I do not consider myself a master communicator. To be sure, communication is a subject I am deeply interested in, but it is of great personal interest because it has seldom gone well in my personal life. What I tend to find most fascinating is the way that terrible communication is something that is easy to find around me as well. What is it that makes communication difficult? This is something I wrack my head around, because I consider myself a person who is not particularly difficult to talk to if one wishes, though I am certainly nowhere near as communicative as I would wish sometimes. I think, in the main, that people communicate or do not communicate more based on themselves than on others though. We do not always judge whether or not communication will go well, and when we think we “need” to talk, others do not always agree.

As I note from time to time, I am a watcher of the Billboard charts. As is the case with much in life, there is a cadence to the Billboard charts. Every Monday the top ten for the next week’s chart is released, along with debuts and a few other songs. Then, by the time Tuesday morning rolls around on the West coast, the whole chart is released. Day by day one can look at the radio and streaming and sales numbers. On Friday one gets to hear new releases, and then on Sunday one gets the release of the top ten albums and the cycle begins again. Not all weeks are like this, but that is the general cadence, except on holidays when charts are delayed a day. What happened this week, though, is a case study in what not to do right. Let us examine how.

First, some of the component charts were released as normal, but then they were pulled back. This led to a lot of worries and concerns about the chart and the question about who was #1 and how this was going to be released. Late in the afternoon, there was a comment from Billboard saying that the chart was going to be released on May 18th. No reason was given for the delay, and throughout Tuesday Billboard continued to post articles that were unrelated to the upcoming chart week but without explaining why it is that the chart had been delayed, when it was going to be released, and whether there were any rule changes or something of that nature. This led those who look for the charts to comment, sometimes quite humorously, sometimes quite irritated, at the delay of Billboard in posting the chart and their reluctance to communicate what was going on. As I write this, it is now Wednesday morning. There has been no top ten or #1 reveal, much less the whole chart as was promised. What makes it hard to say somthing.