The 00s

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

This is a graph of some QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH what I have done.



The data set is all records to have got into the Top 10 during January-June each year. Genre classification has been done by me - where I couldn't remember a record or artist AT ALL I left it off the graph, which is why the %ages don't add up (this affected about 4 records total). Seasonal records - eg World Cup songs - are also in the %ages but not on the graph. I didn't classify the Elvis reissues in 2005 at all.

Categories are blurry - especially in 2000/1/2 when dance and 'urban' and pop were all quite interrelated. Vocal, song-based garage records, for instance, may have ended up in any one of the three though I tried to be consistent.

Urban includes hip-hop, R&B, ragga and soul - R&B dominates within this from approx. the middle of the decade.

Nu-metal I tended to put into "rock", emo I tend to put into "indie" - this is a deeply arbitrary classification, obviously. There was a definite split between "rock" and "indie" in the past which I think is no longer the case, the two categories are quite overlappy now.

I haven't tried to filter 'teenpop' out from 'mumpop' or any other kind.

With all these caveats I think the graph tells some interesting tales and gives a bit of evidence to ideas that have been floating around here.

Comments

Ooh look, I can completely misuse the word 'quartile.'

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I am very surprised at how much "urban" (I echo Lex's comment about it needing the scare quotes but also echo Tom's re: what else do you call it) has plummeted, sales-wise. However, the biggest shock to me is how little rock is sold! Maybe it is because I am a secret rockist (probably true) but I was under the impression there were absolute shedloads of the stuff being peddled circa. Nu-metal; am very shocked to discover it's always resided in the lower... quartile of the graph.

Do very much like that jagged series of points around 2001 where 'urban' and 'rock' suddenly peak and pop drops like an aerodynamic stone. Is very interesting in terms of me not realising exactly how dramatic that was, at the time. Do the urban/rock gain percentages add up to being equal, overall, to the pop drop?

Re: Ooh look, I can completely misuse the word 'quartile.'

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Err, actually, pretend I know how to read graphs/lurn percentages and never asked that last question, shall we?

Re: Ooh look, I can completely misuse the word 'quartile.'

[justfanoe.livejournal.com]

It's still strong as ever in America. I wonder what the same graph would look like here.

Re: Ooh look, I can completely misuse the word 'quartile.'

[justfanoe.livejournal.com]

n.b.: Not enough to actually do it myself.

Re: Ooh look, I can completely misuse the word 'quartile.'

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I will need to do MOAR analysis on the figures when I get back into "work" next week but the interesting thing for me is that Lex's hunch - that the fates of 'urban' and indie are linked - seems to be correct (more so than indie/pop or urban/pop anyway).

Re: Ooh look, I can completely misuse the word 'quartile.'

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

To me it looks more that the fates of urban and dance are v. linked. Although indie and urban are appearing to, err, go in opposite directions (dammit I did a whole year and a half of statistics and cannot remember anything about talking about graffs) at the moment, dance and urban seem linked all along the graph. They're both plummeting, of course but as urban dives down to lurk with the moshers, dance is rallying a bit.