{"id":11850,"date":"2024-08-01T21:04:34","date_gmt":"2024-08-01T21:04:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/?p=11850"},"modified":"2024-08-01T21:04:34","modified_gmt":"2024-08-01T21:04:34","slug":"the-making-of-a-1-song","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/2024\/08\/01\/the-making-of-a-1-song\/","title":{"rendered":"The Making of a #1 Song"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n Vincent M. Carter, <\/span>“From chart-topper to gold record: The effects of Billboard chart popularity on RIAA gold or platinum certification of #1 R&B\/Hip-Hop singles in the Pre-SoundScan and SoundScan eras, 1977\u20132008,” Poetics<\/em>,<\/a><\/span> 2024<\/span><\/div>\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A vinyl record store. Image by Darya Sannikova<\/a> under Pexels<\/a> license.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can you tell if a song is popular?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two important measures of musical success in the US are Billboard<\/em> magazine\u2019s charts<\/a>, which compare the current popularity of songs and albums, and the Recording Industry Association of America\u2019s certification program<\/a>, which aims to measure total sales. The RIAA awards the famous gold and platinum records.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Changes in technology often change these calculations. In a new article, Vincent Carter of Emory University<\/a> showed how one change helped shape the development of R&B and hip-hop music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before the 1990s, Billboard<\/em> magazine measured record sales by calling up record stores and asking for their sales numbers. This changed with SoundScan, which automatically recorded data using point-of-sale scanners. This is often praised<\/a> for making charts more accurate. However, especially in the early days, not all stores had scanner technology. This was especially true of stores that served predominantly Black customers, the core audience for hip-hop and R&B music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carter argues that this technological disparity affected which R&B and hip-hop songs charted. To test this idea, he used data from two sources: Billboard<\/em>\u2019s charts, and the RIAA\u2019s certification program. The Billboard<\/em> charts are a relative measure of a song\u2019s popularity at a specific time, either overall or in a specific category (in this case, R&B\/Hip-Hop). The RIAA certification program is an absolute measure of how successful a song has been over time. Therefore, Carter used certification as a measure of a song\u2019s success over time, while the charts are more short-term. In this study, Billboard<\/em>\u2019s Pop chart was used to measure a song\u2019s mainstream popularity, while the R&B\/Hip-Hop chart measured a song\u2019s genre-specific popularity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>Before SoundScan, #1 songs that stayed for a longer <\/em>time on the R&B\/Hip-Hop chart and the more general \u201cPop\u201d chart were more likely to be certified. After SoundScan, however, this relationship changed. Under the new system, songs that went to #1 on the R&B\/Hip-Hop chart but stayed for a shorter<\/em> period of time were more likely to be certified.but stayed for a shorter<\/em> period of time were more likely to be certified.<\/span> However, certified songs were still more likely to spend longer on the Pop chart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this change, stores that served Black African-American customers had less impact on the sales numbers, though they still drove genre-specific chart performance. The overall influence of Black consumers on the chart therefore declined thanks to SoundScan\u2019s technological disparity. The R&B\/Hip-Hop charts were still measuring a song\u2019s performance on R&B and hip-hop radio, better capturing Black audiences’ taste. Over time, genre-specific chart performance became \u201cdecoupled\u201d or split off from the sales numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carter argues that this disempowered Black audiences, affecting which artists became successful and which types of music were made.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vincent M. Carter, “From chart-topper to gold record: The effects of Billboard chart popularity on RIAA gold or platinum certification of #1 R&B\/Hip-Hop singles in the Pre-SoundScan and SoundScan eras, 1977\u20132008,” Poetics, 2024 A vinyl record store. Image by Darya Sannikova under Pexels license. How can you tell if a song is popular? Two important […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2217,"featured_media":11851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[138740,138714,138728,138736,138730,138726,138723,138734,138724,138738,138725,138737,138722,138741,138731,138715,138718,138743,138735,138721,138739,138720,138742,138716,138732,138719,138733,138717,138729,138727],"class_list":["post-11850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-audience-influence","tag-billboard-charts","tag-black-consumers","tag-chart-accuracy","tag-chart-performance","tag-emory-university-study","tag-genre-specific-popularity","tag-gold-records","tag-hip-hop-music-2","tag-historical-music-trends","tag-mainstream-popularity","tag-music-certification","tag-music-charts","tag-music-evolution","tag-music-industry","tag-music-popularity","tag-music-sales","tag-music-success","tag-platinum-records","tag-point-of-sale-scanners","tag-pop-chart","tag-rb-music","tag-rb-hip-hop-chart","tag-record-sales","tag-record-stores","tag-riaa-certification","tag-sales-data","tag-soundscan-technology","tag-technological-disparity","tag-vincent-carter"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/files\/2024\/08\/pexels-dariabuntaria-2121671-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2217"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11850"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11856,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11850\/revisions\/11856"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/discoveries\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}