Billboard Charts Changing To Reflect Catalog Titles

In a move that surprised chart watchers and could have an impact on how new music charts, earlier this week Billboard Magazine announced that their Billboard 200 chart will change significantly starting with the December 5 issue. With that week’s chart, catalog albums will appear alongside current albums on the list, which ranks the top 200 albums sold that week. Currently any album ranking below 100 that’s 18 months old and doesn’t have a current charting single is removed from the chart.

What are the implications of this? Well, for one, expect to see a lot of Greatest Hits albums on the chart. And when an event happens, like Michael Jackson’s death/concert film or the Beatles catalog being re-released, expect to see multiple titles from artists on the chart. You’ll also see albums that consistently sell copies, like AC/DC’s Back In Black and GN’R’s Appetite For Destruction, popping up. The down side is relatively small. For the last year or so, any band that sold 2,500 copies or so in their first week had a pretty good chance of cracking the top 200. The bar has been raised now – with the number of catalog titles that would be in this past week’s top 200 (35), that’s 35 new/existing albums that wouldn’t be in the chart.

This is a good move, in our opinion. It reflects how people that still buy music purchase it. Many music fans will opt for a greatest hits album over buying a full album. And there are classic albums that people will always buy. It’s about time there’s a chart that reflects that.

(full disclosure, this post’s author worked used to work at a Billboard-affiliated magazine).

iPhone App To Bring Back The Record Store Clerk

Of all the things things the decline of physical CD sales has brought about, we might miss the record store clerk the most. Sure, there were plenty of elitist indie douchebags of the High Fidelity variety, but also passionate music fans trying to help steer people towards music they wouldn’t otherwise have heard. It’s in that spirit that Panel, a new iPhone app, is operating. The $2.99 app gives tastemakers – musicians, producers, record store owners, DJs, music writers and more, a forum to share music. Each week, a different tastemaker will stream two albums, giving commentary and featuring interviews.

The service definitely seems a little more in the indie rock world right now, but producer Matt Bayles (Mastodon, Isis, Minus the Bear) is listed as a participant, and the work he’s done on Mastodon’s first three albums alone is enough for me to take notice. Panel is not going to completely replicate the record store clerk (shout out to Philly’s Third Street Jazz and Rock!), but  considering the most advice from employees you’ll usually get while buying records is “the CD section is between household appliances and TVs,” this service might be worth trying.

No Autoplay On MySpace Has Predictable Results

Last month, MySpace did the music world a favor and disabled autoplay on their profiles, saving the world from crimes against music being commited by bored 16 year-olds that have Garage Band and an Attack Attack! album. Although it hasn’t even been a month, the number of plays on MySpace has dropped dramatically. Media tracking company Big Champagne found that plays in August dropped 20.7 percent from July.

The company canvassed thousands of top artists on MySpace Music, convering the most heavily-tracked names. In July, it showed 1.436 billion plays. In August, it had dropped to 1.138 billion. This is pretty notable, given than they didn’t disable autoplay until around August 18. The bigger picture is that many visitors to a band’s MySpace page might not actually care much about the music, and if anyone has been using number of plays from a band to judge their influence and popularity, they might have to re-examine that.

Must-Own Metal 5.1 Surround Sound Albums

Albums mixed in 5.1 surround sound (that’s five speakers plus a subwoofer) have always been hard to come by in the metal scene. The 5.1 album has been a niche product in general because of the format’s higher price and limited playability (it’ll only play on your DVD player, but you’ll still have to buy the CD version for anywhere else). And that’s not to mention the geeks-only factor of being an audiophile format in a compressed-mp3-is-good-enough age.

With its low sales and high production costs, the format has been mostly relegated to mainstream, classic releases like the Beach Boys and Phil Collins – most metal bands just don’t have the budget to mix an album twice. Still, there are metal artists with the technical chops, high production and careful attention to their craft that deserve the high quality 5.1 treatment. We present to you some absolute must-own 5.1 surround sound metal albums.

Read more »