The death of a giant

Sometimes an era ends not with a bang, but a whimper. Since 1936, Billboard has been the source of truth for anyone looking to rank the success of music, but that leadership has been slowly eroding.

The causes are simple enough — physical sales are down, radio has lost its primacy, and streaming has become the go-to standard for most music listeners. It makes sense that streaming indices like YouTube Music Charts, with near-realtime stats, will replace the older, slower Billboard Top 100.

That said, how this will affect the music industry is yet to be seen. Already, artists have changed the structure and play-length of their songs to better fit with streaming services delivery and tracking algorithms — now they’re remixing and reissuing their work to ramp up views and bring in ad revenue.

Lil Nas X, prophet of the online generation

When Lil Nas X crashed onto the global music scene with Old Town Road, it wasn’t a fluke. He engineered a viral hit, and when it started to build momentum he released remixes to keep his views up and his arc to the top strong. Now, he’s taking this pattern to its logical extreme — or perhaps trolling us — by announcing that he will be releasing an impressive 25 remixes of his latest track, Panini.

That’s a lot of remixes. But then again, if an artist wants success, they need to do what’s necessary. Sometimes that means ridiculous numbers of remixes. Sometimes that means gaming the system — which some call growth hacking or promotion, and others call unethical behaviour.

The issue of gaming the system came to a head at YouTube, which announced on September 13 that they were changing how the 24-hour rankings were calculated. Specifically, they stopped counting all views that were the product of active promotion or having the video placed as an ad itself. Now, to look at that a little more deeply, we see two very different approaches to music promotion — one relatively conventional, one almost nefarious.

Views down the Tube

Buying ads to promote music is nothing new — it predates the recording of music by centuries. Perhaps it’s a little less ethical because online ads can drive views directly, with just a click — but it is fundamentally advertising and no less ethical than any other form of advertising. What is really interesting as a form of artificial view boosting is the practice of buying adspace for the video itself — meaning that ad placement in the YouTube playlist stream counts as a view, effectively allowing labels to buy views for their artists.

This is an interesting echo of the payola scandals of the 50s & 60s, when labels paid DJs to preferentially play certain tracks, increasing exposure and driving sales by ensuring the songs were a “hit”. Now, it can be done digitally through clickfarms and bot armies — software solutions aimed at emulating organic views.

Nominally, the Youtube’s decision to change the way views are calculated is related to the Indian singer Badshah, who broke the viewers’ record by using paid ads that played his song as an ad in the playlist.

“When releasing a new single, major record labels will buy an advertisement on YouTube that places their music video in between other clips. If viewers watch the ad for more than few seconds, YouTube counts that as a view, boosting the overall total. Blackpink and Swift, among others, have done it. Badshah just took it a step further, people familiar with the matter say.” (Bloomberg)

Youtube’s decision to change the formula is causing a great deal of discussion, with some commentators criticising it as racist, while others point to India’s reputation for hosting low-cost click farms and and SEO manipulation companies. Regardless of the rationale, the decision is unsettling previous award winners as it has undermined the legitimacy of their awards — which is fair enough, as YouTube failed to meet basic rigor for data collection. Doubt notwithstanding, the video-sharing platform has declared that this will not affect existing 24-hour record debut holders.

Transparency, accountability, and money

The irony of YouTube’s decision is that they are moving closer to the standards set by Nielsen and Billboard, the leaders of the previous generation of ratings organisations — even as they move to supplant them. It reinforces that simple fact that the more financially relevant data collection becomes, the more diligent and rigorous its collection must be.

That’s something we understand at Utopia Music. We’ve spent the past two years building a global music monitoring service underpinned with immutable blockchain technology to ensure that whenever music is played, wherever it’s played, the rights-holders receive the payment they’re due in a timely and transparent manner. It’s only fair, after all — one play should always equal one pay.

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