I’ve often described Soundcheck as the music version of sports talk radio. Mainly because music and sports share something basic – the passion of the people who follow them.
What’s the fun of rooting for the Yankees if you don’t have the Red Sox to hate? What’s the fun of rooting for the Mets… um, what is the fun of rooting for the Mets? It’s the same with music: Beatles or Stones, Renata Tebaldi or Maria Callas – rivalries give fans a chance to express their passion. But in sports, you have an army of statistics to back up your claims. Statistics in music have been harder to come by.
Traditionally, musical statistics have dealt with sales and radio play. And, once a year, awards like the Grammys. But the bible of musical statistics has long been Billboard, which based its charts on two stats: sales and radio play. For decades, that seemed to be enough.
In this way, the sport music most resembles is soccer. Until recently, soccer stats were pretty basic: goals, assists, corner kicks, yellow and red cards, goals conceded. But as players began changing teams for “transfer fees” in the tens of millions of dollars, soccer managers began looking for more stats to determine who was worth the piles of money they were going to throw around. So things like touches on the ball, passes attempted, passes completed, and even more specific stats have been charted and developed in an attempt to determine who was really a worthwhile investment.
With music sales down and the radio market largely stagnant, it’s tough to base a multi-million-dollar decision on the Billboard charts – we know that there’s a lot of music being viewed and streamed and downloaded and shared, and it’s not necessarily the handful of things selling and being heard on the radio. So a new chart like Big Champagne’s “Ultimate Chart” is a step in the right direction.
Still, the question is: do we need these stats? The answer is the same as it is in sports: we don’t need stats to enjoy the game, or the music. But passion is an elusive thing, and we want what’s left of the industry to know what music we are passionate about. A chart that really reflects that could be a very useful thing.
Do you think music charts help the music world? Leave a comment.
John Schaefer has hosted Soundcheck since the show’s inception in 2002. He has also hosted and produced WNYC’s radio series New Sounds since 1982 (“The No. 1 radio show for the Global Village” – Billboard) and the New Sounds Live concert series since 1986.
