not have been able to afford to do so (when I was a kid, I had to beg my mom to buy one). But you can call a radio station and request a song. The more they get, the more it airs, etc. I am sure others have different interpretations but for me, yes I hung with the Hot 100 until they changed methods too. After that, switching to R&R and believing those were the biggest hits wasn't an issue for me.
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Post by jaxxalude on Jun 8, 2011 9:30:54 GMT -5
All fine and dandy... except that what plays on the radio makes up a very, very small piece of whatever music is out there.
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Post by dukelightning on Jun 8, 2011 9:33:13 GMT -5
I think Billbaord has wrestled with this airplay to sales ratio issue since the HOT 100 started because they have modified it several times. But I went to Cashbox instead of R&R as paul, CT40 and others did because I think both airplay and sales have to be taken into account. Not so much because I favor one over the other but because most if not all of the time, both airplay and sales were components of the HOT 100. That said, we all know that CT40 used R&R becaue by virtue of that chart being based on airplay, the songs listed would be closer to what their projected audience wanted to hear.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 8, 2011 10:44:38 GMT -5
All fine and dandy... except that what plays on the radio makes up a very, very small piece of whatever music is out there. I agree with you now, but then it wasn't like it is today. But these countdown shows and charts surveyed pop radio stations. Naturally, you were going to get whatever those stations were playing and they were only to play what fit their audience. I never woke up and listened to Casey's Top 40 thinking the following 40 songs are bigger than all Country, R&B, CCM, or Rap songs in the USA.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 8, 2011 10:51:33 GMT -5
I think Billbaord has wrestled with this airplay to sales ratio issue since the HOT 100 started because they have modified it several times. But I went to Cashbox instead of R&R as paul, CT40 and others did because I think both airplay and sales have to be taken into account. Not so much because I favor one over the other but because most if not all of the time, both airplay and sales were components of the HOT 100. If you were looking for apples to apples then, sure. But that was around the point MTV had started playing a bunch of stuff I had never heard of in addition to airing a lot of other programming not associated with videos, so admittedly my music taste was shrinking to the point I truly only cared about what came on my local radio station. Mix that in with my reasonings of radio being the key factor for me in being the top songs and there you have why I didn't really care about sales anymore. That said, we all know that CT40 used R&R becaue by virtue of that chart being based on airplay, the songs listed would be closer to what their projected audience wanted to hear. Disagree. No one knew what was coming with the charts in late 88 - 1989 when Casey's Top 40 began. I think the exlcusivity agreement in place between AT40 and Billboard is what prevented Westwood One from going that route. Had there been no such agreement, I think if WW1 could pony up the money on a weekly basis they would have been counting down the Hot 100's Top 40 songs of the week as well.
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Post by matt on Jun 8, 2011 11:04:22 GMT -5
That said, we all know that CT40 used R&R becaue by virtue of that chart being based on airplay, the songs listed would be closer to what their projected audience wanted to hear. Disagree. No one knew what was coming with the charts in late 88 - 1989 when Casey's Top 40 began. I think the exlcusivity agreement in place between AT40 and Billboard is what prevented Westwood One from going that route. Had there been no such agreement, I think if WW1 could pony up the money on a weekly basis they would have been counting down the Hot 100's Top 40 songs of the week as well. Paul, I think you are probably right. My guess is that Casey would have wanted to continue using the Hot 100 on CT40 into 1989 and beyond, for a few reasons. First of all, it would have provided continuity for him and his audience from the previous 18 years of AT40. I assume he had to adjust in terms of talking about records, trivia questions, past chart runs, etc. (though I understand this was mostly compiled by his staff) based on the R&R chart instead of the Hot 100. Also, going to R&R put Casey's show in more direct competition with Rick Dees' show, and took away an advantage that AT40 had--that it used the Billboard chart. Now, once Billboard made the switch to Soundscan, Casey and company may have been happy that they were using R&R at that point. It could be argued that event was one of the blows to Shadoe's run on AT40.
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Post by jaxxalude on Jun 8, 2011 11:09:33 GMT -5
All fine and dandy... except that what plays on the radio makes up a very, very small piece of whatever music is out there. I agree with you now, but then it wasn't like it is today. But these countdown shows and charts surveyed pop radio stations. Naturally, you were going to get whatever those stations were playing and they were only to play what fit their audience. I never woke up and listened to Casey's Top 40 thinking the following 40 songs are bigger than all Country, R&B, CCM, or Rap songs in the USA. Haha, nor should you. But it's pretty much always been like this. The difference is that there's bigger access with the Internet (and I don't necessarily mean illegal filesharing) and even bigger splitting - they even call it narrowcasting these days. So whatever mainstream there is, it's just a collection of the biggest songs/acts/etc. within their sphere coming together to make a coherent chart, for the most part. Sure, there's still your across-the-board superstar like Lady Gaga, the Black Eyed Peas, Katy Perry or Lil Wayne. But they're less and less these days.
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Post by dukelightning on Jun 8, 2011 11:51:04 GMT -5
paul and wahoo I think were the ones who commented on this but I was referring to post 1991 when I said that CT40 used R&R. I knew they could not use Billboard because of contractual obligations in 1989. Their choices were R&R and Cashbox therefore and it may very well have been legal/financial issues that determined it rather than what songs were most amenable to their listeners. It is my contention that if given the choice between Cashbox and R&R outside of legal/financial considerations, they would have chosen R&R. Anyone know how and why they chose R&R?
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