Bad Boomer's Place

Oh Happy Day!  For months now I have been listening to Elvis Radio on Sirus/XM (13 on Sirus, 18 on XM).  All Elvis, all the time – 24/7/365!  I did not intend for this to be the only thing I listen too, but I am finding it difficult to listen to other stations.  There is just nothing as good.

I have been a Elvis fan my entire life, but I also like 50’s & 60’s rock & roll, Blues, and Smooth Jazz.  I am completely confident that Elvis is the best and most popular music personality of all time.  But you know how they always have surveys and contests about “the greatest” this and that, and the results always change.  This is because, as time goes on, conditions and the voters change.  Well, I have a proposal for a fair and accurate way to determine the ranking of artists in the the music industry (at least in modern times).

First of all, the terms “good” or “best” with regards to the performing arts, are completely subjective.  So when we say “best,” we can only mean the most liked by the most people. And because the population is constantly changing, and you cannot survey people who are no longer with us, this is difficult to determine.  But there is still a fair and accurate way to measure greatness.  It involves, of course, how much money people spend and spent.

So here is how to do it.  For each year since records of sales in the music industry have been kept, let’s say start with 1930, take the total revenue of the industry, and see what percentage of the total each artist accounted for that year.  Do this for every year from 1930 to 2009, and then add up all the percentage points for each artist.  Then rank the artists according to their total points.

This method accounts for inflation, increasing population, longivity, and all other variables that have been changing over the years.  Using percentages on an annual basis does this.

If this could be done, I KNOW that Elvis Presley would have the most points by a large margin.

BB