Tag Archives: Black Eyed Peas

The Digital Footprints of the Year’s Highest Paid Musical Acts

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What is PeekScore?: PeekScore is a rank from 1 to 10, assigned to every person. The higher someone’s score, the “more important” they are on the web. In calculating your PeekScore and updating it often, PeekYou takes into account your known presence and activity on the Internet, including but not limited to; your blogging, participation in social networks, the number of your friends, followers, or readers, the amount of web content you create, and your prominence in the news.

The music industry may be in a bit of a shambles in recent years, but try telling that to the ten folks listed below; each of whom fell asleep last night on a pile of money and awoke this morning on a different, bigger pile of money. They earn their keep (and oh boy, do they!) making with the tunes, even while the record labels scramble and panic, and we civilians come to regard recorded music on demand as something akin to running water.

Forbes has lately been blessing we of the (at least relatively) broke and curious class with their annual “top paid” lists for this profession or that, and just a few weeks ago bestowed upon us mere fiscal mortals their list of the year’s highest paid musicians. As we’ve done previously with other such lists – and will likely do until there’s no internet left for us to do it upon/within – we’ve arranged these fabulous popsters not by their heights, weights, ages, or numbers of records sold, but according to the sizes of their digital footprints as measured upon our handy, dandy PeekScore scale.

Ms. Germanotta, unsurprisingly, tops our list. Sir Macca, only slightly more surprisingly – until you think about it for even five seconds – holds strong at number 2. The vocalist for the year’s biggest money makers, even for all his global fame and import, just hasn’t left his mark here in cyberspace in the way many of his less well financially rewarded peers have, and lurks shadily at the list’s bottom. We can’t say that we mind the internet being a reasonably Bono-light zone, but we know we don’t speak for all.

Talk to us in the comments section. Complain or praise us. Tell us what you think of Gaga, Elton, Bono, or whomever. Just say hello.

Rank Picture Name Earnings for Last
Year		 PeekScore
1

Lady Gaga $90 million 10.00 / 10
2

Paul McCartney $67 million 10.00 / 10
3

Dave Matthews (for The Dave Matthews Band) $51 million 10.00 / 10
4

Elton John $100 million 10.00 / 10
5

Justin Bieber $53 million 10.00 / 10
6

will.i.am (for The Black Eyed Peas) $61 million 9.63 / 10
7

Michael Bublé $70 million 9.01 / 10
8

Jon Bon Jovi (for Bon Jovi) $125 million 8.98 / 10
9

Don Henley (for The Eagles) $60 million 8.80 / 10
10

Bono (for U2) $195 million 8.40 / 10

The Digital Footprints of the Artists on the Billboard Top 10, for the Week of June 4, 2011

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What is PeekScore?: PeekScore is a rank from 1 to 10, assigned to every person. The higher someone’s score, the “more important” they are on the web. In calculating your PeekScore and updating it often, PeekYou takes into account your known presence and activity on the Internet, including but not limited to; your blogging, participation in social networks, the number of your friends, followers, or readers, the amount of web content you create, and your prominence in the news.

In the previous entry of this type, wherein we ambitiously introduced this as a recurring feature, we explained our feelings on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and the suspicious formulas which drive it to its conclusions. These thoughts were typed up by us as lifelong fans of popular music, and observers of our popular culture. We did not generously share with you our concerns to, by contrast, shine a favorable light upon the PeekScore blog simply because all of our lists are imbued with an integrity which Billboard’s Hot 100 sorely lacks (however much that is true). It is apples and oranges, we know, to compare the Hot 100 to what we do. Billboard’s chart is a song chart and our charts are, well, AWESOME. Nonetheless, it’s worth noting that while the Hot 100 seems to be somewhat arbitrary, if not quite random, our charts are impartial, and driven by a little thing called (oh, I don’t know…) computers. Also, unlike the Hot 100, PeekScore lists are a valid and accurate measure of the prominence, or even the cultural import, of artists and public figures (well, okay… at least in relation to to each other, and specifically relating to where their impact in cyberspace is concerned). If either our or Billboard’s findings are meaningful is up to you, and for history, to decide; it remains the case, though, that our charts are better… Not that we’d ever gloat about such a thing.

Regardless, the modern marketplace – and frankly, commonsense – simply commands an online presence for any pop musician, and each of the below listed artists have certainly, to varying degrees, pursued this truth (and wisdom) and have risen to the occasion. Our beloved Internet is sort of where it all happens in that industry, these days (and “where it all happens in that industry,” of course doesn’t mean only the good stuff; as the Internet is where the musicians’ goods are bought, sold, traded, borrowed, and on a very, very rare occasion even stolen).

There are few surprises to be found below – Britney, Gaga, and J-Lo, dominate in cyberspace just as they do out here (where we sit, as we type this) in the flesh and bone world of questionable touch and disagreeable odor. We recognize that in this case, Billboard’s chart – where Brit and J-Lo both have top ten hits in 2011 – is a touch more surprising.

If you want to see hacky swipes at Brit for her breakdown of a few years back, Chris Brown for being a violent creep, or Bruno Mars for his stupid hat, just click through to our last attempt at an entry of this sort. Commentary will return in subsequent posts, as new obnoxious digs at the innocent strangers adorning the charts occur to us. There is a purity and sincerity to our stupid insults of strangers, and we don’t wear the catty hat simply for its own sake. While we’re certain these men and women remain profoundly silly and fairly irritating, we’re in just too peaceful a place at the moment to much care. Their songs are hummable, their beats propulsive, and they make the kids happy. Do you honestly have a problem with that?

Anyway, enjoy this quickie post, and while you’re at it, enjoy your life.

A QUICK NOTE: This week’s Top 10 featured 4 songs with one or more guest artists appearing on them, for a total of 7 different guest artists in all. Those guests will not appear on this list. Also, for Black Eyed Peas, we had to choose one of the two members anyone actually gives a damn about. We had previously promised to rotate in Fergie this time around, but a) ultimately feel it’s most fair to stick with BEP’s highest PeekScored member as their representative on the chart, and b) really don’t suspect that anyone cares.

Rank Picture Name Chart Position/Song PeekScore
1

Britney Spears #8 with Till the World Ends 10 / 10
2

Lady Gaga #3 with The Edge of Glory 10 / 10
3

Chris Brown #9 with Look at Me Now (feat. Lil Wayne & Busta Rhymes) 10 / 10
4

Jennifer Lopez #6 with On the Floor (feat. Pitbull) 8.3 / 10
5

Bruno Mars #7 with the Lazy Song 9.81 / 10
6

will.i.am (for Black Eyed Peas) #5 (as part of The Black Eyed Peas) with Just Can’t Get Enough 9.63/ 10
7

Adele #1 with Rolling in the Deep 9.14 / 10
8

Jeremih #10 Down on Me (feat. 50 Cent) 8.06 / 10
9

Katy Perry #2 with E.T. (feat. Kanye West) 8.06 / 10
10

Pitbull #4 with Give Me Everything (feat. Ne-Yo, AfroJack & Nayer) 7.99 / 10

Billboard Top 10 Singles – Week of May 7, 2011

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There’s always been an element of magic to the Billboard Hot 100 Songs chart. While we’re romantics and have always been admirers of how – in our gloriously, simultaneously insane, profound, and inane culture – something as seemingly insubstantial as a pop record can define, or even transform, a moment in time, please make no mistake; we don’t here mean “magic” in the “wow, hearing this song magically transports me back to the summer of ’85… it was the first time I got plucked and folded, with ol’ sweet Lu from Bakersfield, and it was a time I won’t soon forget” sense. We mean that the chart’s findings themselves seem to be the product of wishes, elves, fairies, and favors, and not necessarily a solid and irrefutable reflection of a given week’s most “popular” songs.

While the ranking formula employed by Billboard to determine which songs will make the chart, and in what order, is sort of readily shared information, it’s all still rather vague. It’s claimed that the Hot 100 reflects a combination of sales, airplay, jukebox plays, and (in the modern era) downloads and streams, and the like. But the degrees to which each of these factors are weighed, or in what quantities they’re considered, or how these considerations may differ from song to song, or to what extent sleazy backroom chicanery may also play a part in determining a given song’s chart position, has always been quite unclear. Even if the process is one of unassailable integrity, in the absence of a consistent standard of quantifiable metrics applied across the board, there just has to sometimes be an element of guesswork and/or favoritism involved. When all is said and done, though, the public just accepts the chart’s results as fact; “this song is number one, and who really cares?”

Billboard’s Top 200 Album Chart abandoned ill-defined voodoo algorithms 20 years ago – since adopting the SoundScan sales tracking system – and now theoretically only reflects sales and sales alone. The songs chart remains an enigmatic list of mysterious calculations and dubious results. If we’re incorrect in this characterization of things, feel free to express your displeasure in the comments section. We hardly feel passionately about the above, as there are far greater things to worry about than the integrity of the Hot 100. All this chatter has a greater purpose, and is setting the stage – the stage which is the PeekScore blog – for something PeekScorish, as you’ve likely already guessed.

This fine day, PeekYou introduces what it hopes will be a weekly feature, a PeekScore assessment of the women and men whose songs grace the current week’s Billboard Top 10 Songs chart. While PeekScores apply to people not songs, we still think that there’s something to be gained* from running Billboard’s suspicious conclusions through our own indubitable analysis.

No lengthy diatribes necessary beyond this point (which is not to say they won’t be extant), as it’s all quite self-explanatory. Keep your feet on the ground, and keep reaching for the stars, and all that stuff, and keep checking in each week to see how that week’s charting artists fare on the PeekScore scale.

A QUICK NOTE: This week’s Top 10 featured 5 songs with one or more guest artists appearing on them, for a total of 7 different guest artists in all. Those guests will not appear on this list. Also, for Black Eyed Peas, we had to choose one of the two members anyone actually gives a damn about. In future weeks we may switch that up, but don’t believe our hard math will be too compromised by doing so.

*At a minimum, a pageview, or two, from when this entry comes up as a search engine result for some creepy dude’s late night Katy Perry query.

Picture Name Bio PeekScore


Chris Brown #10 with Look at Me Now (feat. Lil Wayne and Busta Rhymes):
While he tops our list, and of that he can be proud, Mr. Brown seems to be a young man with some issues, and a man who has exhibited some behaviors of which we do not approve. We’ll let the matter drop there, however, as we’re not sure we want to tangle with him. He has a tendency to respond to talk of his violent temper in rather dramatic and terrifying ways.


Jennifer Lopez #7 with On the Floor (feat. Pitbull): She seems to have rehabilitated her reputation and career with her recent stint on American Idol, perhaps even bucking what had been the conventional wisdom by doing so. But, as there are real problems in this world, we’ll pretend to have no thoughts on the matter.


Britney Spears #3 with When the World Ends (feat. Nicki Minaj and Ke$ha): Remember when all that crazy stuff happened with her and her untimely, oddly heartbreaking demise was accepted as an inevitability? Yeah, that was pretty weird. I guess it’s all okay now, though? That’s good.


Rihanna #6 with S&M: We’ve got no problem with Rhianna. Her records are usually okay, and we read that she does a lot of charity work for sick kids, which is pretty swell in PeekYou’s book.


Bruno Mars #5 with The Lazy Song: Somebody who’s both relatively new to the charts (as a solo artist, anyway), and not entirely worthless. A rare enough combination that we won’t even make a wisecrack about his stupid, ever-present hat (nor will we point out that he’s still mostly worthless).


Adele #2 with Rolling in the Deep: Everybody’s going on and on about “Adele-this,” and “Adele-that.” We’d join them, but we’d have to learn a damned thing about her to do so, and at the moment we’re too busy writing smart-alecky entries for the PeekScore blog.


will.i.am #4 with Just Can’t Get Enough (as part of The Black Eyed Peas): Man, that Wolverine movie really stunk up the joint. will.i.am was in that, wasn’t he?


Jeremih #9 with Down on Me (feat. 50 Cent): We’d never heard of him until just now, but apparently he has a song called Down on Me which the nice people seem to like.


Katy Perry #1 with E.T.: We think Neil Diamond’s Heartlight explored the same subject matter with more class and aplomb.


Ke$ha #8 with Blow: Regarding her “party girl” image, Ke$ha once had this to say: “If you mean ‘party girl’ like, at a club with a short skirt on with no underwear, then no… I don’t go to clubs. I try not to let my vagina hang out. I don’t do drugs, but I think I’m a walking good time and I talk kind of funny, so people think I’m messed up all the time. I’m not.” We think we should all follow her lead and at least try to not let our vaginas hang out. It’s just good practice.

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