top 40
Latest
Spotify recaps 10 years of pop music in ‘The Decade Wrapped’ podcast
Earlier this month, music fans took to social media to share their results from Spotify's Wrapped campaign. The streaming service created infographics that depicted each user's favorite artists, songs and genres, as well as data points like the countries where their most-listened-to bands were from. To keep the hype rolling, Spotify has just released a 10-episode podcast called The Decade Wrapped. Each entry covers one year of pop music between 2010 and 2019 and features commentary from critics, comedians and music journalists.
Vinyl is back, and now it has its own UK top 40
Vinyl is making a comeback. Album sales in the UK climbed to 1.29 million last year -- the first time the 1 million mark has been surpassed since 1996. The format is still just a fraction of the total UK albums market (1.5 percent, to be precise) but now its success is being recognised in the charts. The UK's Official Charts Company is launching two vinyl-specific top 40s today -- one for albums and another for 7-inch and 12-inch singles -- for the first time in Britain. The renewed interest in vinyl doesn't appear to be slowing either, with album sales in the first quarter of 2015 up 69 percent from the same period last year. Is the growth from audiophiles, collectors, DJs, or a mixture of all three? It's not clear, but in the age of streaming, it's nice to see that analog still has a place with music lovers.
Jukebox Heroes: Top 40 MMO themes, #40-31
MMO main themes hold the potential to be some of the most powerful and magical pieces of music, partly because we associate them with particular games more than anything else. A great theme will dredge up intense memories or euphoria by the third note, and I see composers putting in their all with many of these themes. A long time ago I did an MMO theme countdown of 20 tracks, but since then I've heard a lot more and have wanted to do the list all over again. So this week in Jukebox Heroes, we're kicking off a countdown of the top 40 MMO themes -- in my opinion, of course. I listened to over 150 themes and spent hours ranking them to create this list. Because these choices are bound to be a little controversial and stir up debate (which is encouraged!), I set down a few rules that I wanted to share here. I limited myself to just one theme from a particular title, even if there were multiple themes in a game. Entries had to be a main theme or the closest equivalent of that; they had to be from MMOs, not from MOBAs; and I had to divorce my weighting of the track itself from the popularity of and my experience with that game. So no points added or subtracted based on the love of the game; I'm counting down the best music, period. Let's see what numbers 40 through 31 have in store for us!
CEA survey: Americans don't want FM in cell phones
Personally, I'd like to have an FM tuner in my iPhone, but then again, I'm a radio geek, so I guess I'm in the minority. According to a survey from the Consumer Electronics Association, more than half of Americans polled say they don't want an FM tuner in their cell phone. That seems strange to me -- why would you not want that extra functionality? The new iPod nano still has an FM tuner on board, so it must be pretty easy to get one in there. Of course, if there's no demand for it, Apple's not likely to eventually include one in a future version of the iPhone. If this survey is any indication, you'll have to try and get American Top 40 in podcast form. Then again, there are some political machinations going on here, too -- the CEA also reports that over 80% of Americans would be opposed to a government mandate on including FM tuners in mobile phones. As big a fan of radio as I am, even I wouldn't support that one. It's not the government's business to determine what features are in my cell phone. But sure enough, that's what the NAB is pushing for, trying to require FM tuners in cell phones for emergency usage and information. At any rate, politics aside (and commenters, please be civil), I'm surprised that so few people are interested in having an FM tuner. Sure, it's not cutting-edge technology, but certainly there are still times that you just want to tune into the radio, right?
UK music charts want to add rhythm game DLC tracking
UK's aptly named Official Chart Company has a fairly progressive idea for how to more accurately tabulate the sales success of musical artists on its Official Download Chart -- by including the sales statistics for tracks offered as downloadable content for rhythm titles such as Rock Band, Guitar Hero: World Tour and SingStar.To compile and include this data, it would take a great deal of negotiation between the record companies, the Official Chart Company and the game's developers, but we think it's definitely worth the trouble -- if only so we could try to get Stephen and the Colberts on the UK Weekly Top 40.
