Are you the sort of one who cares about polls and critics with regards to political representatives, films, eating places and music, or are you somebody who extra follows your individual preferences?
Practically half the world’s inhabitants makes use of social media, and many people comply with the lives and proposals of others on numerous platforms.
Whether or not you are a social media influencer, a follower or neither, your preferences for music and different consumables are tabulated in statistics. These tendencies could or could not think about your selections to buy or hearken to a track or album, for instance.
Recognizing that music is within the ear of the beholder, a earlier Music Historicity column, on March 16, 2022, mentioned the validity of the Grammy Awards and the Rock and Roll Corridor of Fame —subjective discernments by so-called judges.
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However the Recording Business Affiliation of America (RIAA) awards gold and platinum data on the premise of concrete, goal gross sales totals. There is a distinction.
The identical objectivity could be discovered with Billboard chart positions — the numerous totally different lists used within the printed and on-line model of the music and leisure journal.
Two trade requirements are the Billboard Sizzling 100 chart for particular person songs and the Billboard 200 chart for albums. Each base their weekly rankings on unarguable numbers of gross sales, streams and radio airplay.
In addition to these two, you would be amazed to study that there are 139 different weekly Billboard charts.
5 of them apply to all musical genres, together with the Sizzling 100, the Below Sizzling 100, Radio Songs, Digital Music Gross sales and Streaming Songs.
Within the Grownup/Pop class, there are the Mainstream Prime 40, Grownup Prime 40 and Grownup Up to date charts.
There are 13 totally different Rock/Different music charts, together with Rock Digital Music Gross sales, Sizzling Different and Exhausting Rock Streaming Songs, to call three.
By the way in which, the present No. 1 Exhausting Rock Streaming Music is “Mary On A Cross,” by the Swedish band Ghost.
Billboard maintains 16 totally different weekly charts within the R&B/Hip-Hop class, together with Sizzling Rap songs, R&B Digital Songs Gross sales and Rhythmic Airplay, for instance.
What is the present high Rhythmic Airplay track? Transferring up from place No. 2 final week, it is the lurid “Tremendous Freaky Lady,” by Nicki Minaj.
There even are 10 charts of Canadian music and 11 extra protecting worldwide genres.
Alas, there’s just one Billboard Jazz chart —Clean Jazz Airplay. Likewise, there’s just one for music video gross sales and two for World music, akin to Afrobeat.
Together with the Billboard 200, there are 43 totally different charts that cowl album gross sales.
Along with Nation, Bluegrass and Latin, there are particular Billboard album charts for Impartial, Classical, New Age, Soundtracks and one thing known as Tastemakers, chosen by “an influential panel of indie shops and small regional chains.”
Whereas the present Tastemakers checklist contains artists like Joss Stone and Swedish indie combo Peter, Bjorn and John, the highest of the chart is the newest launch from Taylor Swift, “Midnights.”
In case you hadn’t heard, Swift’s tenth studio album set a Billboard file by occupying the entire Sizzling 100 high 10 slots for October 21-27, the week “Midnights” was launched.
No joke. The highest track, “Anti-Hero,” notched 59.7 million streams, 32 million airplay viewers and 13,500 songs bought in a single week, in accordance with Billboard. The statistics for the remaining 9 tunes are equally astounding.
However what’s record-breaking is that Swift surpassed even The Beatles for probably the most songs within the Sizzling 100 for a single week.
For the file, throughout the week of April 4, 1964, the Fab 4 held the highest 5 Billboard slots for his or her hits “Can’t Purchase Me Love,” “Twist And Shout,” “She Loves You,” “I Need To Maintain Your Hand” and “Please Please Me.”
Swift’s 10 high slots inform you one thing about fashionable music tradition, present tastes of the music-buying public and radio station program director selections on what songs to play.
Based in 1894 as “Billboard Promoting,” the journal began off as a commerce publication. It started specializing in the music trade by the early 1900s by monitoring the best-selling data.
In 1955, its “Prime 100” chart first mixed retail gross sales, jukebox and disk jockeys performs. In 1963, Billboard Music Week was renamed merely Billboard.
The calculation for chart place was modified in 2005 to incorporate digital downloads, and in 2007 to rely digital streaming performs. YouTube video performs had been added to the equation in 2013.
It makes you step again and contemplate not solely all of the methods we eat music and leisure, but in addition whether or not we’re maintaining with present expertise at our disposal.
Earlier Music Historicity columns have examined the compact disc, vinyl and cassette tape codecs. At this time, it appears debatable whether or not we have to personal a bodily copy of music in our fingers.
It could be sufficient to know merely the place to go as a way to lease or hear a taking part in of a track. Permit the music to reside within the digital cloud relatively in your shelf of CDs.
Whether or not you comply with suggestions of social media influencers, Billboard charts or radio station airplay, the selection of what reaches your ears nonetheless is as much as you. One thing to consider!
Gary Gibula is an SIU alum, musician, author, editor and writer of the Music Historicity columns. He could be reached at gary@gratefulgary.com.
