The Death Of Billboard (& SoundScan!)
I went to lunch with an A&R man. Fascinating experience, because they’re all hit-driven, it’s like they live in a different world from everybody e-mailing me about the Hold Steady and the National…they’ve got to put up numbers. Quickly. And this guy was lamenting how long it took to break a record.
He was talking about someone who’d had a big hit. How radio rejected the follow-up track, but how this cut was percolating in the marketplace, there was a ton of online buzz, iTunes sales were building, yet the business perceived the cut as a stiff. What was gonna happen when the noise got truly loud, was radio gonna go back on the record?
No way.
And what does this mean for the artist. Should he cut a new track and forget the old one? Especially since it now took eight months to build a cut?
I don’t care about the rapper of the moment. Because I don’t think it’s about the face, but the producer. Remove Drake and Bieber and Katy Perry from the chart and replace them with the geniuses behind the photograph, that would be more real.
But that begs the question, is the "Billboard" chart real? Is radio real? Is SoundScan real?
And what are the biggest acts and tracks in America?
"Billboard" made a mistake. It believed its customers were the record labels. And the labels believed their customers were the retailers. When today, the model is direct, from the manufacturer to the customer. Both entities blew it.
And we’ve ended up with a vacuum.
This vacuum is filled in music sales by P2P. Which includes all kinds of swapping and trading, from RapidShare to IM transfers, none of which the old guard seems to understand exist and are essentially unstoppable and can only be controlled by making a better offer.
In information, we’ve got a Tower of Babel. Some pay attention to Pitchfork, others to Stereogum, still others are so overwhelmed that they’ve given up paying attention completely, and are dedicated to politics or video games or other forms of entertainment.
Into this void now come Eric Garland and BigChampagne.
Believe me, Eric could never succeed at a record company. He’s just not jive enough. Nor does he radiate cool. His is an intellectual style. But that’s what works in the modern era. Nerds have already inherited the earth, you just may not know it. And the nerds always win, not through intimidation, but data.
Eric and BigChampagne have announced a new chart. The Ultimate Chart. Yes, you can view it at:
Ultimate ChartClick on "Tell Me More" to read the explanation.
Bottom line… See all those icons displayed? The ones we know just from the pictures, better than any supposed band as brand? Eric and BigChampagne monitor all their data and more…a hundred sources.
Default is songs. But go to the upper right-hand corner and click to see a list of the top artists.
Yes, right now it appears to be the usual suspects. But as Ben Sisario in the "New York Times" pointed out, Shakira’s "Waka Waka (This Time For Africa)" is number 39 on "Billboard", but it’s number 3 on the Ultimate Chart. Meaning, the sales and airplay on her new album might indicate a stiff, but in the hearts of the consumers, she’s a winner.
And you know the story with winners. Those are the people who can sell tickets, they’re the ones who have a career.
Oh, you’re gonna bitch that it’s the usual suspects, but new charts broken down by format, genre, geographical location, DIY and independent are coming. So, you can see if you’re winning in your own little world.
And winning isn’t what it used to be.
In an era where no one listens to radio and no one buys music is that any surprise?
Of course that’s not true. Some people listen to radio and some people buy music, but fewer than ever before! How are we going to quantify this new behavior?
By ignoring it. That’s been the music industry’s paradigm for the last ten years. But now the old metrics built for an old world are so out of touch as to be almost irrelevant.
But it goes deeper than that. Just like the old charts influenced what was signed and promoted, so will the new. And with so much data, it’ll be easier to quantify and build in the niches. Which is healthy for everybody.
Will Eric and BigChampagne win?
Unclear. But one thing that is clear is "Billboard" has already lost. By clinging to its old model for far too long, cutting overhead instead of reinvesting.
What a fascinating world we live in. Where oldsters live on icebergs, holding on for dear life as they float further and further away from the mainland, as global warming decreases their floe, and the rest of us are sitting pretty on terra firma, with endless delicacies in front of us.
But this new world has been incomprehensible.
Until now.
It’s like we’re putting glasses on the music industry, the details are finally coming into focus.
And you can’t quantify music. But you can quantify its reach. You can approximate its impact. In the old days, that was via tracking radio and retail sales. Now they’re only part of the picture. It’s time for the music industry to embrace a dose of reality. Yes, finally, music is ready for the nerds.
