Top 40 Music on Compact Disc: Is the top 10 entirely wrong in the 90s?

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Topic: Is the top 10 entirely wrong in the 90s?

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budaniel
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Posted: 11 July 2006 at 6:56am \| IP Logged

Knew that would get everyone's attention! But seriously, I just wondered
how other chart lovers felt about this.

I often wonder if the record industry wasn't entirely skewed by charting
practices in the 90s, forever changing the marketing decisions on music
genres. After the basic death of the 45 rpm, cassingles started getting
counted after a few years I believe...but then they were phased out by CD
singles, and I don't think those were actually charted for a while either.
Not to mention many "singles" released by artists in the 90s were never
actually ON a single, I think to bring up full length CD sales. As a result,
billboard eventually changed its method of charting the hits to make sure
these tracks, which were often huge radio hits, got counted in the charts.
But for most of the 90s, these tracks didn't even chart...if you look at Joel
Whitburn's book, he has that symbol next to "alternatve" chart hits that
were hugely popular, but couldn't make the offical chart because they
weren't released as singles.

From where I sit in New York, I can say that when I look back at each
week's top ten in the 90s, a majority of the songs charted were never
even played on popular radio here. We were bombarded by grunge and
"alt rock" tracks...that never charted but were huge "hits" in New York
reality.

Many of the official top ten hits I own from this era (I, like many on here,
collect all the chart hits) I had never even heard until i added them to my
collection.

There's very little diversity in 90s top ten hits--there's rarely a dance
track (and there was an abundance of them becoming big in the 90s,
from La Bouche, Real McCoy, Deboran Cox, Amber, etc) and there is
rarely a grunge or rock track...even some of the biggest tracks from the
the boy band/teen queen explosion don't make a dent in the top ten.

Does anyone think that billboard somehow didn't keep up with the times
by not changing charting method sooner, perhaps sending a completely
wrong message to record companies as to what was really popular music
of the time? Eventually, it becomes a vicious cycle--if the record industry
thinks certain sounds are hot, they start marketing that to listeners. If
young listeners are being spoonfed specific types of music, it's what they
are going to buy, simply because they've not had exposure to other
styles.

Personally, as a lover of pop music, there are SO many 'perfect pop'
songs from the 90s that I can't even believe never got any airplay, let
alone have the opportunity to chart.

What are other peoples thoughts/feelings/opinions about this
problematic chart period of RnR history?

torcan
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Posted: 11 July 2006 at 7:28am \| IP Logged

You bring up a lot of points, but in a lot of ways I agree with what you've said.

I used to listen to Casey Kasem's "American Top 40" every Sunday morning throughout the '80s and early '90s. What I loved about radio back then is that I heard and knew just about every major hit on the charts. In late 1991 "AT40" started counting down the Radio Monitor chart instead. Many hits that were strong in sales, and in the top 10, I never even heard at all.

To be honest, I'm not a fan of rap and can't believe that it's been as popular as it has for so long. In the early '90s, for a while everything was either rap or grunge. Finally pop started taking over again, but by then it was hard to find singles. Even the tracks that did come out seemed to be for a short time only, and if you didn't get it in the first couple of months you were out of luck. Sometimes it took me longer than that to decide if I liked the song enough to buy it!

I agree about there being so many songs that fell through the cracks in the '90s - songs I feel would have been big hits in the '80s. It really seems that everything changed once the '90s started - and not for the better. Plus, there seemed to be more "one-hit wonders" in the '90s than any other decade.

Personally, most of the music I buy these days are the older vinyl singles at record shows or on e-bay. I don't buy a lot of today's music. I even stopped buying Billboard three years ago - but still keep up with its charts online.

You mentioned Joel Whitburn's books - in the book I have (up to 1999) he mentions the promo CD single availability of hits from Dec. 1998 onward. Personally I think he should change it to mention all of them that were released. I'm sure there were many hits from the mid-90s that were on promo singles that he lists as "album cut" - and it would be a help to us if they were mentioned.

(For that matter, I'd love to know how he's arranged to get all of those promos in the first place...it's a mystery to me...unless he's arranged to get on the record companies promo service lists, or through Billboard somehow!)

Brian W.
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Posted: 11 July 2006 at 12:47pm \| IP Logged

Part of me agrees and part of me doesn't, mainly because Billboard's allowing non-commercial singles to chart on the Hot 100 led quickly to the demise of the commercial single. That certainly wasn't the only factor, but it was a HUGE factor in the demise of the format. Prior to that, most songs were still commercially released as singles. That's all changed now, but we had about a four-year period where sales were hardly factored into the Hot 100 at all -- it was all the whim of programming directors and the record companies who paid for hits.

Don't forget that the Hot 100 also changed significantly when they starting compiling it from SoundScan info in late 1991. For the six months prior to that, Billboard continued compiling the Hot 100 from their record store/radio station surveys while they were compiling the published Hot 100 Sales and Hot 100 Airplay charts from Soundscan info, and they were shocked at the discrepancy.

Example: Rod Stewart's "The Motown Song." #10 Hot 100. Sounscan Sales: #24. Soundscan Airplay: #36. That song would never have made the top ten on the Hot 100 if they had made the switch to Soundscan a few months earlier.

The George Michael/Elton John duet would likely have never been #1 if they had switched to Soundscan earlier, as it only hit #4 in both sales and airplay on the concurrent Soundscan-based charts.

That's when hip-hop and country singles started charting high on the charts, is when they began compiling it from Soundscan and getting the REAL figures.

Perhaps the question should be, "Are all charts before November 30, 1991 wrong?"

I actually think the Hot 100 is in really good shape at the moment. Some people have complained that it's time for doubling of download points to stop, but I don't know... I like that, week to week, the #1 hit on the Hot 100 is usually also the bestselling download or commercial single. I think the Hot 100 should be maybe 40% airplay, 60% sales.

Anyway, to answer your question: No, in spite of the airplay-only hits of the 1990s (which were really only a factor for about a five-year period, '94-'98), I think the Hot 100 was more accurate in the 1990s than at any time in the past.

There have always been occasional airplay-only hits that did not rank on the Hot 100. Stevie Wonder's "Isn't She Lovely" comes to mind. For some reason Stevie Wonder would not allow its release as a single.

Brian W.
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Posted: 11 July 2006 at 12:52pm \| IP Logged

Stairway to Heaven is another song that was huge that never charted on the Hot 100.

I have often thought Billboard should get rid of the Hot 100 and go back to separate airplay and sales charts. I think they're two different animals.

cmmmbase
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Posted: 11 July 2006 at 1:00pm \| IP Logged

Brian W. wrote:

The Hot 100 has always been a sales/airplay chart since its inception in 1958. Prior to that there were charts such as "Best Sellers In Stores", "Most Played By Jockeys", "Most Played in Juke Boxes" and a Top 100. Billboard didn't print a sales/airplay breakdown until 1984.

Brian W.
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Posted: 11 July 2006 at 1:07pm \| IP Logged

cmmmbase wrote:

Isn't that what I said?

budaniel
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Posted: 11 July 2006 at 1:09pm \| IP Logged

there's also the impact of MTV..before it became NON-Music Television.
So many huge videos never charted on billboard either or got an radio
play.

Even to this day, I'll watch the top 20 video countdown on VH1 and every
couple of videos I'll be like, "I've never even heard this song on the radio,
yet it's a huge video hit?"

torcan
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Posted: 11 July 2006 at 2:52pm \| IP Logged

Brian W. wrote:

Don't forget that the Hot 100 also changed significantly when they starting compiling it from SoundScan info in late 1991. For the six months prior to that, Billboard continued compiling the Hot 100 from their record store/radio station surveys while they were compiling the published Hot 100 Sales and Hot 100 Airplay charts from Soundscan info, and they were shocked at the discrepancy.

One thing that would be nice if Billboard could do would be to publish exactly how each chart is compiled. In the late '80s when Michael Ellis was chart manager, they had an insert explaining in great detail all the chart rules - about how singles entered the chart, earned bullets, etc. For example, it stated that a single needed (IIRC) 125 airplay points to debut on the Hot 100, and explained how they mixed sales into the data to determine chart positions, and so on.

As far as I know, they've never done that since they switched to the new methodology (I actually wrote a couple of the chart managers requesting that they do so, but nothing ever came of it).

I know in previous issues some of the rules have been mentioned, such as a single getting play in LA during drive time would get more points than a single in Omaha late at night, but they never went into details about the new rules, how exactly they mixed in sales (when it applied) and how many "points" it required to enter the chart.

Edited by torcan on 11 July 2006 at 2:53pm

Grant
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Posted: 11 July 2006 at 6:23pm \| IP Logged

Soundscan made the data more accurate. Once it was in place, country and hip-hop started showing up more on the charts, leading the industry to change course. It is well-known that music sales figures had been artificially inflated before Soundscan. Even after Soundscan was implemented, retail clerks found ways to artificially boost sales figures of a given title at the point of sale. But, the data was still now more accurate than before.

Radio play has always been regional, and you can't determine what was popular on radio alone. Grunge and alt could have been big in NY, but hip hop could have been more popular in Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Dallas, for an example. Perhaps the music sold more despite, or in spite of possible lower radio activity. If there were fewer or no singles available, it sounds perfectly logical to track album tracks. Radio is so fragnmented that one couldn't get totally reliable data from that. Now it's all going to get more interesting because online sales are now included in chart data.

That's my opinion, if you can call it that...

budaniel
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Posted: 18 July 2006 at 8:05am \| IP Logged

honestly, I wouldn't put much stock in the validity of any of these
systems. Did anyone catch this story about Michael Jackson on one of the
entertainment news shows a few weeks back? I only caught the tail end,
but they played a recorded message of him talking to someone about a
benefit record he'd recorded with some other artists after 911. He was
freaking OUT over the phone, and basically said, "You get Sony to drop
that record immediately, and you tell Sony to buy the number one
position on the billboard charts."

Mainstream tastes and trends are manipulated, not dictated by we the
listeners. I mean, Taylor Hicks' single dropped at number one on the
charts for one week. I've never heard the song on the radio, not even
adult contemporary stations. Most of the American Idol winners have
charted at high or at number one...there's a whole load of manipulation
going on there....

aaronk
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Posted: 18 July 2006 at 12:43pm \| IP Logged

That doesn't surprise me, budaniel. I stopped putting my faith in the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the early '90s when it didn't match what was on the radio. I'm not saying that airplay charts are perfect either; however, if a song is receiving massive airplay, I'd call it a hit. If it's receiving little to no airplay, but somehow makes it to the top of the Hot 100, I'm skeptical.

Brian W.
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Posted: 18 July 2006 at 12:44pm \| IP Logged

budaniel wrote:

Taylor Hicks' single dropped at number one on the
charts for one week. I've never heard the song on the radio, not even
adult contemporary stations. Most of the American Idol winners have
charted at high or at number one...there's a whole load of manipulation
going on there....

Taylor Hicks debuting at number one is not manipulation, that's JUST THE OPPOSITE. That's 227,946 people buying the single the first week it was out, so the song doesn't NEED to be played on the radio to chart at number one.

The American Idol contestants chart high because of consumer sales, not because of manipulated airplay. Of course you didn't hear them on the radio -- radio refuses to play them; all they'll play is hip-hop.

Sure, there is manipulation on the airplay charts, though not by SoundScan... by the people who own the radio stations, who are paid by the record companies.

But the SoundScan sales charts are the most accurate method of calculating what music is popular that has ever been devised.

Prior to SoundScan, Billboard's sales surveys never even took down actual sales totals. They just asked each record store what was their number one seller, number two seller, etc., then averaged all surveys. Pretty unscientific, really. A number one seller was a number one seller -- it didn't matter in the Hot 100 formula how far ahead of the pack it was. So the SoundScan sales charts are the first time in history that tracking of sales is not subject to a FORMULA.

If SoundScan had not been in effect in 1997, Elton John's "Candle in the Wind" would never have been number one.

And, by the way, Elvis' "Hound Dog" was never number one on Billboard's Top 100, the airplay-sales-jukebox combo that was the precursor to the Hot 100. Only "Don't Be Cruel" hit number one on that chart. "Hound Dog" was only number one on the sales chart.

aaronk
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Posted: 18 July 2006 at 1:24pm \| IP Logged

I think the bottom line here is that no single chart is going to be perfect. You've got to look at both airplay and sales from more than one chart publisher. I can honestly say that I've never watched ONE single episode of American Idol. I know who Taylor Hicks is, but I have never heard his song. If it was playing, I wouldn't recognize it. Unless you watched American Idol and/or bought the CD, you probably wouldn't know the song.

Every collector has different reasons for collecting certain songs. To me, hits are more than just sales figures, so I'll likely never have Taylor Hicks in my collection. Also, I have to like a song before I'll buy it. I'm not buying a CD just because it's number one.

I don't doubt that the radio charts are manipulated, too; however, a station generally isn't going to play a song for weeks and weeks in heavy rotation if the audience hates it. They don't want people turning off the station. And now that MediaBase is reporting actual spins by airplay monitoring, it's much like the SoundScan of radio. So that argument can be used here, too.

If a record sells half a million copies, is it a hit?

Maybe. Maybe not.

If the only people who know the song are the 500,000 who bought it, I'd say no. If a song is receiving massive airplay, and you can't escape it, and it also sells a half million copies, is it a hit? I'd say yes. Not everyone buys records. I have several friends that own fewer than a couple dozen CDs. Everyone LISTENS to records...on the radio, on TV, at the mall, in the grocery store, etc. That's just my opinion, though. The definition of a hit is at least somewhat subjective.

Edited by aaronk on 18 July 2006 at 10:14pm

Brian W.
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Posted: 18 July 2006 at 5:55pm \| IP Logged

I agree -- there's no one definition of "hit." The first few Beatles singles were flops... until they appeared on TV, then everyone rushed out and bought the records.

Is that comparable to people seeing the Idol contestants on TV and buying their records? I don't know.

aaronk
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Posted: 18 July 2006 at 10:21pm \| IP Logged

Got off on a tangent there, but to answer the original question: Is the top 10 entirely wrong in the 90s? I think Brian's answer is the best you're going to get: The Hot 100 chart became more influenced by sales and become a more accurate representation of what was selling.

The next question is what exactly are you trying to collect?

budaniel wrote:

I, like many on here, collect all the chart hits

I also collect the chart hits, but I generally follow the airplay chart post-1991. Why? Because I work in radio, and many of those "sales" hits on the Hot 100 are not important to me. I don't know them and I don't really care if I own a lot of them.

Anyone?

Brian W.
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Posted: 19 July 2006 at 12:08am \| IP Logged

Hmm... I collect all the top-ten selling singles from 1940 to 2001 (except for the early-to-mid 1970s, where there was no separate sales chart), supplemented by top ten airplay hits for the late 1990s and early 2000s.

After 2000, I collect all the #1 and #2 hits, going primarily by the Hot Digital Songs chart starting in Jan of 2005.

I also collect all the million-selling singles... I'm currently trying to find out what they all ARE, since as I've mentioned in previous threads the RIAA simply certifies million SHIPPERS.

I've toyed with the idea of trying to write a really definitive book on million-selling singles. There have been two: Joseph Murrells "Million Selling Records," much of which is based on hearsay, some of it disproven; and Adam White's "Gold and Platinum Records," which was strictly RIAA-certified records.

I'd love to put together a book that is actually fully documented, with proof of the sales for each and every record.

But I don't think those previous books sold very well. And besides, what do I know about writing a book? :D

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