When is a week not a week? When the week starts on a Friday and it ends on a Thursday, that’s when it isn’t one. But that’s what the record labels have chosen for us and the result is the entire concept of the seven day week is meaningless. I was just trying to write a new singles column for the week of July 6 except I can’t do that because the week of July 6 has no meaning. The new releases dropped on July 10 and I wrote it today so I couldn’t think of it in terms of a week. I ended up just putting up today’s date. I guess I could write July 10 – July 16, but who writes week of like that? It isn’t even a week at all, it is seven days but not a week, it is untidy and uncomfortable.
As for the Billboard 200 and Hot 100? Their dates never made the blindest bit of sense to start with now it is a bewildering mess. The music post I can my charts from (I long hand em before the chart is posted), happens on a Saturday and the actual charts are posted on Tuesday. So now we have Friday, Thursday, Saturday and Tuesday as our record dates to remember. That’s insane. It should be: all music released on the Monday, and all charts on the following Monday sooo…
All Releases for last week: Monday, July 6
All charts for the week ending July 12: Monday, July 13
Now I don’t know what the logistics are here but I have no doubt Nielsen will have no problem having the numbers ready by early Monday, Billboard can post their overview (and I can long hand) on Monday and the charts will be posted by Tuesday morning. What is so wrong with that, right? On Monday’s we get new release for the upcoming week, and old sales for the previous week.
Is it too simple for everyone to keep track of what constitutes a week? The current charts have an end date of 7-18… begging an answer to the musical question, what the hell is that? In the real world, the charts for the week of July… er, for July 17 to July 23 will have an end date of August 8… can that be right??? Apparently, it can be so.
A week that begins on a Friday is bad craziness. The end of your life week is the near halfway point in your musical week: your life and your music has stop aligning. I didn’t really like the Tuesday start, but it was only a day and we could live with it, but FRIDAY??? It is completely wrong for the world’s body clocks. You start the work week with old music you are still digesting when at least before you had one last listen before you put the week to bed. The Monday was like a last chance saloon before Tuesday exploded and now??? Now you are still in the process of a week that mentally is passed. Everything you are listening to is old instantaneously.
The Friday to Thursday week is absolutely ridiculous. This is one of the worst changes to music since hip hop discovered it had to fill 70 minutes of music on a CD.
