Billboard Charts a New Path for Hot 100

For almost half a century, Billboard magazine’s Hot 100 chart has been the gold standard in pop music--the definitive list of the nation’s most popular singles.

It’s the chart Casey Kasem relied on in the ‘60s and ‘70s when his weekly radio countdown show became a pop staple around the world, and it’s the ranking that newspapers long have cited when measuring America’s listening tastes--from Domenico Modugno’s “Volare” in 1958 to Los del Rio’s “Macarena” in 1996.

But Billboard, the bible of the record industry, now admits that the chart often is inaccurate.

*

Reflecting growing concern in the music industry over the ease with which record companies can manipulate the Hot 100, the magazine quietly has spent nearly a year devising a new scoring system--a methodology it hopes to unveil early next month.

“We had some concerns as to whether the chart truly reflected as best it could what’s popular in America,” says Geoff Mayfield, Billboard’s charts editor. “It was our concern that there were a number of issues that we had to address.”

At the heart of the debate is “low-ball” pricing through which record labels induce retailers to sell singles--which generally retail for as much as $4.99 on CD and $2.99 on cassette--for as little as 49 cents and in rare cases only a penny.

This strategy is designed to stimulate sales so a single will move up the chart faster, encouraging radio stations to give more airplay to what appears to be a “hot” record.

The bonus in the plan for the labels is that the added radio airplay not only means the song reaches more listeners, but also the airplay in itself pushes the single up the chart, as Billboard’s formula for determining the Hot 100 considers both sales and airplay. Among the hundreds of singles that have benefited from this practice in recent years is Blackstreet’s “No Diggity,” which was the nation’s top-selling single for six weeks this fall.

“What inevitably happens is that people end up working the system instead of working records,” says a label executive who is critical of cut-rate pricing. “You know, ‘How do I get my record up the chart?’ instead of ‘How do I market my artist honestly and intelligently?’

“Like any business, there are those that want to use shortcuts and there are those that want to do it through hard work.”

*

Billboard’s other important chart, the Top 200 list of albums, is not based on the same sales-airplay formula as the singles chart but on sales only, as determined by the computerized SoundScan monitoring system. Some considered the charts all but infallible with the introduction five years ago of SoundScan and of Broadcast Data Systems, which uses computer technology to measure airplay.

But about three years ago, labels started the practice of shipping heavily discounted singles to retailers, urging them to sell the records at bargain prices.

According to Billboard, most labels do not view singles as a profitable enterprise and instead use them as promotional vehicles to drive album sales.

Billboard was so concerned about low-ball pricing that it considered eliminating sales as a factor in determining the Hot 100.

“We think it’s a bad business practice, and we believe that to some degree, it has affected the chart’s credibility,” Mayfield says. “I know there are radio people who look at the sales chart with less respect because of that practice, and the influence that can have on our chart is a concern.”

The magazine decided against eliminating sales as a factor after a survey of record labels showed overwhelming support for sales as a consideration.

It seems certain, however, that sales will carry less weight. Under the current formula, sales account for about 40% of the chart’s points and airplay accounts for the rest.

*

But low-ball pricing wasn’t the only factor reviewed by Billboard in its Hot 100 study. Others included:

* A broadening of the base used by the magazine to measure radio airplay. Currently, Billboard considers only what is played on Top 40, rhythm-crossover, modern rock, adult Top 40 and adult contemporary stations. It may expand the sample to include R&B;, mainstream rock, adult-alternative and perhaps even country outlets.

* Elimination of a long-standing practice of counting both sides of double-sided hits when measuring airplay. Billboard already has announced that it will begin including airplay points only for the song receiving the most air time.

* Including recordings that are not commercially released as singles. For various promotional and marketing reasons, a growing number of artists are not making singles available to retail, releasing them only to radio. Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know” and Nirvana’s “All Apologies,” for instance, were among the most popular songs of recent years but appeared only on albums and never were released as singles.

Though Billboard considered waiving its stipulation that singles be available commercially to qualify for the Hot 100, it has decided against the move because the industry was against it. Thus, most of the magazine’s attention has been focused on sales and low-balling.

An executive for a major label says, “Labels know how to hype singles to the point that you could have [only] 25 stations playing your single and sell 100,000 records because you were able to massage and manipulate the [product] positioning and pricing in stores.”

How about establishing a floor price to determine chart eligibility? “It would be difficult to enforce,” Mayfield says, “but we would love to have a floor price.”