CHRles said:
Well if you ask the artists or the record companies you'll hear a different tune.
The fact remains that Top 40 radio was the one struggling in the 90s, not the Billboard Hot 100.
Were there popular radio hits that didnt get to chart on the Hot 100? Yeah and it a lot to do with record label tactics/artist promotions. These songs temporarily helped elevate the status of the radio airplay charts in the States, but ultimately its the Billboard Hot 100, Pop 100, and the Download Chart that matter the most these days.
The Hot 100 (or the top 40 portion of hit) was used in the American Top 40 countdown shows until 1991... as the sales side got weird, they only used the airplay component of it... that relationship that the Hot 100 had with radio ended entirely in 1995.
Pop radio's main "struggling period" was actually between 1992 and 1994... 1991 was the beginning of it's true decline and 1995 saw the beginnings of a rebirth. Yes, pop radio had problems from 1992-1994, without a doubt. "I Will Always Love You," "I'll Make Love To You" and "I Swear" were all decent songs, but none of them were really what one could call GREAT songs... the fact that all 3 of these songs spent 11 or more weeks at #1 on the Hot 100 showed two things - the deterioration of the CHR/Pop format and also the deterioration of the Hot 100 chart.
The CHR/Pop format started coming out of it in 1995 with ironically probably the one song which really caused more people than ever to question the validity of the Hot 100: "One Sweet Day" by Mariah Carey & Boyz II Men. The format very much flourished in the late 1990's and also spun off the now popular Hot AC format. The Billboard Hot 100 definitely hit rock bottom during that same time as the "airplay only" hits continued to gain prominence. It wasn't until the very end of 1998 that Billboard
finally decided to include airplay only hits on it's Hot 100 chart...
The bottom line is that Billboard (as has been the case most of the last 20 years) has been slow to react to to changes within the radio & music industry. How many copies did "Tragic Kindgom" sell here in the U.S.? ? ? Although there are other good songs on that album, the vast majority of the over 10 million people that bought it, got it for that aforementioned megahit.
The Pop 100 definitely has some merit today. It's actually the closest thing we have at the moment to the way the Hot 100 used to be before they made the mistake of bundling info for all formats. If they used just CHR, Rhyhtmic and Hot AC airplay in compiling the Hot 100, it would definitely better reflect the true popularity of songs.
I also think the The download chart does have relevance for songs that aren't repressed. The best example I have of a song that just built naturally was Leona Lewis' "Bleeding Love"... It made it to #1 on the downloads charts just after it had reached the top 20 here in airplay, and it dominated the sales charts for quite a long time, ending up as 2008's best selling single here. The song was actually first available for purchase here in late 2007.
Until they fix the Hot 100 - and it's something that actually CAN be done - it will continue to not have too much relevance for a lot of us... Another example of it's irrelevance in today's world below:
Taylor Swift had THREE songs chart in the top 12 of the Hot 100 with no airplay this past year... why? Because they were new songs and got a lot of first week downloads. Within two weeks they were all out of the top 40. The reality is that the songs weren't really popular, it was Taylor's popularity causing people to download the songs. Taylor could have just recorded some breathing and it would sell right now... that's how hot she is. But were the songs hits? I'd have to say NO. A lot of songs were denied from the Hot 100's top 10 as a result - most notably the aforementioned Lewis' "Better In Time" which peaked at #11 there. The thing is why would someone download a song they already owned? I (as many others did) bought the
Spirit album the day it came out... I loved "Better In Time," but I didn't download it when it was climbing the charts as I already owned it. I'm sure that was the case with many other people. It's no wonder it barely cracked the top 20 in downloads despite it's popularity. Once again, someone with some good number crunching skills could create a formula which would give second, third, etc singles a more fair representation on that chart. This particular inherent problem on the Hot 100 and not accounting for album sales has existed for a very long time... just ask all the people who think Journey's "Separate Ways" was a HUGE it... it was, but if you look at the Hot 100, we get a #8 peak. How come? People were buying the album and not just the single for the #1 CHR/Pop hit. "Faithfully" was a MASSIVE follow-up hit, peaking at #4 on the pop chart... but it only got to #12 on the Hot 100... people continued to buy the album, but not the single...
So the Hot 100 is not beyond repair, it's a matter of them WANTING TO repair it... and the facts seem to indicate that they don't want to repair it.
