Singer Beyonce performs onstage during the 2011 Billboard Music Awards… (Ethan Miller/GETTY IMAGES…)
In pop music, being No. 1 doesn’t always mean you’re on top.
Earlier this year, the Oregon rock band the Decemberists reached the summit of the Billboard 200 albums chart with “The King Is Dead.” By selling a measly 94,000 copies of the album in its first week, the band snatched the top spot from the veteran California band Cake, whose “Showroom of Compassion” had sold an even measlier 44,000 copies the week before.
If seeing these two bands atop the Billboard 200 gave you the impression that they were the biggest names in music, you got the wrong impression.
In an era of iTunes and Amazon, Spotify and Pandora, album sales don’t tell you what they used to. With so many routes to our eardrums, how do we measure the actual popularity of pop music? It’s something various companies are scrambling to figure out.
“Album sales as representative of the success of artists is a failing metric,” says Eric Garland, chief executive of Big Champagne, a media marketing company that has aimed to track music’s popularity in the digital age for more than a decade. “It no longer adequately explains or offers real insight into the market dynamics.”
And those dynamics are still important. Even if albums aren’t selling, an artist’s popularity can still be monetized. With sponsorship opportunities and licensing deals on the line, managers need to know how much their acts are worth. Concert promoters need to know what venues an artist can fill and how much to charge for tickets. Labels need to know whether the money they’ve spent on marketing and promotion has been effective.
For the rest of us, the charts mean something else. “A chart provides a venue for fans to talk about who’s winning,” says Jeff Leeds, editor in chief of Buzzmedia Music, which runs a network of music blogs that include Stereogum and Idolator. “It’s not that different from the way polls in politics provide a venue for pundits and talking heads to talk about who’s winning or losing and why. . . . But like a poll, a chart is merely a snapshot, and is only as accurate as the methodology behind it allows.”
Rival rankings
Last July, Big Champagne launched the Ultimate Chart in hopes of tracking the popularity of songs and artists across an array of platforms. Next Big Sound, a Colorado-based company founded in 2008, ranks popularity in the digital realm with two charts that are geared toward the industry. We Are Hunted, a Web site launched in Australia in 2009, aims to measure fan engagement by ranking the 99 most popular songs on Earth based on global impressions online and the “enthusiasm and sentiment” behind them.
The charts are free for all to see, but the data that drive them come at a price. Big Champagne and Next Big Sound make money by selling the data to managers, companies, promoters and record labels.
Rich Westover, vice president for promotion research and information systems at Island/Def Jam records, says he uses Big Champagne’s data to see whether the label’s artists are resonating with fans across demographic and geographic boundaries.
“When people ask us in a meeting, ‘What’s going on with these records?’ I know that I’m going to be using more of the Ultimate Chart information to really give the most accurate gauge I can give on how these songs and how our artists are performing,” Westover says. He says the data can help land an artist a sponsorship or a booking on Letterman.
Rishi Mirchandani, vice president of marketing and operations at RCA/Jive records, uses Next Big Sound’s data to help shape his company’s marketing approach. “What we’re using Next Big Sound to do is to evaluate the growth and the engagement of an artist’s online community and fan base,” he says. “The goal is to really translate those metrics into actionable marketing insights that can inform our decision making.”
The future of these emerging charts may hinge on whether they can draw a meaningful line between buzz and commerce. “It’s really difficult today because there’s a significant gap between Internet fame and Internet commercial success,” says Leeds of Buzzmedia Music. “We’re still in pursuit of the perfect chart.”
Billboard might not be perfect, but it isn’t ready to cede its dominance. “Billboard is a 116-year-old brand, and we’ve been innovating for most of that time,” says Bill Werde, editorial director at Billboard Magazine. “If you look at what we’ve charted and how we’ve charted over the past 50 years, it’s a study in the changes that have gone on in the music business.”
Billboard hasn’t faced many challengers over the years. Competing trade magazines published charts, but in the ’80s they either lost clout (Cash Box magazine) or went out of business (Record World magazine). Now, as weak album sales bring the Billboard 200 closer to obsolescence, Werde touts the Hot 100 singles chart as Billboard’s signature and most enduring chart.
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