The Smiley Smile Message Board

http://www.billboard.com/charts/billboard-200

Hot damn!

I'm disappointed. We should have gotten him into the Top 20, at least.

I bought three copies.

Initial reports had NPP at #16. 

Looking at the 27 albums above Brian shows there's no accounting for taste. 

But, a new solo album from Brian in the top 30 is pretty good. 

Of note: Billboard's Hot 200 chart no longer directly reflects sales.

As I posted in the other thread, Billboard overhauled how their album chart was compiled about five months ago.

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/6320099/billboard-200-makeover-streams-digital-tracks

In other words, streaming is now a giant part of how they calculate where the album places. If sales alone are taken into account, BW places in the top 20. But because the album wasn't streamed as much as some others, it takes a hit.

Compare these two charts:

http://hitsdailydouble.com/building_album_chart

and

http://hitsdailydouble.com/sales_plus_streaming

Only one spot different from Billboard in the second, so I'd assume the first would stand as well -- if we were talking about physical and digital copies sold.

This is understandable in a way, because album sales have cratered, but people are still listening. So it behooves a trade journal to figure out how to reflect how people are actually consuming the product. But it likely hurts the placements of older artists.

Billboard came up with a great way to reward mediocrity. 

I guess it doesn't make much sense to measure album sales by......album sales.   

If it's based on sales alone, Brian comes in at #14.

http://www.billboard.com/charts/top-album-sales

Yeah no kidding.  That is so jacked up.

The numbers they came up with are so arbitrary, too.  So if I listen to the same song 1500 times, I can tell people I listened to the whole album?  Nonsense. 

I know I could be not lazy and google and look this up with more time, but does anyone know what formula is used to factor in streaming? I understand counting paid digital downloads. But it would seem to far more difficult to quantify how much someone streaming a song means either in terms of their own musical interests or how much revenue that generated.

Does Billboard factor in Netflix streams of movies on their video charts? I may click on a Netflix documentary on the migration patterns of lobsters, but I’m never going to actually pay for that on an individual basis.

I know they quite some time ago started factoring radio airplay into the singles charts (which is why old fogey artists have continued to sometimes do well on the album charts but rarely get “hit singles”).

Is there some sort of payola going on between Spotify/Pandora/iTunes radio, etc. and Billboard?

It's all described in the Billboard article I linked to.

Why didn't someone tell me streaming is what mattered? I would have streamed the living **** out of the album....if I knew how to do that....and where to do that. And who cares about streaming anyway? You aren't committing to the album by simply sampling it on the internet. What next? I unfortunately walk past a car with a "Beyonce" song blasting out of it and billboard counts that? It's a joke.

I guess looking at that "album sales" chart things look a little rosier.

Thanks for keeping us informed about how the ratings are done, for now anyway.  So we really can't compare how it charts to past albums, it appears, since streaming has become such a prevalent factor and Brian/BBs tend to have a large older following.  Where's the goal post?  We need to ask Wirestone, obviously...

The entire music industry as a whole is still trying to catch up with developments that happened over a decade ago via online plays, streaming, etc. This includes not only how airplay or what used to be called "needle-drops" are tallied, but also how the songwriters, performers, and publishers get a fair accounting of those plays and how they money gets distributed to them.

Picture the biggest, most tangled-up ball of yarn you can  imagine, and then try to unravel it. That's how digital/internet music is in relation to the old established ways like record labels, charts/payments, etc. It's a mess.

If an album comes in at #1 or #76, I'm pretty confident in saying those numbers aren't factoring in at least half of the ways music gets to listeners as of 2015. It would be like a new car for model year 2016 being unveiled next week with a crank starter in the front, like the old Model T Ford. So much of it anachronistic.


Anyway, it's good to see Brian coming in top-30!  ;D

The whole digital music puzzle is why artists like Brian and The Beach Boys have turned to the expensive VIP deals to make up for revenue that used to be generated by album sales. 

People hated them for it at the time, but Metallica was onto something in 1999 when they took Napster to court. 

Nah, still hate 'em for it.

I hate them for the way they did it, by attacking the fans rather than the company itself. 

Duh! Thanks. Interesting formulas for individual digital track sales (apparently if ten people each just buy “The Right Time”, Brian gets one more “album sale”) and on-demand streaming. So it apparently doesn’t include free (or I guess even paid) radio-style services like Pandora.

Subscriptions on-demand servies are awfully hard to quantify. A lot of people will watch a documentary on lobsters on Netflix, but will never buy a physical or download version of it. Free (even though a cheap paid subscription) is so different from paying *anything*, I’m not even sure 1,500 streams matches one purchase based on how I view the public’s attitude towards what they’ll pay directly for. People who pay $8 or $10 per month for Netflix seem to still feel they’re essentially watching stuff for free.

I never take the time to look at charts.  Do they use youtube views, as well?  That's where I do most of my streaming.  If I like an artist, I buy the product.  Real support.  With this set-up, money doesn't talk.

Boy.  I guess I really do live in the past.  Only know a few of the artists in the Top 50.  Top 200 - other than No Pier Pressure, don't own too many.  Fleetwood Mac, Michael Jackson, Eagles, Pink Floyd (up from last week!)? - where's The Beach Boys?  Do they jump back in these charts in the Summer?  I buy stuff all the time, none of that's here.  Hope Sam's appearance on Letterman last night helps to get him notice.

I'm going back to reissue land now.  Thanks for the info Wirestone.

And Thanks anders, Welcome to the Board.

I’m not sure how it works now, but I know as recently as a few years ago, the rules were that an album could only stay on the “Top 200” album chart for two years. After that, it moves to the “Catalog” chart. This was a change from the past. This was/is why you don’t see instances like the olden days of a Pink Floyd album staying on the album chart for a decade or whatever it was.

So BB stuff like “Sounds of Summer” or “Endless Summer” or “Pet Sounds” will usually only re-appear on the “catalog” chart.