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Originally posted by Thnks Fr Th Mmrs
TRL's effect on music charts, and the shifting tides of music in general, may have seemed apparent and obvious - basically how a song performed on TRL translated into chart success. Wrong. Here are some astounding facts I found in my spare time.
* Despite the whole boy band craze that lasted from 1998-2001 (?), only one song by either the Backstreet Boys or *NSYNC (or any of the B-list boybands, for that matter) was able to reach the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100: *NSYNC's "It's Gonna Be Me" during the summer of 2000, and only for one week. What's even more surprising is that that particular song isn't among the most recognizable from either of them ("I Want It That Way"; "Larger Than Life"; "Bye Bye Bye"; "This I Promise You").
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It is a bit unfair to state that TRL did not have a big impact on the popularity of music in this time period. In regards to chart success you have to remember what was going in the industry during that time period. Top 100 successes back then were based on the combination of BOTH radio airplay and CD singles sales. Back in the late 1990's, record companies began to come up with plans that would boost the record sales of its artists. They figured out that CD sales were hurt by the sales of CD singles. People would prefer to spend a couple of dollars on the single they liked, rather than $12+ for the CD. So record companies began a new practice of not releasing CD singles. Since this was before the time of downloading, the only other way you could get a quality copy of the single was to buy the full CD. How well did this strategy work? Well, the Backstreet Boys, Nsync and Britney Spears all sold albums in excess of 10 million. It seems like the strategy worked amazingly well.
The downside of this strategy was its effects on Hot 100 singles performance. Since the Hot 100 was based on BOTH airplay and CD singles sales, the teen pop artists faired poorly on the Hot 100 because they had ZERO sales numbers. The record companies, in a sense, sacrificed the Hot 100 singles performances for increased CD sales. The record companies were correct in that strategy, because there was far more money to be made selling full CD's than CD singles. Really, who cares if you are The Backstreet Boys or Nsync and you had mediocre performances on the Hot 100 if you could sell 10 million+ per album.
Now teen pop acts may not have faired well on the Hot 100 due to their lack of CD singles sales, but surely TRL had a big impact on the overall popularity of acts like the Backstreet Boys and Nsync and were important in adding to the popularity of teen pop in the late 1990's - early 2000's.
It sucks that "Did My Time" was their highest peaking single to date, being that it's probably one of their worst.
