Billboard Hot 100: 03/02/13

[dbhmr]

That they count those 30-second videos (and all non-official uses of the real tracks of any song) is really...absurd. I mean, how can they even be sure to get all the data? Are they really going to dig to find all the self-made home videos of middle school kids with 79 views? And if they aren't, why not? Where's the line between what counts and what doesn't?

YouTube should absolutely be factored into the Hot 100, but this rule change--and when it has come in--feels so much for show. Like, "Billboard goes viral!"...five years late. The secretive formula isn't adding intrigue, it's adding skepticism, and I think that's an important difference for something as revered as the Billboard charts.

I do agree that I think this is an extreme case, but there have been extreme cases in the past. I don't know, I just think their execution is seriously lacking.

[Quixotic Music Lover]

Feb 21, 2013 11:40:58 GMT -5 Au$tin said:

The Hot 100 is set to measure a song's popularity. Let's just use "Friday" as an example. With the current forumla, it surely would've been a #1 hit. However, that's not the song's doings. Do you want to know what the song actually did? It did not chart in airplay. It made into the top 40 on iTunes.

A video is there as promotion of a song. It's to draw people in to check out the song. If they like it, then they will download it, stream it, request it, etc. "Friday" has hundreds of millions of views. Yet, those views only translated into a few hundred thousand sales and little to no requests. (If it did get any requests, it was most likely jokingly.)

This is why I think the formula needs to be changed. It's great that YouTube now counts, but I still think it counts for way more than it should.

Edit:
Did anyone else notice "Madness" was sent to recurrency? Why is that? It's still gaining on pop.

You have summarized what I feel are the logical/mathematical weaknesses of the new methodology.

In my mind Youtube streaming as well as passive streaming should be treated the same as radio airplay. "Free" exposure to a song that the listener may or may not like. I listen to Live365 internet radio a lot. I hear a wide variety of music of which I actually like only about 25%. According to Billboard streaming a song through the internet is 25 x more popular then listening to it on the radio (300:1 for passive streaming, 7,500:1 for radio airplay as measured by audience impressions).

I would have preferred a formula that gives the greatest weight to sales, with on-demand streaming being weighted 1/100s of sales, and passive streaming / radio airplay being weighted 1/10,000s of sales.

The criteria for the weighting is founded on how much the consumer has to fork over for the music. For a download sale it is 0.99 - 1.29, for on-demand streaming it is $10/month I believe, and for passive streaming/radio airplay it is "free" (you have to put up with commercials).

Looking at it another way, if Youtube was a subscription service like Spotify, would "Harlem Shake" have gotten 103 million streams? I personally think it would have been a lot less.

Using my preferred method, "Harlem Shake" would still have made an impressive debut, but it would not be 3.5 times more popular than the former #1 song (which is #1 in sales and on-demand, and #4 in radio airplay).

[Deleted]

Feb 21, 2013 12:46:17 GMT -5 imbondz said:

so let's say 5 million of those Youtube views of this 'popular' song is to see what the fuss is about, and hate it. How does that factor in?

And what if 50 million people listening to a song every week don't like it, they're just lazy to change the station?

[Envoirment]

Feb 21, 2013 12:58:25 GMT -5 dbhmr said:

That they count those 30-second videos (and all non-official uses of the real tracks of any song) is really...absurd. I mean, how can they even be sure to get all the data? Are they really going to dig to find all the self-made home videos of middle school kids with 79 views? And if they aren't, why not? Where's the line between what counts and what doesn't?

YouTube should absolutely be factored into the Hot 100, but this rule change--and when it has come in--feels so much for show. Like, "Billboard goes viral!"...five years late. The secretive formula isn't adding intrigue, it's adding skepticism, and I think that's an important difference for something as revered as the Billboard charts.

I do agree that I think this is an extreme case, but there have been extreme cases in the past. I don't know, I just think their execution is seriously lacking.

Actually, I believe youtube can easily track videos with certain songs/audio in it, then separate the data into location views. Then I would assume Billboard contacts youtube for the data to add it into their chart methology.

[imbondz]

Billboard has officially jumped the shark

[Tea-why]

*pretends Ditigal Songs chart is the actual Hot 100*

[mcsteamy]

The level of pressed people on this thread is off the charts.

[Rose "Payola" Nylund]

Feb 21, 2013 13:25:38 GMT -5 mcsteamy said:

The level of pressed people on this thread is off the charts.

Or on the charts. I expect a #1 debut next week!

[wavey.]

Feb 21, 2013 13:25:38 GMT -5 mcsteamy said:

The level of pressed people on this thread is off the charts.

Oh yeah. We're McSteamed.

[ListenToItTwice]

Feb 21, 2013 13:17:57 GMT -5 imbondz said:

Billboard has officially jumped the shark

I never thought I'd say it, but yeah. Fuck this. So hard.

[Rurry]

Oh, I didn't realize Billboard was counting all of the 30-second rip-off videos. That's bullshit, yeah. Counting YouTube views is fine, counting YouTube views of videos that have a song playing in the background for 30 seconds is not.

[cking33]

A couple thoughts after taking a night to digest this ...
1. I'm not a fan of Billboard counting abbreviated clips of a song. I think if that's the case, then somebody previewing a song on iTunes or another online outlet should have that count toward the Hot 100 since the song is popular enough to at least check out a clip of it.

2. So, let's say I buy a song on iTunes and on my iPod or phone I listen to it a bunch that week. All those repeated plays don't count toward the Hot 100, just my initial purchase. But if I go to Youtube every time I want to hear the song, that does count toward the Hot 100, and it's counted for a much greater percentage than it used to be, apparently.

3. All that being said, I think we're really looking at the exception to this new rule rather than the norm. Take a look at what happened with Rihanna's "Stay." Her video just debuted on YouTube, causing a lot of people and her fans to go out and watch the video this week, she even benefited saleswise from a Grammy bump, yet her song still is behind "Thrift Shop" on the Hot 100 despite all of that. Without a massive Internet phenomenon, Thrift Shop still would've beaten out a major artist premiering her video this week. I think that tells you the formula might not be completely out of whack on weeks when a major viral video doesn't explode the Internet.

I do think this is encouraging for major artists because I think now, they can be all but guaranteed a Hot 100 #1 hit. Best believe that the next time Taylor Swift or Bieber releases a debut single, the video will likely come out the same week.

[Rurry]

Feb 21, 2013 12:58:25 GMT -5 dbhmr said:

YouTube should absolutely be factored into the Hot 100, but this rule change--and when it has come in--feels so much for show. Like, "Billboard goes viral!"...five years late.

That's kinda how it always is with the entertainment industry, though. This news came out the same day Nielson announced it would be adding streaming data into its numbers, which is similarly a few years later than it should have been. The entertainment industry likes to approach new technology by covering their hands over their ears and pretending it doesn't exist until it benefits them. And...now I guess it benefits Billboard to "go viral" somehow. It can't be a coincidence they just happened to decide upon this new chart calculation method the same week one of the most giant viral videos of our time exploded.

[RadioBeatz]

Whoa, whoa, how can there be people that defend this mess. It's not even about "Harlem Shake" but how absurd the new rule is, how can you agree that short 30 seconds clips of music count to the Hot 100? I can only imagine the level of manipulation is coming ahead on this shitty chart the Hot 100 has become. Definitely jumped the shark.

[josh]

If the 30 second clips count, I imagine all lyric videos count, right? And audio videos.

Release the single and also put an audio video on YT. Later when you want a boost release a lyric video. Later when airplay is peaking release the actual music video. Few weeks later release BTS videos, those will have clips of the song so should count. Few weeks later release unedited/director's cut version of the video. etc etc.

Maximum life for a song now, I guess.

[cking33]

Also, if this rule was in place over the summer, I'm fairly convinced "Call Me Maybe" would have beaten the 16-week record held by "One Sweet Day." All those fan videos that popped up of the song would've contributed a bunch to its chart points.

[astronut]

Mariah, you need to make the three biggest music videos that the world will ever see. It's do or die now.

[Adonis the DemiGod!]

Did the 30-sec clips count? That is still an open question for me.

[Adonis the DemiGod!]

Feb 21, 2013 12:50:38 GMT -5 Envoirment said:

Feb 21, 2013 12:48:40 GMT -5 allow that said:

Do we know this for sure?

The fact it has 103 million in streaming kinda confirms this. If they weren't counted, then it would only have a few million views for the original recording of the song.

it doesn't confirm anything. You're just guessing.

[Adonis the DemiGod!]

Feb 21, 2013 12:58:25 GMT -5 dbhmr said:

That they count those 30-second videos (and all non-official uses of the real tracks of any song) is really...absurd. I mean, how can they even be sure to get all the data? Are they really going to dig to find all the self-made home videos of middle school kids with 79 views? And if they aren't, why not? Where's the line between what counts and what doesn't?

YouTube should absolutely be factored into the Hot 100, but this rule change--and when it has come in--feels so much for show. Like, "Billboard goes viral!"...five years late. The secretive formula isn't adding intrigue, it's adding skepticism, and I think that's an important difference for something as revered as the Billboard charts.

I do agree that I think this is an extreme case, but there have been extreme cases in the past. I don't know, I just think their execution is seriously lacking.

why just youtube and not vimeo or some other video services out there.

[Deleted]

Are we sure that Billboard didn't weight the 30 second clips?

Though from a business point of view, I could understand why they didn't. Don't labels get money from the advertisements of any video that uses their music?

[johnm1120]

So the Beliebers can get every Justin song to #1 now I take it.

[johnm1120]

Feb 21, 2013 14:28:28 GMT -5 astronut said:

Mariah, you need to make the three biggest music videos that the world will ever see. It's do or die now.

Or have the 30 second clips count like she did with "Through the Rain." :)

[Adonis the DemiGod!]

Feb 21, 2013 14:35:53 GMT -5 johnm1120 said:

Feb 21, 2013 14:28:28 GMT -5 astronut said:

Mariah, you need to make the three biggest music videos that the world will ever see. It's do or die now.

Or have the 30 second clips count like she did with "Through the Rain." :)

and Loverboy, don't forget Loverboy.

[johnm1120]

So if I'm in the office and start singing "Remember When," will that count towards the Hot 100 now?

[Deleted]

www.billboard.com/articles/news/1539277/harlem-shake-the-making-and-monetizing-of-baauers-viral-hit

This was posted a few days ago but it's more relevant now:

Baauer's "Harlem Shake" still has quite a ways to go before it becomes the next "Gangnam Style” in terms of total views, but the track became an unexpected viral smash last week at levels not seen since PSY’s American invasion -- and it's already climbing up the Billboard charts. But how else is the song, released on the Mad Decent label, being monetized?
First some quick background for the uninitiated: the craze began with a video posted by YouTube personality Filthy Frank on his DisastaMusic channel on Feb. 2, featuring a basic template that has been spoofed over 3,000 times. Start with 15 seconds of one or a handful of people dancing in place to the song, then watch the video erupt into groups of people breaking out into spontaneous bursts of dance, shakes and other spasms via quick edits for the remaining 15 seconds. In the past week alone, “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon," "The Today Show," Ryan Seacrest and even indie-pop duo Matt & Kim have contributed just four of what have already been thousands of user uploads featuring the song.



The late-week media spree was enough to boost sales of the Baauer single on iTunes to 12,000 for the week ending Feb. 10, according to Nielsen SoundScan, enough for the song to enter the Dance Digital Songs chart at No. 9 this week and No. 12 on Dance/Electronic songs. Expect the song to rise even higher next week, as a recent home-page push from iTunes sent the song to No. 3 on the iTunes chart by Thursday morning, where it remained behind Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ "Thrift Shop" and Rihanna’s "Stay." That’s enough to make “Harlem Shake” the “biggest thing we’ve released on Mad Decent as a label, and it's happened within six days,” says Jasper Goggins, label manager of Mad Decent. “It’s really crazy. Every 15 minutes my mind is blown by something else."

But also aiding in the song’s sales and ultimate revenue potential is YouTube’s Content ID system and a company called INDmusic, which inked a deal with Mad Decent in early 2012 to help monetize the label’s video views through pre-roll ads -- like a Vevo for indies, essentially. Since last Thursday, Feb. 7, INDmusic and YouTube’s automated ContentID have manually and automatically claimed over 4,000 user-uploaded videos featuring the song totaling over 30 million views by the afternoon of Feb. 14, according to YouTube’s Vivian Lewit, director of music content partnerships. Content ID allows rights holders to receive reference files on content they own, metadata describing that content and policies to help them choose what they want YouTube to do with that content -- monetize, track, or block it -- once they find videos that match.



"As we've seen with overwhelming regularity, partners can monetize these uploads. The piece of content could have been monetizing from the ContentID match the minute these uploads began," Lewit says.

And there's serious potential for Bauuer and Mad Decent to collect substantial revenue from those views -- as the Wall Street Journal first reported in 2011, YouTube channel partners can collect up to 55% of revenues from every monetized view on the site, with a sizeable chunk of that 55% going directly to the owners of the song’s publishing and masters. And as Billboard reported in December, PSY’s team stands to collect as much as $2 million in revenue from YouTube views alone -- averaging $2 for every 1,000 YouTube views, per estimates reported by New York magazine.

INDmusic's job, in part, is to help verify copyright claims on clips that ContentID may not have picked up and maximize the cost-per-thousand viewer, or CPM, rates on video views. The company has also been working to embed “click to buy” links for the song on user-uploaded videos to drive further downloads of the song on Google Play, eMusic, Amazon MP3 and iTunes. “We’re encouraging people to make these videos,” says Brandon Martinez, INDmusic’s co-founder and CEO. “We want users’ videos to have 1 million views, we’re just claiming the song so everyone can collect revenue.”



Goggins credits the company for helping Mad Decent increase its revenue potential over the past year. “We get a lot more money from them than when we were our own YouTube partner,” he says, declining to specify just how much more on a percentage basis.

As for Bauuer, a 23-year-old DJ from Brooklyn currently on tour with Just Blaze, he’s kept a fairly low profile since the meme began. Lacking a Twitter profile and bearing only an “art track” of the song on his official YouTube page (1.3 million views compared to a user-uploaded clip that has over 5 million views, both claimed by YouTube and INDmusic), Bauuer himself has kept a remarkably low profile for a dance craze that’s started almost entirely without his direct involvement.

Goggins credits Mad Decent's initial free giveaway of the song in May 2012 through its Jeffrees imprint for the initial interest. “We wanted the music to live on its own for a period of time, to be able to build a groundswell around the track so that when we took away the free download of the track people were fine to just go buy the track,” Goggins says. “The idea was to just get the song out there as far as possible, so this is kind of like a testing ground for what we do.”

[Deleted]

So basically, it counts because the label makes money from advertisements on the videos. They make just as much from 30 second fan clips as entire music videos. We have to remember that Billboard isn't for fans, it's supposed to look at it from a label's perspective.

[areyoureadytojump]

The Top 50 of the Hot 100 is here:

www1.billboard.biz/bbbiz/photos/pdf/2013/TFMmw0221.pdf

[newpower]

So, what it is next? What do you think it would be the next Billboard change? How do they top this?

[lugus15]

I absolutely love the new formula. It will give the charts much needed life.

And what I like more is that BB practically gave radio a big middle finger. And honestly they deserve it by boycotting GS (and it was a boycott, they dropped it like a hot potato just when it was about to reach #1 on the Hot100) and instead we got a very mediocre OMN to reing 9 weeks.... ridiculous.

And lastly, I don't think they did this in the spur of the moment. I think they saw the injustice done to GS and decided very carefully how to incorporate the new changes.