"Laffy Taffy", NY Times and Song/Album Logic
mannybolone
Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
Put aside your dislike of the song (if you indeed do dislike it). This is actually one of the better pieces I've read in a mainstream publication of late to discuss music buying habits and how it is that some songs can be HUGE yet the albums sell lead. There some good food for thought here...which is not a phrase one usually associates with "Laffy Taffy." (No regional bias).http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/12/arts/music/12sann.html'Laffy Taffy': So Light, So Sugary, So DownloadableBy KELEFA SANNEHOver the last year, so-called snap music has made an unlikely journey from Atlanta phenomenon to hip-hop laughingstock to mainstream juggernaut. It's the name some people have given to a dance-centric form of hip-hop, defined by light but propulsive beats and lyrics that often revolve around playful chants.Dem Franchize Boyz have a snap-music hit with "I Think They Like Me (Remix)," which reached No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the rap chart. (It far outpaced the group's previous and better hit, 2004's "White Tee.") But snap music's best-known chant is "Shake that Laffy Taffy, shake that Laffy Taffy." That's the refrain from an utterly infectious song called "Laffy Taffy," by D4L. It has been hanging around the upper reaches of the Billboard chart since before Christmas, and last week it officially became the most popular song in America.There's only one problem: people aren't buying the album. D4L released its debut album, "Down 4 Life" (Dee Money/Asylum/Atlantic), in November; according to Nielsen SoundScan, it has sold about 230,000 copies so far. That's considered a success if you're an alternative-rock group, but not if you're a Southern hip-hop group, and especially not if you're responsible for the biggest song in the country. In fact, it's one of the lowest sales totals for a chart-topping act in years.In another category, though, D4L is setting sales records. Last week, the group sold 175,000 digital copies of "Laffy Taffy." That figure doesn't just set a digital-download record, it smashes the old one: the previous record-holder was Kanye West, who sold 80,500 digital copies of his hit "Gold Digger" one week last fall. D4L has now sold more than twice as many digital downloads as CD's. The group's members - Fabo, Shawty Lo, Mook B and Stoney - aren't just chart-toppers; they're music industry pioneers, too.In news releases, Atlantic is spinning this as great news: a trail-blazing triumph for a forward-thinking label. No doubt the balance sheets tell a different story. You don't have to be a professional accountant to realize that the record company isn't making much money from D4L's record-breaking online success. The list price for D4L's album is $18.98, whereas the iTunes price for "Laffy Taffy" is 99 cents; even when you factor in the cost of CD production, digital downloads are no match for CD sales.Still, those hundreds of thousands of 99 centses must be better than nothing. Throughout the 1990's, record companies all but stopped selling singles, in hopes that people would buy full-length CD's instead. Listeners who wanted one song instead of 15 were out of luck. Radio D.J.'s often found themselves playing songs that weren't even available except on albums. Hit singles often were not singles at all - were not, that is, available singly.In the last few years, though, the idea of buying songs has been resurrected, thanks to iTunes and other legal music download providers. Billboard recently began including digital-download sales in the formula it uses to compile its pop charts. Just as the rise of the vinyl LP helped usher in an era of so-called album-rock, it seems likely that the rise of paid downloads - and the resurrection of the retail singles market - will have unpredictable musical side effects.Which brings us right back to snap music. On the hip-hop prestige scale, goofy dance songs like "Laffy Taffy" don't rate very high. Even in Atlanta, which has produced more than its fair share of goofy dance smash hits (like "Whoomp! There It Is" and "Get Low," to name two of the biggest), dance-oriented hip-hop is often treated like a guilty pleasure. Tough-talking, lyric-oriented storytellers like T. I. and Young Jeezy get much more respect than D4L and Dem Franchize Boyz, whose hits are considered light club music, as opposed to heavy street music.Of course this is a specious dichotomy, but the distinction between serious and frilly exists in many genres, and it often finds expression in consumers' buying patterns. For the serious stuff, you need the album; for the frilly stuff, a song might suffice. Young Jeezy has never had a song as big as "Laffy Taffy," but he has sold many more albums than D4L. In hip-hop as elsewhere, "album artist" isn't just a sales category; it's a music category, too. An elite one.So despite D4L's success, it's a safe bet that Dem Franchize Boyz are hoping their career more closely resembles Young Jeezy's, even though their music doesn't. "I Think They Like Me (Remix)" came from a compilation called "Jermaine Dupri Presents ... Young, Fly & Flashy Vol. 1" (Virgin), which made a tepid debut at No. 43 on the album chart. Now Dem Franchize Boyz have a new emerging hit, "Lean With It, Rock With It," and a new album, "On Top of Our Game," due in stores Feb. 7. For the sake of both their reputation and their bank accounts, no doubt the members are hoping more listeners buy the CD than the single.For now, though, it certainly seems as if snap music and digital downloads were made for each other. Easy and cheap, single-song downloads are the musical equivalent of an impulse buy, so maybe it's no coincidence that the biggest digital download in history (so far) is a cheap-sounding hip-hop track named after a sugary snack that's traditionally found near the cash register. The silly little song about candy was neither as silly nor as little as it first seemed.The 99-cent model may well be unsustainable for major labels, which probably need to sell something more expensive to stay in business. But it might be helpful for smaller acts hoping to score a freak hit. With any luck, the next snap-music hit will be "What's Happenin'," the insanely addictive track from the as yet little-known group Trap Squad. (The refrain comes out in a nasal bleat: "Whass ha na na! Whass ha na na!" This isn't a song; it's a virus.) Here's hoping it soon comes to an iTunes near you.
Comments
I am interested/concerned about this term "Snap Music".[/b]
Are middle school kids already up on this or do you think only
one musical group is trying to push it and this writer bit the bait?
Re: Singles vs. Albums : Bring it on, yo.
We should try to break ourselves of our album worship.
The only reason albums exist is because of the invention of Lp vinyls
and that was merely a few decades ago.
Here's a joke :
Why do most rappers make their CDs too long?
...because they CAN.
Not very funny at all.
Even the 11 year old girl target audience knows that a D4L full length isn't a good idea.
Cashless, what did you think about the Hot Boy Ronald full-length?
You could argue he didn't really "need" a full-length, but if we
only got the two singles, we would have missed his version of
"Titty Bop".
Maybe novelty rappers should be limited to recording Ep-length discs.
what, are NYT writers getting some payola?!? (not surprising, considering the paper's rep as of late...)
thx for the post, O-Dub...I'm letting this percolate for a minute, because I'm not sure which part of this article is most interesting to me to comment on, but I'm thinking it's the economic argument moreso the popcult argument, which could go on and on and on.....
well, hell, on this board either could go on and on, but I'm still lettin' it percolate.
and the kids call pants "wacky slacks"!
I think I should not comment as HBR and the vast majority of all the main cats that make Bounce now live in Houston and I don't wanna end up like the guy that bootlegged TT Tucker.
Uh, iTunes has something like 70-80% marketshare. At this point in time, there's nothing wrong with treating them as if they're the only game in town since they basically are.
And how exactly has the Times taken credability-ending blows?
why stop there? i just had a creatively-devastating/financially-mindblowing idea:
novelty acts could limit themselves to singles only, release them independently and strictly online. get %100 profit 50,000 downloads at .99 cents a pop, and that's great profit for one song, with little risk.
the particular device/tool getting called out - iTunes, here - is irrelevant to what I was getting at; the writer could've said Realistic Boombox From Radio Shack for all I care (if it could receive .99 downloads). I was just reacting to the whole "gee whiz you should buy this song it's great!" cheeky vibe of the writer; it just stuck out to me as sales pitchery/sloppy writing I'd find in InStyle or something. I was getting at that the artist would be receiving the benefit from this kinda of pitch, not iTunes (altho they of course would get their cut, too).
and while I never claimed to say "credibility[/b]-ending" in my post, I do think that the NYT has suffered several blows to their rep in the past several years, thanks to a series of events including Whitewater, Wen Ho Lee, Jayson Blair, Judith Miller and now the illegal wiretapping story timings. I'm not saying - nor would I ever say - that the paper has zero credibility, just that their rep has probably seen better years than the past few. it's a fine paper, and a daily read for me, but not the end-all be-all of information.
still, thx for the post, O-Dub. it's interesting...and I'm still thinking about the economics side of this.
It's a very practical idea.
But remember, some of us are perverts, who will search for
depth where no promise of depth has been shown.
(i.e. scouring Dem Franchize Boyz CDs for deep cuts)
(i.e. scouring Canadian lite-jazz Lps for braeks)
I think there's a point there - that's kinda the equivalent of Jeff Lynne writing specifically for AM radio...
1)Morals
2)They don't know how to use P2P/Soulseek
????
I mean its a file...its got not liner notes, nothing. So what makes someone go the "pay" route when it comes to mp3s, is it because the things are hard for them to find? Now itunes for videos of tv shows/movies for the video pods makes sense to me as those things can be a little more tough to track down. But hit singles? i can't understand that.
"so-called"? Interesting choice of words....
I must have missed the "hip-hop laughingstock" phase of snap music. I mean so-called snap music. I got ripped a new one for laughing at it!
Uhhhh... from the clip I saw about it on MTV (which yes, is all I know about it) either the franchise people or D4L said it was called snap music because it has, um, you know, ... SNAP sounds.
ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. ok. i think i get it now.
If I was the guy that people whispered about being a pedophile, thats about the last thing I would name an album!!!!!!
he said tepid. huh huh huh huh huhhhhuhhh huhhh.
That's a really good point and a really good way of making it.
Basically the latter. I mean, iTUnes is dumb easy. Learning how to use a P2P network isn't that much work but compared to single-click and buy? For $1? People are lazy and/or techno-phobic. That's enough to make a model like iTunes succeed.
That too. The thing is...people don't seem to understand that downloading isn't illegal. It's SHARING that is but again, for the average techno-phobe, the distinction is lost on them.
That's that realness. People just don't know.
Someone mentioned "Laffy Taffy" being simple music and translating well to headphones or shitty computer speakers and I think there's definitely some truth to that.
But the other day I was thinking about a lot pop-rap, and the current trend is definitely leaning towards very stripped down songs, drum wise and instrumentally. It got me thinking if perhaps it has something to do with today's youth (as a whole), being less and less educated musically than we were as children -- maybe partly due to budget cuts in public schools regarding music and the arts. I'm just thinking outloud so feel free to lend your thoughts. But with that in mind, you can see why simpler music would be much more accessible to this generation. If they can wrap their heads around what's happening musically, it's got a much better chance of catching on. It seems like that's definitely being exploited in today's pop market, across the board.
When you think about it, it's largely music being made by people who generally don't know music. Surely, that must have some sort of effect on the current state of commercial rap music.
And it's not that people in the early '90s were so much more educated, but we were sampling jazz, soul and funk so it still had that musicality embedded in it to where it wasn't just an 808 kit on top of a two-key melody.
Things done changes, that's all I know.
then how come so many people who probably buy itunes downloads somehow manage to have super complex css shit going on with their myspace page?
http://s48.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1LNKS47P6NCIF37X8D5ASQNB1K
i don't see it having the commercial success of "laffy taffy" but it's kinda nice.
wait... do phill most caps designate sarcasm even when he says "I AM NOT BEING SARCASTIC"? if so ignore this link.
Nah, no sarcasm. I have retired from the caps now too, after hearing the Ghost / Rae / Biggie song in the other thread. The real schitt has officially been vanquished. Thanks for the link.
Good point.
What's thy theory?
laziness & riaa fear.
Please, somebody upload that trapsquad song!!?!?!?!?!!! i cant find it on soulseek!