meta-roj

i’ll see you on the other side…

several months ago, i went back to the 2002 pop season and cooked up some charts about the charts. one showed the trajectory of #1 hits as they worked up and out of the top 40 range. two others showed juice – both for individual songs and for artists.

with the close of 2003, we have the full set of charts available, and since these pictures were so popular, i just had to give you the updates.

to echo the points about 2002…

12 songs hit #1 in 2003 (up from 9 in 2002), from 10 different artists (up from 8 in 2002). we again had a #1 debut (clay aiken), following the path of kelly clarkson, and quickly falling out of the chart. for 2003, two artists hit #1 twice (50 cent and beyonce, although beyonce had a little help with one of those).

 

 

the general pictures look pretty similar from 2002 to 2003…

we have 224 charting songs in 2003 (down from 233 last year), representing 160 artists (down from 165). as last year, #1 hits can be pretty far down the curve – clay aiken ranked #71 for artists juice and #88 for song juice with his #1 hit.

the charm of the tv-manufactured popstar may have already worn off, compare kelly clarkson (the 2002 candidate), racking up a total of 417 points, to clay aiken (the 2003 candidate) with only 180.

even more dramatic was the disconnect between the #1 chart position and song juice. this year two tracks accumulated more song-juice (kid rock scoring 1051 and r. kelly scoring 944) than 50 cent’s chart-topper (scoring 822). #1s did manage to suck up about 15% of the total available song juice and 20% of the available artist juice.

update: added label information to most of the trajectory chart. just in case you were keeping track…

something happened in the past few days, generating over 200 visitors looking for rafe esquith, the hobart shakespeareans and more than a dozen related searches. i don’t know why this is happening now, but welcome. i hope you found something useful and relevant while you were here.

the guys at news.com have a piece on the mini-ipod rumors now. they give a $121 million revenue figure for the ipod line (which you may contrast to the purely hypothetical music store revenue of somewhere around $20 million).

news.com – Would $100 iPod compete or cannibalize?

“I don’t think Apple currently needs to sell a $100 iPod at risk of cannibalizing sales of existing models and sacrificing gross margins, ” said Tim Deal, analyst with Technology Business Research in Hampton, N.H. “Apple already has the market lead, so I don’t see the need for (the $100 version) when people are buying $299 and $399 models.”

put on your own analyst hat and decide if “up 9 percent from the prior quarter and 128 percent from a year ago” doesn’t suggest that all the musigeeks that want 10,000+ song ipods are already geared up, and it’s time to expand the market to the rest of the people… anyway, my cards are already on the table.

an ipod in every pocket in 2004!

(discussion at ars-technica).

so long, neighbor

[this is a draft – send me your thoughts]

You are a guest on this server. I fund the operation and maintenance of this website, weblog and domain. I welcome, without obligation, comments and thoughts that are intelligible, relevant, and written by humans in response to posts or existing comments on this site.

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thanks: jsled, loebrich, bill kearney.

I have recently been informed that “there is no legal ground (that I am aware of) on which you can stand with your payment requests.”

so, while i appreciate the votes of support and sincere thoughts from kynn, richard, matthew, kriselda, geekman, amy, pieter, chris and others, who have shared their thoughts in backchannels…. now i have a bit of a crisis for this theory of imposing cost on blogspammers.

my service provider received a complaint about my thank-you note and payment request to a spammer, and as a result, i’ve been asked to stop emailing people requesting payment, with the above justification.

so, i’m calling any lawyers within eye-shot of this post – help me craft functional, legal, and binding commercial applications license terms.

i think there are grounds here. i’m providing a service (hosting, storage, bandwidth, professional editorial review, and a prominent posting place), and in return demanding a fee. there should be a nice, simple way to explain that i expect payment for the services provided. i think there is probably a solid precedent for collecting fees for services.

i knew this was a quick hack, and full of holes, but i guess it’s time to get serious. if one complaint from a spammer is enough to shut down this experiment, the spammers have already won. ladies and gentlemen, pack up your blogs and go home.

ap wire Court Tosses Suit Vs. Barbie Lampooner

“Mattel cannot use trademark laws to censor all parodies or satires which use its name, ” Judge Harry Pregerson wrote for the three-judge panel.

so, feel free to blend your barbie or whatever else makes you happy.

candyman

speaker of tongues