Rolling Stone Magazine To Launch Its Own Music Charts

[seminolefan]

variety.com/2019/music/news/rolling-stone-launch-own-music-charts-challenge-billboard-1203207480/

Rolling Stone to Launch Its Own Music Charts in Challenge to Billboard
By Henry Chu


Rolling Stone will begin publishing its own music charts beginning next Monday, in a challenge to the longtime leader in the field, Billboard magazine.

The new “Rolling Stone Charts” will encompass the top 100 singles and the top 200 albums in the U.S.. the singles chart will be updated daily instead of weekly. The lists are also expected to incorporate more information on streaming and offer more transparency about how the rankings are derived. Rolling Stone, which is owned by Penske Media Corp. (which also owns Variety), is hoping that those innovations will help it muscle onto turf that Billboard has ruled for decades.

“PMC’s strategy is to constantly evolve our brands and products across media platforms,” PMC CEO Jay Penske said in a statement. “What’s imperative and exciting about our new Rolling Stone Charts is that it will present a transparent, granular and real-time quantification to accurately reflect listeners’ evolving interests and give insight into worldwide trends.”

PMC bought a majority stake in Rolling Stone two years ago, and became full owner of the property earlier this year.

The new charts will rely on data from analytics firm BuzzAngle Music, which was founded in 2013 and launched in 2016. PMC made a strategic investment in the company last year. Among other features, BuzzAngle tracks daily sales, streaming and airplay of songs, artists and albums.

Three other weekly charts that will launch Monday are the Rolling Stone Artist 500, ranking the most-streamed artists; the Rolling Stone Trending 25, a list of the fastest-moving songs based on a number of metrics; and the Rolling Stone Breakthrough 25, which will look at artists who have entered the charted for the first time.

News of the new charts was first reported by Vanity Fair on Tuesday.

[seminolefan]

www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/05/rolling-stone-takes-aim-at-the-billboard-charts

Rolling Stone Takes Aim at the Competition With a Billboard Charts Killer
by Joe Pompeo
May 7, 2019 5:30 am

Ever since Penske Media Corporation took control of Rolling Stone two years ago, C.E.O. Jay Penske has been reviving and modernizing the 52-year-old publication—and bolstering his relatively under-the-radar media-mogul status in the process. Under Penske’s stewardship, the print edition was re-conceived as a monthly product, one that’s been featuring artists and influencers who feel more relevant to today’s readers than to their baby-boomer parents.Rolling Stone has also sought to put itself back on the map as a destination for political coverage, with half a dozen politics reporters, a Washington bureau chief, and Matt Taibbi back as a full-time staff writer. In January, Penske doubled down on his reboot by acquiring the 49 percent of Rolling Stone that he didn’t already own, after initially buying Jann Wenner’s majority stake for $50 million in 2017.

Now, Penske is aiming a cannon directly at one of Rolling Stone’s main rivals in music coverage. On Tuesday morning, P.M.C. is set to announce the creation of a competitor to the Billboard charts, which have been the go-to authority for ranking the popularity of songs and albums ever since their debut in 1940. Rolling Stone will now offer its own set of charts—including the top 100 songs and top 200 albums—which P.M.C. says will be more effective than Billboard’s in three key ways: they will be updated daily as opposed to weekly, they will go deeper on streaming data, and they will be completely transparent about their measurement methodologies.

Billboard gets its data through an exclusive deal with Nielsen SoundScan, but Rolling Stone will use Alpha Data, a three-year-old analytics start-up formerly known as BuzzAngle Music that has been building up clout within the industry since its 2016 launch. P.M.C. invested in BuzzAngle last year and is giving it a significant boost by pairing the service with Rolling Stone. “Rolling Stone is the most widely recognized brand in the music space,” Penske said by phone from Los Angeles on Monday, “and we think it should be used in other ways to help people discover music.” That said, P.M.C. is going up against the age-old gold standard, so it’s not like taking down the Billboard charts is a surefire bet. In either case, the news will be alluring for those in the music industry, who tend to get worked up over chart positions the way TV-news professionals do over ratings, or publishers over Web traffic. Might there be a dash of hysteria when there’s a different No.1 song or album on the the Billboard charts versus the Rolling Stone Charts? (They go public on May 13, and Alpha Data will continue to sell its analytics to record labels and other B2B operations.)

In addition to Rolling Stone, Penske has expanded his empire over the past few years by snatching up publications including Variety, Women’s Wear Daily, and Peter Brant’s Art Media Holdings. Last year, P.M.C. got a $200 million infusion from the Saudi Research and Marketing Group, which also has a joint-venture with Bloomberg. P.M.C. is profitable and has more cash than that on-hand, according to someone familiar with its finances, and is planning to make further acquisitions.

[doofus67]

Very, very interesting. Over the decades, whenever Billboard's and Cash Box's #1's were different in a given week -- which was quite often -- there was zero hubbub. We shall see.

[djjoe1960]

I think the way the charts are compiled (how much does radio airplay figure into the chart, how does streaming affect it, sales, etc.) will determine whether the Rolling Stone chart is taken seriously by anybody. Now with so many different ways to enjoy music--streaming, digital downloads, radio airplay, people sharing music--the narrow casting of charts is more important than ever. A radio airplay chart that is trying to lure in advertisers and listeners could be a totally different audience from someone who streams their favorites, or someone who uses youtube to get their music fix. So I believe that Rolling Stone will need to have as many charts as Billboard in order to be credible.

[mrjukebox]

I remember when Rolling Stone compiled their own list of the best selling albums in the country-This probably started in the late 70's or early 80's.

[Michael1973]

May 8, 2019 18:49:02 GMT -5 mrjukebox said:

I remember when Rolling Stone compiled their own list of the best selling albums in the country-This probably started in the late 70's or early 80's.

Me too. That's why this article surprised me. I had no idea they ever stopped!