billboard
Latest
Post a racist comment online, see it on a billboard near your house
Messages posted on Facebook, Twitter and other online spaces may feel like they carry less weight than things said in the physical world -- but that's not the case, argues Brazilian civil-rights group Criola. This year, Criola launched a campaign labeled, "Virtual racism, real consequences," which pulls racially bigoted comments from the internet and places them on billboards in the neighborhoods where the commenters live. Criola finds racist messages online and then uses geotag data to locate the author's neighborhood; the group then rents billboard space nearby and prints the comments for the world -- and the original writer -- to see. The names and images of the commenters are blurred out, but the message rings clear: Things said online affect people in real life, in real ways.
Yahoo revives its signature San Francisco billboard
Have you missed seeing Yahoo's distinctive billboard while driving along San Francisco's piece of Interstate 80? So has Yahoo. After a 4-year hiatus, the internet giant is bringing back its iconic signage to "surprise and delight" (read: advertise to) commuters heading toward the Bay Bridge. Unfortunately, though, it's not going to maintain the same 1960s motel charm that you remember. The whimsical design you see above has been replaced by the slightly lifeless billboard pictured below, at least for now. Still, this is both a good way to mark Yahoo's 20th anniversary and remind locals that Google isn't the only '90s-era web pioneer in town. [Image credit: AP Photo/Russel A. Daniels]
Streams from apps like Spotify and Beats will soon be included in the Billboard 200
Highlighting the growing influence of streaming on the music industry, the New York Times last week reported that music streams from sites like Spotify and Beats will, for the first time, be included in the calculation of the Billboard 200. In addition, Billboard will also include digital track sales. Previously, the Billboard 200 chart was solely comprised of digital and physical album sales. SoundScan and Billboard will count 1,500 song streams from services like Spotify, Beats Music, Rdio, Rhapsody and Google Play as equivalent to an album sale. For the first time, they will also count "track equivalent albums" - a common industry yardstick of 10 downloads of individual tracks - as part of the formula for album rankings on the Billboard 200. The change is to some degree a sign of a broad reconsideration of media measurement in the digital age, as television studios, magazine publishers and others push companies like Nielsen to account for the changes in how people consume media. Beginning on November 30, music streams and digital downloads will be included in the Billboard 200 tabulation and it'll be interesting to see how the additional data will affect the rankings. The move to incorporate music streams and digital downloads is entirely appropriate and, arguably, should have been implemented much sooner. iTunes, Pandora, and on-demand streaming services like Spotify are more popular than ever and the Billboard 200 rankings, for some time now, hasn't accurately reflected the more popular music in the country. Looking ahead, music streaming is arguably poised to jump to even greater heights once Apple incorporates the Beats Music app into iOS.According to a report from the Financial Times last week, Apple is aiming to do so sometime in early 2015, perhaps as early as March.
Billboard tweaks album sales chart to include streams, digital track sales
Until now, the Billboard 200 chart has been ranked based on albums sales, but that's about to change. On November 30th, that list will expand its criteria to include sales of a record's individual tracks and streaming plays for the chart that'll post on December 4th. Ten tracks sold will equal one album, while 1,500 spins via the likes of Spotify, Rdio or Beats Music from the same title will count as one sale, too. "Now we have the ability to look at that engagement and gauge the popularity of an album over time," Billboard's director of charts Silvio Pietroluongo told The New York Times. As you might expect, pop stars stand to benefit most.
Times Square's new digital billboard is almost the length of a football field
New Yorkers passing through Times Square will see (whether they want to or not) the biggest, most expensive digital billboard (at least in the US) when it turns on this Tuesday night. The screen is big enough to run a whole block, from 45th to 46th Street along Broadway, and is made up of 24 million pixels. (To contrast, 4K TVs weigh in with around 8 million pixel, although the scale here is massively different.) Oh yeah, it's also eight stories high. According to the New York Times, the cost of this prime advertising real estate comes in at over $2.5 million for four weeks. Google, a company that has the means, will take over the big screen as the debut advertiser until 2015. But we can go bigger: LG's already using the world's biggest billboard in Saudi Arabia, which is 820 feet long. [Image credit: Richard Perry/The New York Times]
US billboards to display interactive paintings to teach you art history
Several billboards in Times Square displayed something a lot different than the usual on August 4th -- instead of ads, they displayed some of the most recognizable American paintings. What happened in Times Square marks the launch of the Art Everywhere US project, which touts itself as the "largest outdoor art exhibition ever conceived." Its organizers plan to showcase 58 artworks (voted by people out of the original 100, with Edward Hopper's Nighthawks topping the list) across the country throughout the month of August.
#NowPlaying: Twitter and Billboard flip the switch on real-time music charts
Back in March, Billboard and Twitter announced plans to bring real-time tune-tracking charts to the masses. Well, today a couple of those charts went live. The Trending 140 keeps tabs on shared songs in the US, calculated by increased action in the last 60 minutes. As you might expect, you can filter the results for the last 24 hours and stats will get posted weekly as the Billboard Twitter Top Tracks chart. There's an Emerging Artists ranking too, and it'll work and be published in the same way. In case you're wondering what lights up the ticker, tweets containing links to streaming services like Spotify or iTunes, music-specific hashtags (like #nowplaying or a song title) and words like "music," "song," or "listen" all weigh into the minute-by-minute tally. In the few minutes it took to write this post, John Mayer, Demi Lovato and Austin Mahone have all spent a moment in the number one spot.
Watch Michael Jackson's holographic return at the Billboard Music Awards
Michael Jackson isn't the first posthumous recording artist to be reconstituted by light projection -- Tupac got there first -- but it didn't stop the assembled crowds at the Billboard Music Awards whipping themselves into a frenzy during the performance. Naturally, it all coincided with Jackson's Xscape album, launched earlier this month, but the surprise was spoiled a few days early by litigation between several holographic companies over the tech being used. We've embedded ABC's coverage after the break although the performance looks a little flat on video. And don't worry: there's moonwalking.
Twitter and Billboard team up for real-time tune-tracking charts
Billboard has long been the go-to for charting an artist's or song's popularity week to week. Now, the outfit has announced "an exclusive, multi-year partnership" with Twitter to create real-time charts monitoring tweets about music in the US. Billboard Twitter Real-Time Charts (catchy name, eh?) look to be the standard for tracking tune-based conversations as they happen. While the tallies will be housed at Billboard.com, the two have also agreed to a Twitter Amplify partnership that includes in-tweet charts and weekly video roundups -- just in case you happen to miss anything. "Our goal with these efforts is to give artists who share songs and engage with their audience on Twitter a way to get noticed by even more fans, other musicians and industry decision-makers in real time," said Twitter's head of music Bob Moczydlowsky. No word yet on an exact launch date, but Billboard says charts should go live "in the coming weeks."
Billboard: Digital music sales decrease for the first time ever, vinyl continues to grow
It was inevitable: After years of highs and then a plateau, digital music sales saw their first decrease in 2013. Last year, digital song purchases dropped almost six percent according to a Billboard report, while digital album sales dropped 0.1 percent. Compact discs continued their downward spiral as well, and took a 14.5 percent loss. On the flip side, pure analog music (read: vinyl) showed an increase of 31.9 percent -- representing a full two percent of music sales. Until Nielsen's SoundScan report for streaming hits, however, we won't know how much of an impact the likes of Spotify or Rdio are having on purchases. We have a hunch it'll be rather telling. [Image credit: karola riegler photography/Flickr]
EVE Evolved: First impressions of Rubicon
For years I've been writing that EVE Online needs more deployable sandbox structures that any player can use, so I was naturally pretty excited to hear that this was to be one of the key features of the Rubicon expansion. The Mobile Depot sounded like a great freeform sandbox tool when it was announced, but I didn't understand quite how awesome it was until I started setting up my own. While the depot is ostensibly a fancy item container with a ship fitting service, anchoring one feels almost like planting your flag in space, and spotting another depot on the directional scanner means war. I've spent this week exploring low-security space in the new Stratios Sisters of EVE faction cruiser, stealing rare moon minerals with a Siphon Unit, and desperately searching for the elusive but valuable ghost sites. As expected, players have already found some creative uses for the new personal deployable structures: Mobile Depots are being used as advertising billboards in Jita and to bait aggressive players into becoming flagged as criminal suspects, Mobile Tractor Units have seen some unorthodox usage outside of missions, and the Siphon Unit will literally print money if you find an unsecured moon-mining operation tucked away in space. In this week's EVE Evolved, I test-drive the Rubicon expansion's new structures to find out if they live up to expectations.
LG trolls Samsung's Times Square billboards with Optimus G '4' ads
The press is headed to Radio City Music Hall for Samsung's Galaxy S IV event in a few hours, but the company has also taken up consumer-focused presence in Times Square -- where rival LG is waiting. As shown in the pic, LG has refashioned its billboards (which it already occupied for 20 years before the new neighbor moved in below last year) to mock Samsung's "4" themed advertising, touting that the Optimus G is "here 4 you now", among other messages. They'd probably have a better chance of grabbing our attention if the upgraded Optimus G Pro were here 4 us instead, but that's not an option yet. Still, we have to appreciate a prank pulled off well enough that it even scores some screen time in a Samsung promo video (at :49 and 2:04) embedded after the break.
Billboard redesign brings charts streaming into the 21st century
Back in the old days, music charts were mostly good for hit single montages in movies about struggling bands. These days, chart-making stalwart Billboard's looking to offer up something more, bring its services into the era of streaming media, with a redesign that harnesses Spotify, Rdio and Myspace functionality, letting users listen to the day's tracks in order of popularity, the way they were meant to be listened to, we guess.
Billboard: Halo 4 highest-charting game soundtrack yet
Halo 4 won't be out for a few more days, but the official soundtrack from composer Neil Davidge has been widely available since the middle of October – and it's done well. Billboard ranked it in the #50 spot for its Billboard 200, which is the highest a video game soundtrack has ever reached on the charts.Davidge's score sold 9,000 copies in its first week and Billboard says it outperformed all the series' predecessors in the Top Soundtracks category. That includes the Halo: Reach soundtrack, which made it to number eight back in 2010. The official Halo 4 soundtrack reached third in Top Soundtracks.The Halo 2 soundtrack still has a record over Halo 4's score, however. It managed to move more than 9,000 albums during its second week on shelves. The previous record holder for top video game soundtrack on the Billboard 200 was the soundtrack to Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock at 107. Yup, the honor goes to an album of a video game in which you play along to that album.
UK gets official Top 100 music streaming chart next week, Billboard seen crying in the corner
Used to be, musicians were judged (commercially speaking, of course) by how much radio play they got and how many albums and singles they sold. The UK's answer to Billboard, the Official Charts Company, has seen a future filled with streaming music from services like Spotify, Napster and Deezer and decided that it needed a streaming chart to truly judge the success or failure of today's, and tomorrow's, top tunes. Thus, a Top 100 streaming chart was created and is set to launch next Monday, May 14. So, who rules the web across the pond, sonically speaking? You'll have to wait for the full list, but a preview of the top ten artists awaits in the PR below.
Spotify apps hands-on
The big reveal at today's "what's next" Spotify event? Apps. So, so many apps. As anticipated, the Swedish music streaming service launched its very own platform for third-party developers. The program is launching today in beta, with a number of partners, including some high profile music names like Rolling Stone and Last.fm along with some relative new-comers to the scene, like SoundDrop and Sharemyplaylists.com. We had the opportunity to play around with a number of these new apps at the event, and don't let the fact that our ears are still ringing stop you from checking out our impressions after the break. %Gallery-140703%
Yahoo's San Francisco billboard closing up shop after more than a decade
Oh, 1999. Simpler times, those. IT departments were frantically prepping for Y2K, Jeff Bezos (or his head, at least) was named Time's "Person of the Year" and the tech bubble was getting ready to burst at the seams. That same year, the lights on Yahoo's "A nice place to stay on the internet" billboard turned on for the first time on the highway leading to the Bay Bridge. Those lights, which have seen their share of ups and downs for internet companies, will be turned off for the last time in the coming weeks. Clear Channel confirmed that there will, indeed, be vacancy in that space come next month.
This Dota 2 fan set up a billboard to win a beta key
One Dota 2 fan wanted to win a beta key in a big way in Valve's recent photo contest -- like, really big. The rules stipulated entrants submit a photograph of themselves "holding a sign that reads 'Dota 2' and your 'PlayDotA.com Username' in any creative fashion," and that the image had to be larger than 600x400 px. So Steven Addison put his image on a billboard, because that's what sane people do to get beta keys. Placing an ad on an electronic billboard in Addison's neighborhood normally costs $3,000. Addison and his friend wanted to use the billboard in a student film as well, and after Addison explained their situation, a kind Clear Channel man offered him a small amount of air time for free. We're very happy to hear that, because compared to the other submissions, even $20 seems like too much to have invested in this contest. [Thanks, Barnz!]
Dean Kamen files patent application for an inflatable, illuminated wind turbine
Inflatable wind turbines may not be an entirely new idea, but prolific inventor Dean Kamen has detailed one of a slightly different sort in a recently published patent application. In addition to generating energy for general use, the turbine would also be able to power a set of LEDs adorning the turbine itself, which could be used to display advertising or other information using a persistence of vision effect. The application even suggests that multiple turbines could be linked together and synchronized to form one large billboard. Of course, it is still just that, a patent application -- but it is assigned to Kamen's DEKA company, so it may not be quite as far off from reality as some other applications.
Engadget takes over Times Square, courtesy of TS2 (video)
Remember when we took over Times Square last month? Contrary to comments-based speculation, we didn't drop several years' salary to see our names and faces (and pets) up in lights. We were actually shooting a segment for the Engadget Show about a new service from Times Square2 (TS2). The NASDAQ / Thomson Reuters alliance is working to increase engagement on the giant electronic billboards it controls in one of the most heavily trafficked spots in the US. The organization has designed a free API for developers, making it possible to create applications for its giant ad spaces on the side of the Thomson Reuters and NASDAQ buildings, and it showed us some of the fruits of its labor in the video clip that you'll find after the break.%Gallery-130286%
