Just yesterday, Twitter shut down its #Music hub, a page that most Twitter users didn’t even know existed. But today comes news that Billboard has partnered with Twitter to launch the Billboard Twitter Real-Time Charts, a continuously updated list of what music people are talking about and sharing on Twitter. If that sounds sort of pointless (and it just may be), consider also that the chart will, according to the New York Times, only “monitor ‘positive’ mentions and filter out negative ones.” That means that, should Chris Brown do something terrible, all the tweets about his shenanigans won’t land him atop the Billboard Twitter Real-Time Chart, thus keeping him from the glory that comes with sitting atop an arbitrarily defined chart based on Twitter mentions.
Twitter’s head of music, Bob Moczydlowsky, says the company aims “to make Twitter the universal signal of real-time music measurement.” Moczydlowsky tells the Times that the company wants “music business decisions to be based on Twitter data,” even though Twitter followers are easily (and cheaply) purchased online. If all goes well, says Moczydlowsky, artists will “know that when they share songs and engage with their audience on Twitter, the buzz they create will be visible to fans and industry decision-makers.” Keep that in mind, Tyler The Creator.