Somehow, it seemed fitting that when Billboard magazine unleashed its new state-of-the-art, highly computerized system for tracking the nation`s most popular singles, the first extended run at No. 1 would be scored by Michael Jackson`s ”Black or White.”
It made for an impressive double punch: Jackson, after all, is well into his third decade as a pop superstar (starting with ”I Want You Back,” which hit No. 1 for the Jackson 5 in 1969), and Billboard`s record charts have long been gospel within the music industry, with thousands of careers riding weekly on the smallest change in the trade magazine`s all-important numbers.
So when ”Black or White” spent all of December and most of January at No. 1, Jackson`s seven-week reign appeared to be yet another spectacular achievement by a performer with a history of setting chart records.
After all, Billboard`s old system rarely produced even a four-week champ, and so far in the `90s, Jackson`s feat had been matched by only one other song: Bryan Adams` ”(Everything I Do) I Do It for You,” which ruled the singles chart for seven weeks last summer.
But in time, the performance of ”Black or White” probably will be viewed as ”just routine.” That`s the opinion of Michael Ellis, Billboard`s director of charts, who predicts that a longer average run at No. 1 will be just one of the sweeping changes in chart dynamics produced by the new tracking system.
”It won`t be unusual for a record to spend two months at No. 1,” says Ellis, whose magazine tested the new methodology for several months before it took effect Nov. 30.
The research even showed that Adams` ”Everything I Do” was a bigger hit than ”Black or White.”
”There`s no way those two were even comparable, even though they both spent seven weeks at No. 1,” Ellis says. ”Under the new system, `Everything` would have spent 11 weeks at No. 1, and possibly even 12. It was just that dominant.”
Computer counting
Why would ”Everything I Do” have been so much stronger under the new system? Part of the answer, Ellis says, lies in the presence of the computer, which means that much of the new counting process is ”untouched by human hands.”
Here`s how it works: As in the past, the singles charts (officially titled the Billboard Hot 100 Singles) are compiled based on a combination of points for radio airplay and record sales, with the formula of 60 percent airplay-40 percent sales remaining intact. The change comes in how data for each segment is gathered.
For radio airplay, 122 major-market Top 40 stations, including Chicago`s WBBM-FM, are monitored 24 hours a day by computers programmed by a Billboard affiliate, Broadcast Data Systems, to record each time a specific song is played. (The program is so sophisticated, Ellis says, that the computer has no trouble distinguishing between two records with a very similar sound-say, P.M. Dawn`s ”Set Adrift on Memory Bliss” and Spandau Ballet`s ”True”-though there initially was a problem getting different ”mixes” of the same song counted as just one single.)
After each play is recorded, it is converted into ”gross impressions”
based on the station`s Arbitron ratings at the time of play.
”Thus, a song would receive many more points for a play during drive time in Chicago than it would get at 3 a.m. in a smaller market,” Ellis says. Playlist input
Though the computerized impressions now make up most of the airplay score, Billboard still is getting some data using the old system-based on playlists prepared by radio station managers-in an effort to get input from the 98 markets that are too small for computerized tracking.
”It was important for balance to keep these small markets in the mix, because they tend to lean much stronger to rock than the big stations,” Ellis says. ”Without them, the chart would have been too dance-oriented, too urban.”
The net effect of the new airplay tracking, he says, is ”a dose of reality” that more accurately reflects what songs the stations are playing. Before, he says, a song might be receiving saturation airplay weeks before a station officially added it to the list, or be classified as heavy rotation when it actually was only being played at certain times of the day.
For the sales part of the formula, Billboard has contracted with SoundScan, a New York-based marketing firm, which uses a point-of-sale system (similar to the bar codes used by grocery stores) to track sales of each single from a sample of record chains and independent stores that represent 57 percent of the nationwide market.
Previously, sales figures were phoned in weekly by store personnel, who Ellis says sometimes ”just took things off the top of their head” instead of counting the records sold.
The accuracy problems with the old system already have been demonstrated by the significant changes in Billboard`s Top 200 albums chart since the magazine switched that list to the SoundScan system last spring.
The continued high ranking of country star Garth Brooks and surprisingly high showings by such rap performers as N.W.A. and Ice Cube indicate that previously store officials were underreporting sales by country and rap acts and overreporting the demand for high-profile rock names.
So just how has the new computerized system affected the action and placement of records on Billboard`s Hot 100 pop singles list?
The accompanying graphs compare the typical chart patterns of top-ranked songs immediately before and after the switch to the new methodology, which officially began with the chart dated Nov. 30.
The first chart shows two songs that demonstrated the classic performance curves under the old system for two types of successful singles: a superstar release with a faster-than-normal rise to its peak position (Mariah Carey`s
”Emotions,” which took just seven weeks to reach No. 1) and a more average single (Natural Selection`s ”Do Anything,” which topped out at No. 2 in its 11th chart week).
When both are plotted, they showed a strikingly similar pattern, with a strong rise into the Top 10, a flattening of the curve as the records reached their peak, and a rate of descent slightly sharper than the rate of rise. This was a highly predictable pattern.
Startling rebounds
But a strong indication of the impact of the new system can be seen in the first week, when ”Emotions” and ”Do Anything” made startling rebounds back into the Top 20 that would have been unheard of under the old system.
This didn`t mean that these records had suddenly regained popularity, but that the old system had pushed them-and others-down too far and too fast in the two preceding weeks. (Most probably, Ellis says, this was because radio stations had dropped them from official playlists long before they stopped playing the songs.)
In fact, in the Nov. 30 chart, Billboard also published test rankings that showed where each record in the Hot 100 would have been the week before had the new system been used. These figures placed ”Emotions” at No. 9
(instead of the old system`s No. 33) and ”Do Anything” at No. 5 (instead of No. 24).
Although both records resumed their declines in the following week, their rankings in the first week of the revised system seemed to point to the emergence of a vastly different pattern in the Top 5, with singles
skyrocketing up the charts, then flattening and holding near their peaks for many more weeks than would have happened under the old system.
This can be seen on the second chart, which shows the meteoric rise of two singles: Jackson`s ”Black or White” and the George Michael-Elton John duet ”Don`t Let the Sun Go Down on Me,” the only song in this week`s Top 5 to have had its complete chart run under the new system.
In the case of ”Black or White,” the record entered the chart at No. 35 (it would have been a phenomenal No. 19 had the new system gone into effect one week earlier), rose the next week to No. 3, then spent the next seven weeks at No. 1 (it`s credited with two weeks for the Dec. 21 chart, which was frozen for two weeks because of Billboard`s annual holiday break) before finally falling to No. 4 in the just-released rankings for Jan. 25.
Logjam
In the meantime, a logjam was created in the positions just under ”Black or White” that saw three songs dominating the Top 5 for almost two months, a development that would have been unheard of in the up-and-down days of the old system.
Arriving just in time to take advantage of the break in the logjam was
”Don`t Let the Sun Go Down on Me,” which last week (Jan. 18 chart) looked like it was in position to shoot into No. 1. But taking over instead was Color Me Badd`s ”All 4 Love,” which had hung around in the Top 5 for seven weeks before finally making it to the top spot.
”This will be the new pattern,” Ellis says. ”Superstar product will go up much faster and, largely because of the airplay monitoring, all records will come down much more slowly. So you`ll see fewer (different) records at the top, and they`ll stay there for much longer than in the past.”
