The People Have Spoken...And Clicked
Listening to the radio the other day, amidst the ubiquitous (and awesome) "Umbrella" and the tiresome (if catchy) "Makes Me Wonder", I heard "Hey There Delilah" by the Plain White T's. You've probably heard it, too. Nice song, well-written and heartfelt, a little on the sappy side. But it's most notable for illustrating how much the Internet has changed the way we listen to music, and more importantly, how it has changed the music industry as a whole.
"Hey There Delilah" was released as an album track by the Plain White T's, a largely unknown indie act, in 2005. Now, two years later, the song is sitting at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, setting itself up nicely as the main contender to knock Rihanna's "Umbrella" off the top spot. I don't know how it got there - I'm not sure anyone does, least of all the band - but I'm willing to bet a pretty penny that three or four years ago, this never would have happened. "Hey There Delilah" would perhaps have become a fan favorite, charting somewhere in the 20s or 30s on the Modern Rock Tracks chart, but there's no way it would have found itself among the T-Pains and Fergies on the radio airplay spectrum. No, "Hey There Delilah"'s success is firmly rooted in the digital download revolution, which was made concrete a couple of years ago when Billboard starting counting digital single sales toward its formulation of the Hot 100, previously devoted to airplay and physical single sales only. People heard "Delilah" somewhere - perhaps a friend recommended it, or they read a positive review in a magazine - and they downloaded it in droves, and the snowball kept growing. It's the same phenomenon that rocketed D4L's "Laffy Taffy" to #1, despite the fact that it's one of the most lazily produced and ill-conceived rap tracks since the dawn of the genre. For whatever reason, people liked it (or they enjoyed it from an ironic standpoint - please God, tell me all those downloads were for the sake of irony), and the Billboard charts bespoke of the song's popular online demand. And lo, there it was every hour on 106.9 FM, driving me crazy.
The public is now dictating which songs make it into heavy radio rotation more than ever before, and they're doing it through the power of the Internet. For all the talk of how music downloads and iPods would deal a death blow to traditional radio, it seems the two have a more symbiotic relationship than the Chicken Littles of the the music industry would care to admit. Flukes become chart-toppers, indie acts have their day in the sun, careers are made or broken based on how many mouse clicks that "Buy Song" button receives today. It's exciting to envision what else lies in store for the ever-tightening relationship between the music industry and its consumers, and it's refreshing to know that if listeners would rather hear a different Gwen Stefani song than the one record executives choose as the next single, well, that's the one they'll probably hear. Bring on the revolution.
"Hey There Delilah" was released as an album track by the Plain White T's, a largely unknown indie act, in 2005. Now, two years later, the song is sitting at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, setting itself up nicely as the main contender to knock Rihanna's "Umbrella" off the top spot. I don't know how it got there - I'm not sure anyone does, least of all the band - but I'm willing to bet a pretty penny that three or four years ago, this never would have happened. "Hey There Delilah" would perhaps have become a fan favorite, charting somewhere in the 20s or 30s on the Modern Rock Tracks chart, but there's no way it would have found itself among the T-Pains and Fergies on the radio airplay spectrum. No, "Hey There Delilah"'s success is firmly rooted in the digital download revolution, which was made concrete a couple of years ago when Billboard starting counting digital single sales toward its formulation of the Hot 100, previously devoted to airplay and physical single sales only. People heard "Delilah" somewhere - perhaps a friend recommended it, or they read a positive review in a magazine - and they downloaded it in droves, and the snowball kept growing. It's the same phenomenon that rocketed D4L's "Laffy Taffy" to #1, despite the fact that it's one of the most lazily produced and ill-conceived rap tracks since the dawn of the genre. For whatever reason, people liked it (or they enjoyed it from an ironic standpoint - please God, tell me all those downloads were for the sake of irony), and the Billboard charts bespoke of the song's popular online demand. And lo, there it was every hour on 106.9 FM, driving me crazy.
The public is now dictating which songs make it into heavy radio rotation more than ever before, and they're doing it through the power of the Internet. For all the talk of how music downloads and iPods would deal a death blow to traditional radio, it seems the two have a more symbiotic relationship than the Chicken Littles of the the music industry would care to admit. Flukes become chart-toppers, indie acts have their day in the sun, careers are made or broken based on how many mouse clicks that "Buy Song" button receives today. It's exciting to envision what else lies in store for the ever-tightening relationship between the music industry and its consumers, and it's refreshing to know that if listeners would rather hear a different Gwen Stefani song than the one record executives choose as the next single, well, that's the one they'll probably hear. Bring on the revolution.
This entry was posted by Darryl, on
Sunday, July 15, 2007.
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