MUSICAL MUSINGS
September 7, 2004
IS THE SINGLES MARKET COMING BACK?
A little over a year ago, Billboard debuted its Hot Digital Tracks chart. These were the top ten songs on that chart, dated July 12, 2003. In parentheses, I've noted the songs' corresponding positions on the Hot 100 that week:
1. Beyoncé - Crazy in Love (#1)
2. Kelly Clarkson - Miss Independent (#12)
3. Coldplay - Clocks (--)
4. matchbox twenty - Unwell (#7)
5. Clay Aiken - This Is the Night (#3)
6. Michelle Branch - Are You Happy Now? (#28)
7. R. Kelly - Ignition [Remix] (#21)
8. Jewel - Intuition (#26)
9. Train - Calling All Angels (#43)
10. Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time (--)
Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time"? Yes, that's right ... it seems that one of the online vendors was doing a promotion; the next week, Cyndi was nowhere to be found. In other words, the Digital Tracks chart was a bit volatile in its earliest days.
All the other songs could be classified as "current hits" in one format or another. The Clay Aiken song was the #1 seller on the "traditional" singles chart, and seven others made the Top 20 of the Hot 100 chart. Coldplay's "Clocks" had peaked at #29 on the Hot 100 and had already dropped off that chart. But apparently a lot of Coldplay fans were early onto the digital bandwagon; "The Scientist," a Coldplay song that missed the Hot 100 entirely, was ranked at #24 on that first Digital Tracks chart.
When I first saw this chart, my next question was, "Which songs at the top of the Hot 100 aren't being legally downloaded?" Well, the song at #2 that week, "Magic Stick" by Lil' Kim, was nowhere to be found on the Digital Tracks chart. In fact, hip hop accounted for a good number of those missing songs, even though these songs were available for online sale at the time. This leads me to believe a number of big hits were being primarily being acquired illegally by younger music fans.
Two months later, the RIAA cracked down on illegal downloading by suing hundreds of file-swappers, including a 12-year-old girl whose story was well publicized. Sales of digital singles grew quickly, though it's impossible to gauge how much of that growth was due to the lawsuits and how much was inevitable as the technology and word-of-mouth spread.
As I began collecting the Hot Digital Tracks charts in a ring binder, I saw more and more Cyndi Lauper-type anomalies. When Barry White died, two of his biggest hits from the '70s made the chart for one week. Avril Lavigne, Ben Folds, Neil Young, Seal, and others capitalized on the visibility made available to them on iTunes and other download sites; each of them managed to score multiple debuts on the chart in a given week. In fact, on the August 9 chart, Ben Folds debuted songs at #1, #2, #3, #5, and #6, and not one of these songs received significant radio play! It was clear that only a small number of fans was downloading digital singles at this point.
Here's a list of the songs that have spent time at #1 on the Hot Digital Tracks chart since its inception:
Beyoncé - Crazy in Love (7 weeks, non-consecutive)
Ben Folds - In Between Days (1 week)
Moby - Love of Strings (1 week)
John Mayer - Bigger than My Body (2 weeks)
Black Eyed Peas - Where Is the Love? (1 week)
Johnny Cash - Hurt (1 week, the week he died)
Sarah McLachlan - Fallen (1 week)
OutKast - Hey Ya! (19 weeks, non-consecutive ... the best-selling digital single
so far)
Britney Spears - Toxic (1 week)
Green Day - I Fought the Law (1 week)
Maroon5 - This Love (4 weeks)
D12 - My Band (3 weeks)
Hoobastank - The Reason (10 weeks)
Usher - Yeah! (4 weeks)
Ashlee Simpson - Pieces of Me (1 week)
Maroon5 - She Will Be Loved (5 weeks so far)
Do you see what I see? As the chart has aged, the chart-toppers are leaning more and more toward songs that have received significant radio airplay. In 2004 so far, Green Day's "I Fought the Law" is the only #1 digital single not to have made the top 10 of the Hot 100. Furthermore, this cover of the Bobby Fuller classic may have spelled out the fate of illegal file-swappers; its ironic title was stressed by its use in a commercial offering free, legal downloads to Coke buyers.
More and more people are paying for digital singles. "She Will Be Loved," the chart's current #1, moved over 15,000 downloads this week, compared with only 4400 copies sold for Fantasia's "I Believe," the top-selling physical single. I don't have exact numbers on this, but it seems to me that in the past year, the digital singles market and the physical singles market have swapped situations.
Neither situation is particularly cushy when you compare them to how well physical singles used to do. In 1993, if memory serves, Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" was selling over a million copies a week! Will digital singles eventually reach that point? I think it's inevitable. The CD market is slumping, and many people accuse the record labels of an unwillingness to develop artists, saying they prefer to launch a big hit radio single and then release an album of filler. At least now, most of the labels are making those radio singles available for sale individually.
But the labels still choose the release timetable. The clear champion of the Hot 100 this year, "Yeah!" by Usher, was not made available for sale online until three months after its airplay had peaked; if it had come out sooner, it might have rivaled "Hey Ya!" for total online sales. Clearly, some labels are still playing profit-optimizing games with single availability, knowing that many fans who only wanted the single will be forced to plop down much more money for the entire album.
Now, the current top 10 of the Hot Digital Tracks chart; again, I've noted each song's position on the Hot 100 in parentheses:
1. Maroon5 - She Will Be Loved (#9)
2. Black Eyed Peas - Let's Get It Started (#25)
3. Kelly Clarkson - Breakaway (#48)
4. Nelly - My Place (#4)
5. Avril Lavigne - My Happy Ending (#18)
6. Ashlee Simpson - Pieces of Me (#8)
7. Ciara - Goodies (#1)
8. Usher - Yeah! (#30)
9. Hoobastank - The Reason (#16)
10. Ryan Cabrera - On the Way Down (#27)
This week, all the songs in the Hot Digital Tracks top 10 -- and 44 of the top 50 -- are or have been on the Hot 100 chart. Online sales are starting to reflect the songs we know as hits from the radio. Admittedly, three of those six non-Hot 100 songs are new songs by Ben Folds, so we're still seeing some volatility, but those songs rank at #44, #47, and #49. A year ago, they may have blanketed the top three!
Also, more and more hip hop songs are being legally downloaded today, although sometimes their sales don't really kick in until they have crossed over to mainstream pop. But availability is still an issue for some hits. One big hit on the Hot 100 is "Breaking the Habit" by Linkin Park; a DVD single is available in stores, but Warner Bros. is not allowing any of Linkin Park's songs to be downloaded at this time.
Billboard plans to incorporate data from the Hot Digital Tracks chart into the Hot 100 chart. Last I heard, they were still working out some technological snafus, but they expected to accomplish this transition before the end of the year. What effect will digital sales have on the big chart? At first, probably not much; if digital singles this year are doing about as well as physical singles were last year, it may be awhile before a song like "I Fought the Law" has enough online impact to become a hit on the Hot 100.
But we're already moving toward a time when all the hits we hear on the radio are also available for sale. If this keeps up, we may once again be able to rate a song's popularity by how many music fans have purchased copies--not by how many program directors have decided it fits their format.
What was the #1 song on the day you were born? Click here to find out.