With ongoing debates about how much money artists make from streaming, industry publication Billboard is hoping to help them understand more.
Tag: Billboard
Billboard launches a chart tracking TikTok’s most popular songs
The question of how much ‘official’ charts really matter to music listeners nowadays remains a sparky debate.
NFTs roundup: OpenSea, Warner Chappell, Probably a Label…
These are testing times for the crypto world, but there is still plenty of activity going on around NFTs, music and web3 technologies.
Don’t Mint Twice, It’s Alright: Bob Dylan NFTs are coming
The times, they most certainly are a-changing’. Bob Dylan and Miles Davis will soon become the latest musicians to be the focus of non-fungible drops.
Billboard and MRC Data team up for new international charts
We tend to think of Billboard’s music charts predominantly in the context of the US industry, but the publication has long been casting its ranking-feelers globally too.
Billboard and Logitech launch chart ranking music influencers
Billboard has teamed up with tech firm Logitech to create a chart that quantifies “creators who are driving music consumption through content creation”
Taylor Swift tops Billboard’s 2020 estimated earnings chart
Billboard has published its latest ‘Money Makers’ rankings estimating the earnings in the US for the upper echelon of musicians last year. The rankings factor in guesses at the stars’ income from […]
Party like it’s, er, 2010 with Billboard’s new Twitter chart
“Billboard and Twitter have partnered on a first-of-its-kind Billboard chart that will showcase the most talked-about songs on the social media platform,” announced Billboard yesterday. And strictly speaking, that’s true: it’s […]
Billboard and MRC launch two new global music charts
We’re used to reporting on the ins and outs in Billboard’s US music charts, but now the publication and data partner MRC are turning their attention to global rankings.
They’ve launched two new charts: the ‘Billboard Global 200’ and the ‘Billboard Global Excl. US’, which will collect data from more than 200 territories on “official-only streams on both subscription and ad-supported tiers of leading digital platforms, and downloads from key online music retailers”.
Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s ‘WAP’ tops the first Global 200 rankings, while Maluma’s ‘Hawái’ is number one on the chart that excludes the US.
Billboard bars merch / ticket bundles from chart calculations
Billboard is changing its chart rules in the US to no longer count sales of albums bundled with merchandise or concert tickets.
It hasn’t yet said when the change will kick in, but when it does “all albums bundled with either merchandise or concert tickets must be promoted as an add-on to those purchases in order to be counted on the charts”.
Billboard said it thinks the change will ensure the charts “more accurately reflect the conscious purchasing decisions of consumers and level the playing field for all artists”.
There’s plenty of backstory here. In August 2018, Nicki Minaj criticised the charts after losing out to Travis Scott in a bundles-fuelled race for number one in Billboard’s albums chart (“What we’re not gonna do is have this f***ing autotune man come up in here selling f***ing sweaters and telling y’all he sold half a million f***ing albums, ’cause he didn’t!” was her memorable quote, although her album had also been bundled, with tickets rather than merch.
Billboard defends charts after Tekashi 6ix9ine allegations
If official music charts don’t matter any more, why do artists get so furious when they feel they’ve been deprived of a number one by a rival’s nefarious marketing tactics? 2018’s […]
Bandsintown claims fan interest in livestreams will endure
Among the many unknowns around this Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on the music industry: will the current boom in livestreams ebb away quickly once live concerts return? According to a survey […]