Tuesday, July 05, 2005

number one?

What exactly does it mean to have the "Number One" (or, for that matter, number 100) song in this day and age?

I know that way back when, it was literally based on the number of 7" 45rpm records sold each week. While this was already somewhat bogus because I think even in the 70's there were a lot of people who only bought LPs, at least it was based in reality in some way.

But WTF do they count now? CD singles? Does anybody actually buy those? Do they count legal downloads? How about illegal downloads?

Or is it just completely bogus now, like the New York Times "best seller" book list?

(Inspired by watching the The Filth and the Fury over the weekend)


Dorman and I worked with a music marketing firm in 2003, and, geeks that we are, asked these questsions.

Before SoundScan -- which actually counts albums at point of purchase -- the charts in Billboard were, essentially, fiction. Any chart geek or Pink Floyd fan knows when the fake numbers went away and the real ones came in, since it was at that point that "Dark Side of the Moon" dropped off the charts after some huge number of years.

Yes, back in the vinyl days, they counted 45s. Yes, they count CD singles now, too, but the volume is irrelevant. The only charts that really matter are album sales (pop. country, etc.). Single popularity is, I believe, tracked by radio playlists in major markets, and is relatively insulated from actual public approval, if I recall correctly.

I presume single downloads are counted, but probably aren't factored into "#1 record" calculations because it's such a small chunk of the whole. Album downloads are still unusual, so they probably don't enter into it at all -- and, RIAA being who they are, I'd lay dollars to donuts that nonphysical sales are simply not counted in gold/plat/diamond designations yet.

As for illegal downloads, nobody likes to talk about it, but there is a company called "Big Champagne" that works to track what's popular on the darknets, and then feeds that back to labels to influence airplay, marketing dollars, etc. There was a big story on 'em in Wired a could years ago; oddly enough, I know one of the principals from when he lived here (mutual friends).

Thanks for the answer... which basically boils down to "yes, the singles chart is BS".

The fact that airplay is now the major determining factor of chart position means that nothing like what the Pistols accomplished (having the number one single during a period when they were actually banned from the air) can ever happen again. Which is really what got me wondering about this.