Latest / Why We Do What We Do / Billboard Hot 100

Transcript

Billboard Hot 100 · Why We Do What We Do

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You're listening to Why we do what we do? Welcome
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: to Why we do what we do. I am your
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: host who is so hot right now, Abraham.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: And I am your host who is wondering where William
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Board is Shane.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: We are a psychology podcast. We talk about the things
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: that humans and non human animals do, and sometimes we
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: dip our toes all the way into the zeitgeist to
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: talk about pop culture things, a term we'll actually sort
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: of explain a little bit in this discussion. So but yeah,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: that's what we do. And if you're joining us for
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: the first time, then welcome. We hope you enjoy what
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: we have to offer in this discussion, and if you're
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: a returning person, then welcome back, and thank you for
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: continuing to seek us out. And either way, if you'd
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: like to support us, you can leave us a rating
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: and a review like subscribe, hello a friend, join us
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: on Patreon. I'll talk more about those things at the
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: end of this discussion, but I'd like to wish you
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: all a happy great American grump out on this day,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: May the sixth.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the day after the days after May the
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: fourth be with you and Revenge of the Fifth and
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: turn me in. We don't have a good this. It
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: could be Revenge of the sixth, I guess, but yeah,
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: the Sith get two days anyway. It is International No
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Diet Day.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Okay, but it is also National Anxiety Disorders Screening Day.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: So important, Yes it is. It's also National Beverage Day.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I'll take a coffee.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: It is National Crepes suzette Day.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: I love a good crape. It is a National Day
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: to prevent teen and unplanned pregnancy. I wish I'd have
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: known about that before.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's see our recent episode on abstinence on the education. Yeah,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: for a strategy that does not work to accomplish that goal.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: The opposite, Yeah, it does the opposite. It is National
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Deaf Interpreter Day. I love that. That's fantastic.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're so great. I worked with a deaf interpreter
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: named November, and she was such a hippie. She was
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: so cool. She was so great to work with. It
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: is National Nurses Day.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Fantastic. It is National Tourist Appreciation Day.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: It depends on where you're doing.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: I guess they do spend money, so they do.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they do keep entire cities alive. The city I
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: live in as a result of tourism. So yeah, yours
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: is two a little bit.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is air quality Awareness week.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Air has quality and it should be good. It is
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: the opposite of that Are Aware Week.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's good that they're together, I think.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: And it's also be kind to animals week.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Ah love for sure, yes, yes, all right, but those
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: are the holidays, which is not exactly why why we're here.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: It's like a portion but not the entire reason, just
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: the amuse bouche, which we also did an episode on.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: But uh, we are talking about music, and specifically we're
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: talking about ways that we rank music, and we thought
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: this was a potentially useful discussion to have because that
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: things like this often set up contingencies that we don't
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: necessarily expect and then end up guiding our culture and
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: music and the industry as a whole in ways that
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: are sometimes intended and sometimes not right. And so sometimes
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: people make simple, low stakes, entertainment based decisions that seem
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: harmless but end up having far reaching implications and unintended
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: and sometimes lesser known intended consequences.
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so we are going to talk about the Billboard
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Top one hundred which is full of sellouts. By the way,
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: I'm just kidding how it came to be, how it works,
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: and how it actually has shaped our culture in specifically
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: music as a leading kind of indicator of what is popular,
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: you know. So we're gon we're gonna spend a little
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: bit time on this. So I'm really excited about it.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Yes, And we might interchangeably call it Top one hundred
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: or Hot one hundred. The official name is Hot one hundred,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: and then they have like a Top two hundred for albums,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: and there's a bunch of other top what's in this
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: so apologize if they get mixed up, but lots of lists.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: These are so many lists. We're talking about primarily the
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Hot one hundred, but we'll talk about some others as
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: well as we go along. Yeah, all right, I feel
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: like I maybe skipped some things during the intro. Are
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: there anything you'd like to add before we jump into
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: our discussion?
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: No, I feel good. Let's do it.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Okay, we're already off to the races so quickly that
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: I do think this will be on the shorter end
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: for a full length. We'll find out, you know. We
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: say that, and then it goes for three hours so yeah, exactly,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: and we do like to talk about music, so that
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: is that is the thing.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: That is true.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Okay, So let's get into the history of this. A
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: version of what would become this idea and the actual
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: implementation of the Billboard existed well before the Billboard existed,
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: in the form of retailers and other merchants posting about
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: popular items in their stores. So they would simply have
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: like posters that they'd create that would say these are
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: really high these are really well selling items, and they
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: would highlight those very popular or you can imagine that
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: they wanted those items to become high selling, and so
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: they would report them as high selling and the hopes
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: that they would be able to offload that merch But anyway,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: I digress. There was a strategy that existed in the
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: marketing space of people having posters like this in some places.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Now, the Billboard as we know it
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: today first began as an advertising agency on November one,
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: eighteen ninety four, as Billboard Advertising. I think that's going
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: to be really critical information. It was a journal like
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: publication intended to build post for businesses and simply listed
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: things for sale. They were just saying, hey, this is
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: for sale. Here's a business that has this thing that
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: you might like to buy.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: That was basically it. That was what it did, that
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: was its purpose. So that was eighteen ninety four and
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: eighteen ninety six. Two years later it expanded its advertising
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: to include things for like fares, carnivals, other attractions, and
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: then just a year after that, in eighteen ninety seven,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: it rebranded as simply the Billboard instead of Billboard Advertising.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: At this point it was becoming crammed with content, like
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: it had been expanding every year since its inception, and
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: was starting to include more things that were sort of
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: in the entertainment space, as limited as that would have
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: been at the end of the eighteen hundreds, but we
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: found for our patron supporters you could see this. We
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: found some cool scans of some of the covers of
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: some of these old versions of this little like periodical
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: back in the late eighteen hundreds where it was called
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: billboard Advertising.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: And it looks exactly like you think it would.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: I find the art and the specifically like the advertising
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: and newspaper style around this time so fascinating. I think
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: it's so and so unique. I think this is one
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: of those ones there's like a just to describe it
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: to folks who haven't seen it, there's an image on
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: the front, it's a portrait of a man, and then
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: behind it there's like some cartoon drawings and some like
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: filigree around it to like make it look like floral
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: and like fancy and like kind of like it's like
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: gilded a little bit. Yeah, the font is really bold
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: and really but like it also, I could picture people
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: reading it like monthly resume, I have all that is new,
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: bright and interesting on the balls. Like I could see
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: people saying it like that because it's got that feel.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: So it's I don't know, it's really interesting looking.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely completely agree.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, So in the early nineteen hundreds, Billboard started
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: including not just advertisements and charts showing high selling popular
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: attractions and merchandise, they started mentioning musicians. So the first
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: mention of musicians was a nineteen oh four issue, with
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: nineteen oh five issues featuring a section dedicated to musicians only.
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: So they really started kind of highlighting this and especially
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: like when you think about this early nineteen hundreds, music
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: and live music becomes really popular. Traveling musicians become very popular,
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: like it starts to become kind of like built into
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: like the folklore and like Americana a little bit in
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: the US, so like music starts to become really widely
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: celebrated in the United States around this time.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean it was still hard to get
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: music very reliably at this point. And we'll get into
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: that a second, but anyway, so yeah, initially they were
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: just like saying, here, here are things that people are selling.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: That it was like, here are really popular things that
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: people are selling, and now here's really popular music you
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: should know about. And the first version of a top
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: ten list started in a nineteen thirteen issue with this
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: is titled last Week's ten best Sellers among the Popular Songs,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: catchy title. Yeah, and they were reporting top selling sheet
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: music at the time. So again quick aside, at this
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: point in time, when the early nineteen hundreds, recording music
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: was extremely new, Like recording it at all was very
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: very new, and it really had not translated yet into
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: widespread consumption and distribution. People were not purchasing music. You
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: could hardly record it and then listen back the available
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: music at this point, like radio had been around, but
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: it had been around really for like less than a
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: decade where it was like just dedicated to playing songs
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: on the radio. And to listen to music at this time,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: you either had to have a radio, which was not
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: necessarily that easy to come by, or be somewhere that
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: had a radio, or you had to buy the sheet
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: music and play it yourself, which was actually one of
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: the most common ways that people listened to music. Yeah,
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: or you would go see a live performance. But that's
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: why they listed the top ten best selling sheet music
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: is because for people to hear songs that they liked,
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: they would buy the music and then play it themselves, Yeah.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: Which is also which is really fun to think about.
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: But also I don't know if you've ever tried to
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: play off the sheet music or something like that, but
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: like if you've never heard the song or the piece before,
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: it could be really interesting because like you might have
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: like little like intonations or variations in it even though
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: you're following the sheet music, that might make it sound
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: a little bit different. So like every time somebody's purchasing
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: sheet music and they're learning how to play a song
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: or they're playing it, it could sound just slightly different
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: than what was like originally intended, which is really I
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: think a fascinating like a little element of this.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I think you could end up with like
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: regional versions of how a song is supposed to go
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: as interpreted by people who were sort of musicians and
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: they're reading it how they thought it should sound when
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: they would learn to play it.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And kind of going back to your comment about
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: the recorded music, like versions of recorded music existed in
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: about eighteen seventy seven with Thomas Edison, who just I
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: think this guy was bored. He was just like and
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: another thing and he just like just make something else.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: I love that episode of The Simpsons, by the way
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: where they learn about his chair, right. Did you ever
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: see that like where it's like he falls back and
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: there's like the legs like pop out to make sure
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: that he doesn't fall back when he's in his chair
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: when he's leading back. Yes, yeah, well the Simpsons they
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: talk about it. Ever, So anyway, Thomas Edison has his photograph.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: Vinyl records start gaining commercial viability in the nineteen thirties,
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: although the modern LP vinyl as we know it didn't
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: actually debut until nineteen forty eight. What they actually like
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: and when it did come out, like they really only
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: did like singles, there were a lot of like you
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: didn't get like twelve inch records. You got like smaller
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: single records because it was more affordable, and people would
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: go record and they could go into a studio and
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: record that day, and it like they record live and
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: it gets put right to the vinyl in the same
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: studio and it's only like a little seven inch or
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: of forty five, you know.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: And that's kind of how it started to look in
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties. You started getting more of the like
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: twelve track A sides, B sides thing in nineteen forty eight.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: But yeah, that being said, technically record sales were happening
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties because you had the version you
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: were talking about that they often had those EPs and
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: whatnot in singles. So in March nineteen thirty seven, Billboard
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: debuted this list was called quote Songs with the most
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: Radio plug That was the title, and that was a chart,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: and this kicked off a series of different types of charts.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: So they were they would track like songs that were
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: bestsellers and stores, songs that were most played by jockeys,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: which is to say people at radio stations, and then
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: songs that were played the most on jukeboxes.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is super interesting. And one of the lists
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: they had was like ads most played on radio, and
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: we're back and we're talking about lists that are made
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: by advertising companies and how accurate they are. So Billboard
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: is starting to do these lists most played songs by
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: jockeys on jukeboxes all stuff. They actually started creating a
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: variety of top tens in these various lists, but eventually,
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty five they compiled retail sales, jockey plays,
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: and jukebox plays into a single list called the Top
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: one hundred, and so in nineteen fifty five, the Top
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: one hundred is born. Individual record sales were counted separate
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: at the time, which would seems very daunting in nineteen
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: fifty five, like that's a lot of paper to go through.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: I feel like there's a lot of like, that's a
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: lot of information. But the top song and the first
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: Top one hundred list was love is a many splendid
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: thing by the four aces.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Yes, and so yeah, this is actually although it's called
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: the Top one hundred, this is not yet the Hot
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: one hundred. In fact, that would come just to this
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: next section. Year jukeboxes were already waning in popularity by
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five, so these started being excluded from the
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: list by nineteen fifty seven, So just two years into
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: them publishing these lists, they started changing how the algorithm
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: compiled data. And then the debut of the Hot one
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: hundred list we're familiar with today was debuted on August fourth,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifty eight, So we are so many decades out
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: from that. Yeah. The very first number one on the
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Hot one hundred was poor Little Fool by Ricky Nelson.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: And by this time, most of the other functions that
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Billboard had started with the advertising ranking popular events and
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: activities and carnivals and stuff, those had largely faded away
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: and it was pretty much focused exclusively on music by
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: the time it debuted the Hot one hundred and nineteen
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: fifty eight.
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, now at this point in time, we've been only
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: talking about charting songs, and that's what the Hot one
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: hundred has been, And like some of this stuff already,
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: it's been about songs, not records. There was actually a
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: separate chart that was started in nineteen forty five to
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: track full albums and initially separated by record RPM, specifically
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: so you either had thirty threes or forty fives, and
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: then by mono and stereo sound, so you had like
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: these different classifications for these lists. So it was like, oh,
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: this is the number one, thirty three, this number forty five,
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: this is the number one, this right, yea, And these
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: various classifications were eventually combined into a single top two
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: hundred albums, and that list officially created nineteen sixty seven.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: They started spin off charts for country music in nineteen
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: sixty four, R and BA in nineteen sixty five, jazz
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty nine, which I think is interesting that
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: it took a while to get to jazz.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: Me too, I was surprised, But then also you.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: Think about it, it's like, well, country music sure, like
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: whoever's running this is probably not very interesting. Jazz Latin
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: music in nineteen seventy three, gospel in seventy four, and
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: rock in eighty one. Yes, rock in eighty one is
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: interesting because rock music was very popular in like the
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: sixties and seventies. So like the fact that it took
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: that long to get to rock is really interesting to me.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: The fact that it took that long, as with gospel,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: was surprising to me, I would have thought that would
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: have been really early on. Yeah, yeah, those were the
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: genres of the albums and whatnot. Now, remarkably, the Billboard
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Hot one hundred and Top two hundred album seems to
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: remain fairly relevant even nearly a century later. I mean,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: we're more like seven decades, but you know, the better
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: part of a century, if you will.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And people still use this to classify the relative
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: success of an artist or a song. And this is
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: due in part to the Billboard being highly adaptive to
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: changing times, technologies, sensitivity to popularity of various mediums and whatnot.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: You know, it's surprising to me that something like this
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: has lasted as long as it has lasted, and still
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: seems like it is probably the most common way that
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: people talk about the popularity of music, as by referring
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: to this compiled list the Billboard Hot one hundred or
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: Top two hundred albums.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and of course, at this point in time, there's
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: a nearly innumerable number of top whatever lists. Everybody loves
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: a good listical and their subgenres and specifications within subgenres.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: I mean, like it's so much it's not just Latin music,
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: it's Mexican Latin or Tropical Mexican Latin on streaming, and
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: the Billboard has actually introduced global metrics, So the Billboard
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Global two hundred and expanded the various countries, regions, languages,
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: et cetera, etc. Like I mean, it is extensive what
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: they cover.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there are so many different ways to categorize these
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: things and to list them that people are interested in
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: trying to say, well, how do I rank on this list?
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: And where am I on this list? Et cetera. So,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: though there are many groups, organizations and people who have
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: attempted to create their own versions of things like lists,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: none have really risen high enough to dethrone the major
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Billboard Hot one hundred or Top two hundred lists. And
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: I do think, you know, some have been moderately successful,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: partially because their platform specific So I think you know
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Spotify is going to list like their top songs, and
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: iTunes will list their top songs, and many people will
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: sort of list their top songs and they'll deliberately they
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: won't use the Billboard Hot one hundred. And it's specifically
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: because we'll get to this in a minute, but the
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Billboard Hot one hundred could technically have any kind of
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: song on it. And most people when they're trying to
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: platform something like their top ten or their top twenty,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: they want to kind of exclude song that maybe are
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: not friendly to the widest possible audience, like songs that
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: have swearing and then might rise to the ranks of
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: the top one hundred songs, but someone who's putting together
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: some kind of like more family friendly list will not
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: include those, or they might exclude certain genres of music.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: They're like, we're not going to do anything heavy, we're
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: not going to do anything rap. It's just going to
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: be pop sort of music. And so that's there are
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: versions of this exist. They're used fairly regularly, and they
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: don't actually use the Billboard Hot one hundred to assemble
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: their sort of takeaways from that. They'll do a different
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: way of doing it. But that kind of really brings
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: to the point at this point, discerning listeners may have
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: been asking, Okay, so how are these lists actually compiled,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Like what data determines whether a song or album is
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: included or how it's included and how it's placed on
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: these lists. And if you're asking that, I would say
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: that's a very smart question.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: That is a very smart question. Good job. So hilariously
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: and also understandably. Initial data were compiled by radio stations
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: and record stores, which would tally and send their information
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: to Billboard. That is, they could simply decide what they
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: wanted to be popular, or someone could bribe the right
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: people to facilitate popularity, or record companies could put their
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: thumb on the scale by sending lots of records to
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: radio stations and stores to show high sales. It's almost
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: like they're just like fudging the numbers.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: That is exactly what they were doing that they I
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: mean for a long time and we'll get into this.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: They would just like say, these are our best sales,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: and then that's how Billboard one hundred would compile their data,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: is just like people reporting it. And also record companies
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: could sponsor songs to be played more on the radios
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: so that they could try and ensure a spot in
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: the Hot one hundred. So they would specifically send these
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: tracks to the radio stations and say you're going to
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: get an additional stipend to ensure that this plays every
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: single day or three times a day or whatever, so
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: that they would then report high numbers for that song
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: and it would be on the Hot one hundred, which
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: you know, the radio is choosing the song for you.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: That doesn't necessarily reflect how well people actually like that song, right,
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: But that is how like a lot of people still
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: find new music. But what then happened is when the
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: record companies stopped promoting that song, it would then fall
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: off of the Hot one hundred because it was no
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: longer being selected to be played on radio stations. So
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: it is kind of interesting again like they're just putting
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: their thumb on the scale here to orchestrate what they
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: want to be popular so that they can make money
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: from it, and not necessarily reflecting what people would choose
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: or prefer or enjoy. It's just was being forced down
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: their gullet, right.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: We actually haven't stated clearly that the only songs that
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: could be tracked on the Billboard Hot one hundred were
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: songs that were sold as singles. Okay, these are single tracks,
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: These are not albums. These are sold singles. And if
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: the most popular song in the world was not available
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: for purchase as a single, it was ineligible to be
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: considered for the Billboard Hot one hundred. You know, not
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: that such a thing would have ever happened, but like
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: that's essentially what it was. It was like you like,
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: for example, if the Beatles put out a record called
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: Rubber Soul, right like Rubber Soul, and the song from
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: Rubbers the lead single would not necessarily be the thing
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: that would end up on Hot one hundred. It would
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: be like a separate single that was sold as like
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: this song is you know side A is this this
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: hit song? The single side B is like, you know,
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: some kind of special song, but like it was sold
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: as a single. And that's where like the seven inches,
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: the forty five's, like the smaller records would come in
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: because you would buy them as like a single with
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: like one or two songs on it, and.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Then you know, the song could be included on a
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: full length album, and a lot of them were, but
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: it was also available individually to be sold, Yes, that
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: version of that song as its own thing. And that
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: didn't mean that if there was ever a cut of
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: a song that was designed just for radio play but
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: was not sold as its own single, that could not
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: be included, even if it was extremely popular, that could
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: not be included. And that did happen sometimes, Like there
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: were really popular songs that had a radio edit that
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: was not included in the Billboard Hot one hundred for
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: a while early on because it was not sold as
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: a single. Now, one thing that's kind of interesting here
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: is it was never a requirement and it still isn't
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: that a song be new or that it be published
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: by major label to be eligible and to be actually
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: charted on a spot on the Hot one hundred. That
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: is usually how it happened. Again, labels can push songs
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: harder than others. They have a lot more resources and
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: connections and stuff behind them, so they can push a
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: song a lot harder than an independent artist could. And
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: it just happens to be the case that newer songs
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: tended to reach the top spots very quickly and then
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: sort of fade away. However, technically, any song sold as
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: a single independently or you know, whether or not it
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: was super family friendly, it could in theory reach a
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: spot on that Hot one hundred list if it was
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: sold as a single, even if it was put out independently.
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I love that you brought up the point that, like,
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: it doesn't have to be a brand new song, because
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: we've seen an example of this in the last few years. Yeah,
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: that Kate Bush song Running Up That Hill is a
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: perfect example of a song that was released in a
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: nineteen eighty five and hit the top the Billboard Hot
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: one hundred like thirty years later. So like it like
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: because of Stranger Things. So like you see examples of this,
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: like yeah, like it was popular on Stranger Things and
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: then it ended up on the Billboard Hot one hundred.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: And it's a thirty year old song at this point,
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: so you know, when we're you know, even like closer
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: to forty at this point, it was one of those
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: things when it came out like it was an old song,
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: but it hit the mark because of some cultural like
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: thing that happened, right.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And there's actually another one that happens too,
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: and here's an ad for it. We're back. There's not
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: an ad for it. It's actuallything else. But it did happen.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: It has happened other times day. Older songs have come
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: back to the Billboard Hot one hundred, just as you said,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: and for similar reasons. Now, remarkably, this self report survey
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: style wild West data reporting could not last. Sure it
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: did for a while because remember the actual Billboard Hot
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: one hundred as it stands Today debuted in nineteen fifty eight. Well,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: it continued the self report style data all the way
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: until nineteen ninety one, Wow, where Billboard underwent a tremendous
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: paradigm shift. And primarily what they did is a couple
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: of things. One is they switched to objective electronically reported
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: data tracked by broadcast data systems or bds, and this
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: is for air plays or radio plays. And then they
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: use a system called sound scan for retail record sales.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: And so now rather than the companies just you know,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: writing them letters that say we sold five hundred thousand albums,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: go ahead and put us on your list, they would
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: actually have real hard numbers coming in that were not
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: necessarily being fudged. There are still ways to fudge it,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: but it's now a lot more difficult. This is much
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: more objective. And incidentally, they reveal the surprising outcome from
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: the data that they did not know, and one of
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: those was that both country and rap were being sold
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: and played a lot more and we're a lot more
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: popular than they had believed to be up until that point.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: Super interesting. Also, I think this is really important. This
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: is like one of those things when you're thinking about this,
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: you might be going, well, yes, this is more objective,
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: but it's only objective. And I will say this as
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: a musician. It's only objective if you were able to
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: get your record distributed into places where people can purchase music.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: Like the reason that for a long time, punk and
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: hardcore and metal did not make the Billboard numbers is
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: because a lot of times they were independent labels. They
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: were putting out their own records. They were small, they
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: couldn't get distributions, so they couldn't get the same sales
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: levels as like something like Aerosmith or day La Soul
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: or you know whoever. Right, Like, it's also important to
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: remember that, like, while it's a subjective based on the
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: data that are available, those data are also influenced by accessibility.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: So yeah, there's gatekeepers that are like making sure that
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: some things make it to listeners and some things don't. Yeah,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: And to that point, another interesting aspect of this is
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: thinking about like, let's say Joe Schmo in New York
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: is like, I just want this to chart the top
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: one hundred, and they have to be They happen to
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: be absurdly wealthy, so they buy their own two hundred
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: thousand copies of an album, right, and that goes into
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: like a storage warehouse and it never sees the light
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: of day again. It looks like that album's soul really well,
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: but nobody's actually listening to it. And alternatively, you know,
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: someone buys an album and listens to the album like
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: fifty thousand times because it's their favorite thing ever to
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: listen to. The fact that they bought it once counts
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: as once for that number. The fact that the album
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: got played fifty thousand times is not at all and
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: there's no way to do this really, but that's just
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: not factored into it. All. The calculation for how actually
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: like well liked a song is. It's just how many
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: people heard this at least once, yeah, or not even
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: heard it, purchased it at least once, possibly never listened
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: to it, versus how many people like really play this
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: a lot and listen to it consistently.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: Right, exactly exactly so. Continuing forward to the criteria that
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: songs be sold to singles to be included in the
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: Hot one hundred list was intended at least in part
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: to incentivize record companies to release songs as singles. Unclear
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: why this would be a preference. We don't really know.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: Nobody really said. Maybe it was cheaper like for record
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: I mean, it was, for sure cheaper for record companies
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: to produce singles versus full length albums. Like that makes
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: sense to sell that because it's less cost and you
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: were getting you could sell it for a higher time.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: But it was kind of unclear. By the nineties, the
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: medium of music had changed pretty drastically and companies were
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: pushing full length CDs, which in the nineties were selling
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: very well and also in twenty twenty six also selling
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: very well, which is really bizarre making a comeback.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I have a lot of CDs and had a
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: lot of CDs. I've lost a lot of CDs and
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: broken and scratched quite a few. Yeah, but yes, had
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: an enormous CD collection for sure. I remember this time
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: very well. But yeah, it was actually weird because what
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: I was reading is that the record companies have always
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: pushed for albums, and it was the Billboard Hot one
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: hundred was actually wanting to encourage them doing singles only,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: and I'm not really sure why. Yeah, maybe it felt
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: like it was there was so much investment in producing
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: a single song that it felt like they weren'tett as
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: much return on their investment as if they did, like
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: a whole album that one go they might have multiple
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: hits on it. Maybe that's what the deal was. I
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: found a record that I didn't include in here, but
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: there was several artists who had multiple Billboard Hot one
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: hundred hits from the same album. Sure, Beatles were on there.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: I believe Michael Jackson was on there. So there were
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: some times that that happened, and like that definitely does
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: very very well for a company or company when something
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: like that happens.
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because when you think about it, it's like almost
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: like the resale value on an album, Like every time
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: there's a new single from the same album, they don't
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: have to make new albums. They can just use the
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: same one to sell. It was like, yeah, and for
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: like three or four years, that record is still selling
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: because there's a new single every few months exactly.
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So anyway, that was kind of a thing that
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: happened is they had had this approach to sort of
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: pushing for singles only, and by the the nineties when
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: CDs we were all the rage and the primary way
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: that anybody listened to any form of music. That started
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: to make the Billboard Hot one hundred seem kind of
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: out of touch with what was going on in mainstream music,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: and that really is a huge threat to their ability
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: to survive and continue to remain relevant. Sure, and so
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: as Billboard does, and they had been doing for decades,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: they adapted. And what that meant here is that as
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: part of this shift in the ninety one shift is
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: they started including radio singles that didn't have a corresponding
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: retail counterpart on their charts. And so that meant that
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: those radio edits that could not be sold as singles
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: that were not included in the Hot one hundred but
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: were very popular could now be included on that list
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: and factored into the Hot one hundred, which also had
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: some slightly unintended consequences.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the effect was an immediate skew towards songs played
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: on the radio as dominating Hot one hundred spots for
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: several years. Of course, at this time, pirting, downloading, purchasing
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: music digitally was rapidly growing in popularity, mostly pirrating than
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: anything else, and that also skewed some stuff. And for
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: those of you who don't know what a radio edit is,
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: because I think we brought it up a couple of times,
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: but like just so you know, oftentimes what it is
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: is like they take a song and they like cut
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: down the length of the song to like its most
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: essential parts, to make it like, yeah, so it's not
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: too long, because like they when they used to play
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: songs on the radio, they would always aim for like
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: three minutes. They kind of believe that, like the listener
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: only had a three minutes. And this actually was like
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: a big point of contention for Queen releasing Bohemian Rhapsody
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: because Bohemian Rhapsody is so long, but that became like
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: you know, their song, yeah, yeah, but like a radio
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: edit is just cutting it down so that like some
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: of the extra fluff is a little bit not quite
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: as not in the whole song, like an album version
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: maybe twice as long because of some extra little bells
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: and whistles that they've added.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they really focused on lyrics most of the time.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: So they would cut intro music, they would cut outro music,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: they would cut bridge music, they might cut verses that
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: were repetitive, but they would always keep Actually I don't
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: think they ever did that well. They always did is
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: they kept the parts that they thought were the most
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: earwormy and were most likely too, but that would be
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: a modified version of the song, and you really couldn't
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: get that version of the song anyway other than the
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: edit that was played on the radio. And so when
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: they started including that, because there was a lot of
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: those out there, because again they thought that people were
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: only going to tolerate specific types of songs, then all
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, the Hot one hundred was like, here
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: is the radio. Yeah, and again that made it look
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: a little out of touch. And furthermore, as we said, like,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: at this point, people are getting a lot of their
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: music online in some capacity most people. I don't know
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: if people would remember this at this point, but there
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: was a thing called napster, yes in the nineties, and
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: various versions of it like LimeWire and some other things.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: But yeah, these were ways that people would essentially trade
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: downloaded songs, digital copies of songs for free with one another,
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: and that the music industry really really did not like,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: like really did not like, because essentially people were getting
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: music for free and there was a lot of this happening,
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: and so various strategies were implemented to try and get
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: this under control. One of the problems, which may have
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: even been orchestrated in part by the record companies, but
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: who knows. It's is the wild West. This was very
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: unregulated territory, was that people would attach a ton of
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: viruses to these songs. Ye, so you had to be
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: really careful what you were downloading because you could royally
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: screw up your computer by swapping songs with people when
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: some of those songs were files that you willingly took
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: onto your computer that were loaded with viruses. Yeah, so
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: that was definitely a problem.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: It was a dangerous time.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: It was dangerous. Yeah. Yeah, you'd all of a sudden get
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: like just hardcore porn windows popping up all over your
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: computer and you're like, what is this.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was like you'd open file. Yeah, you open
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: a file and there's nothing but ads.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: Okay, we're back. We've been sort of talking about how
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: the music landscape was changing. We've gone in this piracy
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: digital media part. And then there's this enterprising little nobody
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: who had a clever idea in two thousand and three
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: launch a digital web store to sell songs at a
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: mere ninety nine cents a pop. And importantly, here an
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: important feature that was negotiated into this little web store
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: was that those songs could not be restricted to an album,
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: meaning you could buy any track, and any track can
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: be sold individually without having to purchase the entire album.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: You could buy just the intro if you wanted to,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: or just the outro, whatever it was. You could buy
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: any single song without having to buy the entire album,
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: or you could buy the entire album. Then a little
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: nobody by the way, his name was Steve Jobs, and
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: his little web store was called iTunes.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: Yep, yeap. If you'd never heard of it, it's okay,
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: it's been lost to obscurity. Now. This completely altered the
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: music listening landscape and actually is really kind of like
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: Napster and some of that stuff led to this, which
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: led to current status, which is some of the streaming
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: which we'll talk about. Yeah, this required an adaptation in
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: tracking music popularity again. So in two thousand and five,
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: when it was clear iTunes was not a flash in
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: the pan destined to fade into obscurity at any time soon,
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: Billboard what Hot one hundred, they started including iTunes digital
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: sales as part of their aggregation compilation, which actually, like
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: it makes sense as we start to move into that
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: space and is one of the clear metrics that are
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: used now when it comes to you know, listening in
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: music and popularity.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's now called Apple music. I don't know if
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: it's even called iTunes anywhere anymore, but now called Apple music.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: And one thing that that we have mentioned so far
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: is they actually had a weighting, like a waiting scale,
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: for how important these various metrics were in terms of
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: their ranking. So and this is this is actually still
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: true that sales of actual albums are people purchasing the songs.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: Those are one of the most heavily weighted. Radio plays
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: are also among like one of the most heavily weighted.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: Streaming songs were not very heavily weighted, whether they were
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: whatever platform they were streamed on or heard in that way,
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: those were weighted much less heavily. So the fact that
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: a song was played seven billion times is relevant, but
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: maybe not as important as how many times the album
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: was sold. And I think they see the purchasing ass
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: of music as a sort of bigger commitment. But also
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: I'm guessing that that has changed or is changing, because
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: we've now moved into a space where I think most
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: people just stream their music and don't buy albums at all.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: I mean now they Pandora, Spotify, Amazon Music, and YouTube
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: have all been started to be included and the digital
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: space of music popular and in sales as part of
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: the compilation for their ranking, and that allowed the has
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: continued to allow Billboard Hot one hundred to represent the
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: most popular music by factoring in all of these streaming sources.
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: And I have no idea how sales and radio plays
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: compared to streaming, but I'd be willing to guess that
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: they're kind of dwarfed by it. I think that, yeah,
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: the overwhelming majority of way of the way that music
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: has played anymore is through streaming.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I think as a response to the emergence
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: of AI and some of the streaming spaces and like
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: some of the things that like, because you're finding that
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: people are just making AI music and throwing it out
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: there and whatnot. Like, I think people are responding to
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: that wanting physical media. So I think that you're starting that.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: I think that's why you're starting to see vinyl and
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: CDs and tapes start to come back because at this
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: at this point in time, like it's a way to
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: preserve music when streaming services decide to remove something or
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: something is not available, like it's an easy way to
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: get access to that stuff.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: It was one of the most frustrating things to like
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: have songs or albums you really love just disappear from
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: streaming services for some reason and they're like, yeah, how
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: can I want this back? Please? Why why did you
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: take it away?
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's it's unfortunate. It's so frustrating.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so that is one of the benefits of having
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: like physical tangible media.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So all that to say, we think it's important
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: to kind of go into a little bit of a
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: contingency analysis as it pertains to all of the things
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: we just mentioned, the lists that aggregated data, all these things.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: So the Billboard Hot one hundred and top two hundred
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: albums do command some power and influence on culture at large,
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: how different organizations market and all these things. They can
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: drive marketing strategies, and how bands will put out music,
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: when they put out music, how they market music in time,
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: It facilitates or inhibits some artists. It can get keep
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: toward and away from certain genres, and in some ways
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: push technology forward. It does a lot of things. I
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: think more than just going here's music to listen.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: To, Yeah, and just like here's here's what's popular. And
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: I noticed for a long time, I was like, wow,
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: it's interesting that bands always put out new albums on Tuesday.
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: What I didn't know is that the Billboard Hot one hundred,
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: this comes out as a weekly list and the data
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: are compiled from they were compiled from essentially Tuesday through Monday,
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: or like it was like Monday through Sunday or something.
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: But they put out their new list on Tuesdays, and
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: so to sort of maximize the time and albums spent
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: or a song spent in the radio play to possibly
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: Billboard the Top one hundred, they wanted to release it
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: as close to that cycle as possible. Yeah, And that
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: seems to be what happened. And then they shifted and
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: I think twenty twenty one or something like that. It
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: was the last few years handful of years, six or
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: seven doesn't feel like that many to people my age,
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: but someone born not long ago is now in first grade,
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: so to them as their whole life. But anyway, they
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: shifted it so that it's now on a Friday through
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: Thursday cycle. Is now when they compile the data, and
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: I've now noticed a lot of albums now come out
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: on Fridays. Yeah, and so it is interesting again how
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: they drive those sorts of things you don't necessarily think about,
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: but it's like in service of maximizing time, and there
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: is a bit of a delay, so like what is
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: released is not necessarily going to show Like what's popular
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: that week won't necessarily show up that week. It'll actually
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: show up the following week. But that's kind of just
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: the nature of the beast. But that is how and
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: why people have orchestrated and organized their releases and sometimes
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: even tried to make sure that they're not competing with
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: other popular releases.
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like they.
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: Might actually wait to release something if something is like
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: super dominating the charts and they're like, oh, my song
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: is good, but not that good. Let's wait till this
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: one's a little less popular and then writ it out
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: or whatever. You know. I think there are specific things
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: where their specific strategy is to make sure that they
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: get the highest possible place on that list.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It coincides with like tours as well, Like I'm
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: going to release a new song and then we're going
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: to do a tour and then that's popular song. You've
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: been listening to it for weeks NonStop. You can come
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: see it live. Like, there's lots of things they do
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: to Like, it's an entire industry. The music industry is
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: an entire industry that is very like there's lots of
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: moving parts. I mean, it is really really fascinating.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and it always comes down to the bottom.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: It is making as much money as possible. And you know,
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: for the bands, I actually have a huge amount of
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: sympathy for that. This is their job, Like, their work
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: is to create music that they can sell so that
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: they can afford to buy food and put a roof
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: over their heads, right, and like continue doing their job
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: as well. So, like I understand from that perspective, for
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: record companies, this is a lot of This is a
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: lot more about squeezing other people for their talent. Yeah,
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: to get as much out of them as you possibly
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: can by like giving them a lot of money to
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: record and tour and whatnot, and then you know, milking
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: them for everything they're worth. So I do appreciate that.
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: I feel like there's more and more services out there
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: to allow bands to exist somewhat independent from major labels.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: But again that does also limit their exposure and their
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: ability to do things like chart on the Billboard one hundred. Right,
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: So we kind of got on off of a side tangent. Essentially,
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: what we're saying here is the hot one hundred does
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: have some power, but it is not all powerful, and
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: it does have to bend and adapt to conditions as
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: conditions change. So while the Billboard remains a meaningfully used
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: badge for artists and record companies to measure success, it
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: is an outcome they specifically strive for. The Billboard only
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: continues to do so as long as people are using
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: the Billboard to like, refer to for those things, And
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: so they must accurately and agnostically represent trends that are
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: actual like current trends, at least somewhat closely, you know.
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: And I do think it's worth acknowledging that they may
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: not actually be a clear representation of the popularity of
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: some songs in the zeitgeist, but they'll be pretty close.
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah. And as much as they might push
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: technology forward, technology also pushes the Billboard to adapt. So
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: while initially only singles were considered with the advent in
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: your total market dominance of streaming and a la carte
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: listing choices. They don't even call them singles anymore because
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: every song was just a song, whether or not it
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: belongs to an album. There is an increasing trend in
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: artist to release more songs or EPs instead of full
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: length albums, which is really interesting too.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: It's kind of an artifact of recording that we ever
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: had albums to begin with. Like initially, a lot of
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: artists did just write a song and then would just
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: play that song and that would became popular and or
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: you know, they would write a handful of songs and
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: they had maybe a rotation they'd go through when they're
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: performing live, way way way way way back before recording
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: was even that common of a thing, and so the
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: album was kind of and I've wanted to actually do
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: a whole episode about this at some point because I
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: think it's fascinating, is that, like just the fact of
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: recording technology gave us how long an album was, because
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: it was how much you could fit on there, like
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: how many tracks, how long the tracks were, Yeah, And
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: essentially like that dictated and then the fact that an
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: album existed at all, which gave rise to things like
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: concept albums and like interlocked narrative across albums, and that
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: we sort of with the technology shift that we're in now,
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: it's moved back towards the sort of just putting out
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: songs and it's and even bands who started in an
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: era where albums were the only way you really released
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: music has started to gently slide toward the I'm just
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: gonna put this song out. Yeah it's a thing. So
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: I even really intended to be a single. It's just
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: we wrote this song, we're proud of it. Here it
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: is everybody, and they just make it available, which was
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: kind of cool too, Like I don't know, it's a
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: it's just a weird time. And you know, you and
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: I I think grew up in the album in the
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: era of albums, or like at the tail end of
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: the era of albums where we were used to that,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: and we think often of listening to albums as a
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: complete experience. You know, the songs are intended sometimes to
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: be connected to each other. They will reprise themes at
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: different points of the album and reference like songs that happened.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: There's an order to listen to them because the transitions
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: flow from one song to the next, and that piece
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: of it's kind of going away in some capacity, not entirely,
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: like people still do this, but it does feel like
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: it's sort of slowly sliding away that which is okay,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: you know, it is what it is. But you know,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: I'm definitely gonna have a certain amount of nostalgia for
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: listening to the experience of the story is told by
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: an album.
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, most definitely, Like I like reading the liner notes, listening,
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: like listening to it from front the back, finding those
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: secret gems, like that's absolutely to me the best way
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: to do it. But it's different. It's my kids. My
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: kids do not listen to albums. They listen to singles.
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they listen to songs, yeah, just whatever the song is.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: And and the other thing too with albums that I
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: just waxing nostalgia here is like you get used to,
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: like what song happens after another song? Yes, and so
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: like this song cues up the next song, and so
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: you'll start as one song's ending, you start like singing
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: the next song to yourself, Yeah, in preparation of what's
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: coming up, and like those you know, there's just there's
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: something about that experience that I enjoy, you know, Yeah, Yeah,
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: it's wonderful. Yeah, it just it feels like these things
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: go together. I like the story that they tell, and
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: they do it without ads. Okay, we're back. We'll try
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: and rain in the nostalgia a little bit. But we
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: are here sort of unpacking the ways that the circumstances
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: of the market and the Billboard one hundred have shaped
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: the culture and the industry of music.
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so kind of going back to the initial mission,
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: Billboard was simply advertising, and then it shifted to more
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: reporting popular trends and has kind of like done something
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: there by reporting trends, it is also functioning as advertising,
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: so like it was advertising, then it was reporting, and
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: now it's back to reporting on trends. So now it's
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: advertising and artists, executives and record companies push products and marketing,
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: and they forced musical decisions and encourage homogeneity in an
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: effort to chart high. So like you see these pushes
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: for record companies to identify a single that makes the
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: most sense. It's going to be the best earworm, it's
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: going to be the thing that stands out, and artists
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: sometimes disagree with and that creates some tension with the
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: record companies. I mean, it's absolutely all like, what can
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: we do to make you the biggest star? We have
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: to market you a certain way. Billboard is one of
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: those ways.
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: So even though the chart is I guess in spirit
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: pushed and maybe marketed as representing people's musical preferences at
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: the time, it shapes those preferences nearly as much as
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: it just reports them. Right. It is because it is
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: showing this is what's popular a lot of times that
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: people then saying, oh, that's what I should then listen to.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: And this is likely a contributing factor to the dramatically
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: increased homogenization of music writing, the lack of creativity, and
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: the rapid embrace of AI music is at least in
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: part because the culture around charting well and what that
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: incentivizes in music writing. It is like catchyr repetitive earworms
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: that all sound about the same. Yeah, that's basically the point.
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's something they really think about here. Like,
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: it has long been implicitly understood that just because something
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: is popular, it doesn't mean it's good. Like I'm looking
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: at the top one hundred right now at this moment,
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: at the time of this recording, and I'm just kind
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: of like, yeah, yeah, Like it's like, yeah, it's a
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: lot of like to me. And you know, like you know,
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: Justin Bieber, Bruno, Mars Taylor, Swift Team and Paula you
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: just kind of go Luke Holmbs. You're just kind of
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: like all right, like I get it, Like they're accessible, right,
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: But just because popular doesn't mean it's good. And for
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: I think both of us, the Billboard Hot one hundred
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: is almost more of an indictment than an endorsement for
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: this reason. Like it's just kind of like, this is
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: the sugary stuff that most people like. It doesn't mean
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: that it's good or well written or any of those things.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: So yeah, exactly right. I'm like the kind of complex, nuance, thoughtful,
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: creative music that I love is not gonna make it
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: onto that list very often, if ever. Yeah, And it
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: is because it is complex, nuanced, creative, and musically complex.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: Like if it is simple, not creative, repetitive, sort of nonsensical, whatever,
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: then there's a high likelihood it's going to make it
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: eigeh onto that list.
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: Part of why AI music, I think is doing really well.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: It'd be like if there was a survey of popular
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: food and the whole point of the survey was to
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: try and show you what's the best food in the world,
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: and it only ever came back with nerds and eminems.
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: And it's because their sales are so high. Sure, sure,
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: those like taste kind of good, but you're not usually
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: going to a restaurant for their Nerds and Eminem's selection
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: speak for yourself, just because they're very popular based on
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: the sales, Right, it's like, yeah, we've got a lot
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: of good data to suggest that those are popular candy products,
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: but those aren't like food. I can't write on those things.
• 49:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's yeah, it's it's basically the idea that like
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: this is ultimately this is ultimately a way to quantify art.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly right, which I think cannot accurately represent what
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: is artist capable of doing for some people. Like it's possible,
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: and I would argue actually fairly likely that some of
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: the most popular songs that have ever existed have actually
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: very little emotional resonance with the audience. Yeah, like people
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: like them because they're catching this sound good. They don't
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: mean anything. You don't get you know, Frizon when you
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: listen to them. It's not like the songs we listen
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: to when we listen to it, we just feel the
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: passion filling our bodies and our souls.
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: Even bands we love like I love Blankwet too. But
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: sit there and listen to all the small things and
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: tell me that it means anything, you know.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, And they've got some great songs that like
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: really do like they really hit you and they land beautifully.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I think, you know, I would guess there's
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: at least a handful of not a few of those
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: songs that're like nobody ever actually connected with in any
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: emotional way that Scott popular because they were catchy and like,
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: oh I like this song. It makes me bop my
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: head and like that was as deep as that song went. Yeah,
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: So anyway, I just I felt like I wanted to
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: sort of think about again analyzing this from the perspective
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: of what circumstances the Billboard creates and represents, and the
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: fact that it does play a dual role here. It
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: both is meant to show what is popular but also
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: drives what is popular, and like it will continue to
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: do that thing, And I do think like it'll it'll
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: keep adapting and it probably will stay around for a
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: while because of that, Like it has already stood the
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: test of time much much better than I think other
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: forms of entertainment have managed to do or like things
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: adjacent to entertainment. Really yeah, but yeah, so I think
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: it is an interesting way to think about it, and
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: just that it's it's worth unpacking a little bit some
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: of the contingencies and circumstances around it.
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. I agree, it's a taste maker, but
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: it's only a taste maker because it's under so many contingities,
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: and it creates so many contingities, and it shapes so
• 51:59
  Speaker 2: many industries around that like, and those industries shape our
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: individual behavior as a result. Right, So like, it's yeah,
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: it's just a series of medic contingencies all the way down.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: Imagine there was no money whatsoever in music and the
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: only thing that happened is that people made stuff that
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: they liked, and people listened to stuff that they liked,
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: and that chart represented what was actually the most preferred
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: and listened to by people. I gotta believe this would
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: be a pretty different looking chart, right, I really do.
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: If money was not involved, this would have shaped up
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: a very very different list and and way that people
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: engage with that list. So yeah, it ends up coming
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: down to marketing, like so many things. Well, that does
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: feel like a really good transition to an ad. But
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: let's let's actually get into our our sort of interesting tidbits,
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: take home points, tid points.
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there are good points.
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and find a segue somewhere and yeah.
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: We'll get We'll get there at some point. So the
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: word pop and when we talk about pop music and
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: pop culture and all that, it comes from the term
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: popular music from these lists, including Billboard Hot one hundred. However,
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: it has since become associated with a genre onto itself,
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: pop music, primarily representing simple, easily consumable songs, primarily targeted
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: at younger or arguably musically ignorant audiences. And to be fair, like,
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: there are some pop songs that'll catch you and you're
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: just like, I can't help but sing it. It's very catchy,
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: Like there's there's something really valuable about understanding the simplicity
• 53:29
  Speaker 2: of good melody and where that comes from. But like,
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: for the most part, it's it's not substantive.
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll push back on good melody and say easily
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: consumable melody.
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: Sure, sure, it's.
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: It's it's stuff that it's it's simple and therefore easy
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: to latch onto. And there are things that are not
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: simple that when you latch onto them, you still can
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: still can latch onto. And I think that I like
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: to make it I've made this point before and I'll
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: make it again, which is Bohemian Rhapsody, as you were saying,
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: is a really good example of this. The melody in
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: that song is weird. The music in that song is
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: very weird. I feel like if that song were to
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: debut today, it would never make it to people's ears
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: because despite the fact that it is an awesome, awesome
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: song it is, it does not fit the mold at
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: all of what popular music is, and people are not
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: used to listening to songs like that except for the
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: fact that it did exist and that band fought hard
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: to make sure that it existed in the world in
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: a relatively unaltered state. And so like that song has bizarre,
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: strange melodies that do not fit the mold of the
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: kinds of like intervals and intonations and chords and musical
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: shifts that were used to hearing in our music. And
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: so I think that you can I guess where I'm
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: going with that is just that you can latch onto strange,
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: complex melodies and then really learn to love them. But
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: they take a minute to get used to, and record
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: companies ain't got a minute despair. They're like, no, we've
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: figured out these four These four notes are the notes
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: you use to write a melody, and you just change
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: the order of them, sometimes hold one of them longer
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: than another, and you'll have an infinite combination of different
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: melodies to release. And therefore, like we can just keep
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: essentially recycling that until the end of time.
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: By the way, those four chords are hit or missed
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: by Newfound Glory, Like that's those those chords. It's which
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: is also glistener in by Bush, which is also when
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: I Come Around by Green Day, which is also it's
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: the same for those four chords. You'll hear it everywhere now.
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's also that one Journey song that's really like
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: everybody knows, yes.
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's it's the Journey song. Like there's a
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: really great YouTube video of a guy going like using
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: the same chords and playing it over and over and
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: over again and just singing different songs over it, and
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: you're like, yep, sure.
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: Yep, yep, that is that is the case, And you
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: probably will hear the same ads play over and over
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: in this ad role. That's why they call it a roll,
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: you know, it is just yeah, of course cycles background.
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: Huh Okay, anyway, we're back. We're still on our interesting
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: tit points. If you've ever heard this term number one
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: with a bullet, this phrase has enjoyed widespread use in
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: contemporary vernacular, although I had not actually heard this outside
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: of fall Up Boy. I think that's the only time
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: that I ever heard that. Have you heard this before,
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: number one with a bullet?
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I've heard it a few times. Yeah, but
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: it's like it's always you sporadically and like it shows
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: up and you're like, that just feels like it's outdated.
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: Well it's it's kind of its own thing. But where
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: it comes from is on the early paper prints of
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: billboard charts, and they probably do a digital version of
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: this now. They would circle the bullet next to the
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: tracks when those tracks were gaining in popularity, and so
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: essentially there could be a bunch of tracks that had
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: a bullet that which was the circle around the bullet,
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: and so a number one with a bullet would refer
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: to a song that has reached number one but is
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: still gaining in popularity and would likely maintain its top
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: spot for a while. So that's sure where that term
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: comes from. But it has been used, I think, to
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: just talk about something as being very popular or very
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: good in some way so interesting.
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: It's just such a weird thing to like how that
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: turns like it's cultural selection at play right where you go, Like,
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: we've just always said that, and it's like not even
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: realizing where it comes from. That's so fascinating. Yeah, Now,
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: a bullet didn't necessarily predict how well a song would
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: actually do. A song without a bullet could suddenly gain
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: a popularity in a song with a bullet could suddenly
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: lose popularity. Lots of reasons why, but in general, a
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: bullet was indicative of a song gaining in popularity, possibly
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: to the point of obtaining a number one position.
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So anyway, that's the history of number one with
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: a bullet. I thought that was just a thing to
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: throw in at the end for those people who are interested.
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: Mariah Carey is nineteen ninety four. All I Want for
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: Christmas is you continues to hold the record for well, actually,
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: it achieved this record a few years ago and has
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: continued to hold it for the most weeks at the
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: number one spot on the Hot one hundred with now
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: as of January twenty twenty six, twenty two weeks, not consecutively,
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: as mostly in the season that it plays. But there
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: was almost like a campaign at some point to revitalize
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: this several years ago because a song came out forever
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: ago and did get really popular, but then people just
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: keep playing that as like their main Christmas tune, and
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: so Mariah Carey just keeps coming back into the number
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: one Hot one hundred slot during the holiday season with
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: that song, and so that one now currently holds the record.
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: The record before that was sixteen weeks with the Boys
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: to Men's song I Forget Which One, but that has
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: also been broken by Country Road by Little nas X
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: that spent nineteen weeks and the number one spot in
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. And then the longest song in terms of
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: how long the song actually is at number one was
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: Taylor Swift's ten minute version of All Too Well. This,
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: this super super long song managed to not only make
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: it to number one, but it was the longest song
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: ever to do so.
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, super interesting.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's kind of cool. But those are just
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: some things to know about the Billboard one hundred.
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: Hot one beautiful hot hot one hundred.
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: Toasty warm one hundred. All right, I think that gets
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: us to the end of our discussion as I as
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: I warned at the beginning, this would be a short one,
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: which meant it would be a long one. So here
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: we are.
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's how it goes.
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: We do have some things to recommend for you, and
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: I think we did an transition very recently, so we'll
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: just go ahead and jump right into those. Before I
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: do that, though, so we won't jump into those, I'll
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: do credits. Thank you all for listening. I appreciate you
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: all being here. I would like to say that if
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: you would like to support us, you can leave us
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: a rating and a review. Wherever you're listening to this.
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: Give it that nice five star rating and if you
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: have something nice to say a review, and if you don't,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: then just don't. You don't need to hurt us just
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: because you don't like us, but you can support us
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: by the way of leaving us a nice review. You
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: can also tell a friend and you can join us
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: on Patreon. If you do, then there are sort of
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: bonus goodies over there ad free content early episodes that
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: sort of thing, and I will read your name in
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: the list of our supporters at the end of our
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: full length discussion, So giant. Thank you too, Mike m Megan,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: Mike T, Justin, Kim Brad, Stephanie, Brian, Ashley Kerr and
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: Charlie for all of your wonderful, generous help and helping
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: us continue to be a podcast.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: You're the best.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: Also, thank you to my team of people without whom
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: I could not make this podcast writing and fact checking
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: from Shane and myself. Thank you for recording with me today.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: Shane, thank you for having me every time.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: Our social media coordinator is Emma Wilson, and our person
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: who does all of the excellent audio in nests to
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: make this sound like a Billboard Hot one hundred podcast
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: is justin thank you for your executive producing powers.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: Magusa Tuvida.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: All right, I think that's what we have to say
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: about that before we get through recommendations. Is there anything
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: you would like?
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: Oh?
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: I forgot one thing, which is that if you'd like
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: to tell us your thoughts about the Billboard Hot one
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: hundred or your favorite songs or anything related to this topic,
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: you can email us directly by reaching us at info
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: at wwdwwdpodcast dot com, or on the social media platforms.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you, So tell us your thoughts,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: correct us on something that we got wrong, and we
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: might read those as listener mail at the end of
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: a discussion. So yeah, feel free to reach out to us. Okay, now,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: is there anything I forgot you'd like to add before
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: we give our recommendations for this episode?
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: No, I think I'm good recommendations.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: I'm recommending a TV show. This is a very silly,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: mockumentary style TV show called The Fall and Rise of
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: Reggie Dinkins. I think this is on Peacock, NBC something
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: like that. This is just a very very funny show.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: So the sort of premise here is that Tracy Morgan
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: plays Reggie Dinkins, and he's sort of a pro football
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: player who was kicked out of the sport for insider
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: training and gambling, and he's kind of trying to win
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: back his name by hiring a documentarian played by Daniel Radcliffe. Men,
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: so you have, yeah, Tracy Morgan, Daniel Radcliffe, Bobby moynihan,
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: Erica Alexander, and Jalen Hall are the primary sort of
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: cast people in this and it's just it's very, very
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: funny and very silly, really good delivery of jokes. Daniel
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: Radcliffe has this wonderfully at times completely unhinged performance that's
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: just so much fun. He is just a delight. But
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: everybody in here is really at the top of their
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: game and it's it's very funny. So I do recommend
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: the TV show. I'm sure they're getting a second season.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: But yeah, this is I believe. I know it's streaming
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: on Peacock. I think it's like a Peacock original. Yeah,
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: but there might be a through other platforms as well.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: But that's it. Fall and Rise of Regie Dinkins.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: I hear it's great. So I've got it on my
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: list and we've been talking about watching it, but we
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: haven't watched it yet.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: So yeah, it's fun. It's enjoyable, all right.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: So I'm going to recommend a book. I will share
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: this caveat that one. I've not finished this book at
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: the time of this recording, at the time that we
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: are recording too, by the time it's released, I will
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: have probably finished it, sure, And that is a book
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: called Project tail Mary, which we have talked about on
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: the show, and it is just such a delight. Now.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: I just I love the characters. I relate to them
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: as a dorky scientist, like it's just a lot of fun.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: And I don't want to spoil it too much, but basically,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: like we've said on the show, like the world is
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: in peril, there is a thing happening to our son
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: and community is trying to figure it out. And the
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: primary antagonist, Ryland Grace, it's just a biology teacher who
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: is just a science nerd who is suddenly thrust into
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: this like world saving project, and it's it's just a
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: lot of fun to see him kind of navigate that
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: and to and like all the science behind it. It's
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: Andy Weir so if you like the Martian and air
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: artimists and all that. But I just love it so
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: much and I'll probably talk about it again. I'll probably
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: recommend it again once I finish it.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: Yes, this is I've said on the show. Yeah, this
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: is my favorite book. And that is saying something because
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: I've read a lot of books. Not as much as Shane,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: but I've read a lot of books, and I just
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: love this And even people I know who are like
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: I don't like sci fi. They've read this and they're like,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: this is the best book ever. So if you like anything,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: you will like this book because it is so so good.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: And the movie is also fantastic, and I gushed about
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: that a while ago, so I'm glad you're enjoying it.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: It's such a good recommend and just a wonderful book
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: that everybody should read because it's it represents like the
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: best of humanity.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really just so wonderful.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: All right. That is the Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins,
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: the TV show, and the book Project Hail Mary by
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: Andy Weir, now also a major motion picture starring Ryan Gosling.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: I think that is all we have to say about
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: all of that. Is there anything that I missed you
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: liked at before we say goodbyes?
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: Nope?
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: Perfect? All right, Thank you everyone for listening. This is
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: Abraham and it's Shane. We're out.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: Bye. You've been listening to Why We Do What We Do.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: You can learn more about this and other episodes by
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: going to WWD WWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening,
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: and we hope you have an awesome day.