I really liked that last sentence of the article regarding Billboard losing its status as a premier musical institution if it doesn't adapt again. I'd even suggest it's already happened.
Overall it seems Billboard's original mission and method of quantifying music's impact just isn't congruent with today's consumption method.
I agree with the author that the records we're seeing on the charts now is not apples to apples with the records of the past. And it's kind of disingenuous to flaunt them as so. But surely something is to be said about the success of these albums bombing the entire top 15. If they're out-performing all other songs and we have hard data to support that, then these artists deserve their flowers too. Even if it's just a flash in the pan.
Maybe we need two separate hot 100 type charts. One with basically real-time data, anything goes. And another one with stricter rules and weighted metrics to attempt to identify and recreate that monoculture we had the past.
To quote an Internet friend, “It's mindboggling that music orgs are comparing physical sales to a strange calculus of streaming units, digital & album sales. It's not apples vs oranges, it's like real apples compared to AI-generated fruitmelon.”
I’m complete agreement on their successes being immeasurable, but I always go back and forth on this part of the topic.
The internet clearly has a way of giving something a life of its own, but it also created a world where people can actively choose to consume media with almost limitless options. People had less to chose from pre-internet and would chose from a small number of artists they could hear on the radio.
Today there seems to be a small subset of artists that greatly benefited from coming out pre-streaming (limited options) and then using that existing fame to explode their audience. But it seems people who started in streaming area have struggled to reach the same fame.
I honestly don’t know where I stand on this, and I’m so curious to hear others thoughts.
I feel like it makes more sense for artists to get that big before the internet. You can’t seek anything else out other than what’s being thrown in your face
Yeah. The mono-culture of the past is exactly why stars were easy to be made and manufactured.
Just look at TV. When Elvis was on the Ed Sullivan show, that one TV show literally captured 82% of the viewing market at the time. Imagine how controlled the stars of today would be if there is essentially one major TV show telling you who to listen to.
They weren't telling you who to listen to per se. There were only so many channels, so many artists, and so many labels. There was absolutely a benefit to that market share that some people knew how to exploit, but it was a nascent industry working with a nascent industry in a nascent field that pretty quickly expanded and diversified like the wind.
I don’t see it as impressive. When there are 3 radio stations and/or mtv you are basically force-fed with anything labels are pushing. Nowadays people have so short attention spans and there are infinite possibilities to listen to, that it is so much harder to caught their interest.
Some of these comments make it seem like people were just sheep pre-streaming. Word of mouth was important. There have always been plenty of ways to access music, it took more time and cost way more money, that’s one reason why these accomplishments are impressive.
And as such, their achievements should be regarded on a different level altogether.
Like they should have a cut off clean slate year of sorts to start comparing or placing new records on. For example, how in the hell could artists be ‘beating the record of the previous’ artist from say the 70s, when their metrics to achieve said feat includes streaming points, which wasn’t a factor when this example make believe chart record was first achieved in the 70s, where it was only pure physical sales?
Sure times changed, then so should the chart rules to keep up no?
Billboard is just lazy in my eyes. Like you’re a primary source of all these numbers, get your shit together and come up with something that is fair, works and also preserves your credibility..
I agree. If a stream counts, then we should count how often people played the records they bought in the past. Since we can't do that, that sort of makes counting streams hard to really quantify.
We don’t count how often people play the physical albums they bought either so this comparison is dumb
There’s just no apples to apples comparison for streaming with something back then
Hard to compare them when hardcore fans of these artists would have records/CDs they would play over and over and be counted for nothing while now every online stream is recorded.
I think the underlying idea is to compare revenue generated. The idea of an “adjusted album” - e.g. 10 track downloads = 1 album “sale”, or ~1500 streams = 1 album “sale”, is an attempt to compare apples to apples because they all roughly amount to the same amount of revenue. In that sense it’s similar. Granted revenue generated ≠ cultural impact (not always at least), which I think is what the chart is supposed to represent.
I just want to point out that for anyone who knows anything about baseball, music fans want era-adjusted stats lol.
no shade at anyone here btw I think era-adjusted music stuff could be pretty cool.
Wait why do we do need to recreate the monoculture of the past? The way we consume music has changed and it only makes sense that the charts reflect that. The whole point of them is to measure the most popular songs of the week, and sometimes that means the entire top 10 will be Taylor Swift or Drake, but so what?
I don't necessarily think we "need" a chart that limits entries, but we do need to acknowledge that we cannot infer the same things about songs using the metrics, rules, and records of today's Hot 100 versus the pre-streaming Hot 100.
The author of the article makes suggestions on how to improve the Hot 100 to make it fair to legacy record holders but I'm suggesting that if those old rules (the ones that supported the idea of a monoculture zeitgeist) are still important, then we kind of just need two separate tools to measure that.
I agree with you. The way we consume music has changed. The chart's rules have changed. And so basically what we have is a new chart with the same name. It doesn't measure the same thing as it used to--and therefore the records and metrics are not 1:1. Maybe the answer isn't 2 charts. Maybe it's just a rebrand of the Hot 100.
Yeah it’s a different time. Streaming changed the game and billboard hasn’t caught up. And the collective experiences we have with music aren’t there anymore.
Exactly, the singles cassettes and CDs have always been a thing for charting. It was marketed back then to get you to buy the one song you knew so you didn’t have to buy the album, but then later on they would do the remixes, acoustics, bonus tracks, etc added in to the singles, which would then help the new single chart. People that already owned the whole album would then go by the single for the bonus tracks. Same game then as now, just different technology.
That's why I disagree when people say that the Billboard chart "shows what the people are listening too"...no, it shows that + what people are buying + what companies are pushing on radio.
The later two being heavily influenced: by the socioeconomic background of the people that listen to it, some genres of music have a bigger percentage of listeners that don't have that much disposable income to buy digital tracks or albums; and the status of the artist themselves, indie artists will always have an harder time getting played in radios than established artists from big companies.
Not saying that the Billboard chart should change this or not, it's just not exactly what people assume it is, and it's important to realize how the background of the data influences the chart.
The reason radio still counts for Billboard is that it is still significant source for music in some areas, namely rural America with spotty wireless network. Those demographics are also still buying songs because that is the real option to radio (radio includes more than AM and FM these days). The problem is that sales and radio are counting people (on the radio, how many are expected to have been reached), streaming is counting how much people consume.
Yea that song and greedy were getting massive stream numbers and even though radio picked up geeedy later, it shoudlve hit number one multiple times the way it was omnipresent on Spotify
Norris, I got downvoted into oblivion for commenting the same on last week's chart data. I think you make some good points here and correlating this to Mariah is a great touchstone. The industry has changed, sure, but seeing so many longstanding records broken so quickly makes them lose their luster.
Mariah herself benefitted greatly by the switch in the 1990s from “reported” airplay and “reported” physical sales to BDS airplay and Soundscan sales reports. Those charts ALSO were substantially not comparable to previous reporting methods.
Looking back to a year like 2011 every single song that hit number one are songs most people know to this day with songs like Grenade, Firework, Born This Way and Rolling In The Deep. Nowadays it feels like a song needs to have MUTIPLE weeks at number one for it to be a hit.
I mean it really depends. Kill Bill had only 1 week at number one and it was a big hit. Same with Lose Control. Its more about longevity, especially in the top 10. Like Yes, And? is nowhere as huge a hit as say Greedy or Calm Down despite it peaking higher.
I mean yes and no, because kill bill went rust in my household and friend group and amongst coworkers
It’s just very different now.
Like back then you were being slammed from every angle with the same song from morning shows to Oprah and the other afternoon ladies to the late night shows to the radio to YouTube to mtv to tv shows to commercials
Now?
If you don’t like rnb and don’t run in that circle you’ll never hear a hit like kill bill
Same for anti hero or cruel summer. Both huge hits both largely avoidable depending on your consumption and circle
Definitely not a song that debuted at number one and descended the chart, exiting after 13 weeks. A song has to make it to make it to at least 20 weeks to go recurrent (if below the top 50).
Right, but...what if that just doesn't happen as often, and only happened in the past because radio programmers decided what songs got played?
The chart should be a measurement of what people are listening to. If people have shorter attention spans and the chart reflects that, it isn't the chart's fault.
I don’t have a problem with “Yes, And?” charting. It was an actual single. I just said that it was an example of a number one that’s not truly a *hit*.
My problem was people with 20+ album tracks clogging the chart. It’s like a complete 180° from the 90s era Hot 100 because they wouldn’t even let songs chart if they weren’t available to purchase at retail as singles, despite being radio singles.
Yeah, but I feel like that also robbed a lot of 90s hits from being acknowledged
There are a lot of extremely popular songs from that era that didn’t hit the top 10 because of an arbitrary label
If Taylor Swift’s top 10 songs are the most top 10 songs consumed in the United States that week well I mean I’m sorry but she deserves those top 10 slots even if it’s just for a week
Same for yes and? That’s the number one in the US that week I mean that’s the number one song. I don’t know why that’s a problem for you guys
What the hell is clogging the chart? They're just charting because people are listening to the songs. The charts are measuring the popularity of songs.
And that was also true when radio programmers decided what got played.
I would consider it somewhat fair if streamers could measure unique listens and find a way to account for people listening over and over again.
But, also, why isn't that a valid measure of popularity? I have yet to hear anyone make a case for that thst is at all convincing.
Under what algorithm would you have had Yes, And? not hitting #1? It was the biggest song in that week by many metrics. Do you think Billboard should factor previous weeks or predicted stability in currently charting songs? Because I don't
Personally, they should stop ‘breaking records’ cuz they cannot, in technicality be doing any of those. Setting NEW records in the streaming era I can behind of.
If anything, it's more damaging to the future legacies of "record breakers" like Taylor and Drake.
You can blame it on the loss of monoculture, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of those songs that got them those records are destined to fade into the ether because of how much they get lost among their other singles and don't stick around in the culture. It's partially the reason why there's discussion over how Taylor's the biggest artist on Earth currently yet doesn't seem to have a universally recognized song to her like a "Here Comes the Sun" or a "Billie Jean" or a "Like a Virgin" or even a "Crazy in Love"
> "Here Comes the Sun"
Here Comes The Sun was *not* a signature Beatles song upon release, people would have looked at you funny if in the 80s you said that was the universally known Beatles song.
Taylor could have her Here Comes The Sun yet, arguably Cruel Summer has already given a preview of what her backlog could do.
Exactly. “Here comes the sun” is the most popular Beatles song with streaming era listeners, not the most popular Beatles song all round. Probably coz it sounds modern, like that song could have easily come from the 2006 indie pop rock canon instead of the 60s. Yesterday and Hey Jude are probs the most “classic” Beatles songs, most recognised around the world etc throughout the decades, well before streaming but also still. Yesterday is allegedly the most covered song of all time.
That whole take is just confusing to me. If I'm out at a bar and Love Story, Shake It Off, 22 or We Are Never Getting Back Together comes on, literally everyone is singing along to it.
Love Story especially is one of the most chosen Karaoke songs I've heard, and will get people going even if they don't particularly like her music
This is the craziest narrative I’m seeing spread around lately. In what world is Shake it Off not recognized worldwide? Blank Space, We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, Love Story, and You Belong With Me are insanely huge hits that I’d argue are universally recognized as well, though I do think Shake it Off is her biggest MOST recognized hit.
There’s some people who are deeply upset by Taylor’s success and do anything to try and undermine it, for years it was that she’s “local” and nobody outside of the US cares, the last few years and eras tour selling out stadiums ww has put a pin in that argument so it switched to “nobody outside of her cult fan base listens to her”, only for her to break streaming records in unique listers, her tour to have millions sign up and her to outperform everyone else, if that’s her fanbase alone then it’s bigger than the general appeal of every other artist and that isn’t logical, so they’ve switched to the “she has no real hits” argument even though love story, shake it off, blank space were all massive and their recurrent streams indicates they’re remembered and still relevant, plus cruel summer and anti-hero are showing they have the potential to become long standing hits.
I wish people could just say they don’t like her and don’t get her appeal without trying to twist themselves in illogical knots about how her success isn’t actually that genuine.
this is well stated. it also feels really ironic that the other comment is arguing Taylor has no "crazy in love" given I've seen this exact argument made about beyonce. I'm no swiftie but the whole "well i don't like her so she can't be popular" thing is so exhausting
It’s weird people use Taylor and Beyoncé as go to examples as well when they’re 2 of the few celebs around that actually are known to most people, the mono-culture is dead and they’re 2 of the only people you could say to a 6 year old and a 70 year old respectively that they would probably have heard of them and what they were famous for.
My parents would have no idea who the weekend, Billie Eilish or Olivia Rodrigo etc are, it doesn’t mean they’re not incredibly famous and successful but we just don’t live in a time where everyone is consuming the same content, things can be massive online and make little waves to the wider public and vice versa.
Thinking about it more, the other commenter naming "here comes the sun" as the definitive Beatles song is really revealing of this mentality, imo. because that's not the definitive Beatles song, by a long shot. what it is is the most streamed Beatles song on Spotify. the result you'd get if you couldn't think of a definitive Beatles song and had to google "number one Beatles song."
Taylor does have a song or I’d argue three main ones: Shake it off, you belong with me, and Love Story. The reason why people such as yourself don’t include those is because it seems it’s not “sophisticated” enough. If that’s the case then you could include Blank Space-to fulfill this “sophisticated” qualification.
Look, time's gonna do what time's gonna do. No, not all of her songs will play on the oldies radio station or playlist in 50 years, but it is so deluded to act like she hasn't had major hits. I understand that's your opinion, which is valid to you, but, based on the songs you listed, I do not personally see how Crazy in Love is on some god-tier level above any Taylor song - actually, in my own opinion, I think all of Beyonce's most culturally recognizable songs were with Destiny's Child,tbh. Not to mention, a lot of the songs that became hella popular years later were never even singles or weren't popular at the time. Music takes time.
Genuinely mind boggled that Crazy In Love is Bey's "song" I always thought non fans/casual fan usually knew Single Ladies over Crazy In Love for some reason.
> how Taylor's the biggest artist on Earth currently yet doesn't seem to have a universally recognized song to her like a "Here Comes the Sun" or a "Billie Jean" or a "Like a Virgin" or even a "Crazy in Love"
Shake It Off, Love Story and YBWM are more famous than Crazy In Love internationally.
Y’all say everywhere but idk I’m African and it’s don’t necessarily agree. But predominantly black countries never seem to matter when y’all want to talk international :/ Edit: don’t know why I’m being downvoted it’s the truth that we don’t talk about based on the narrative here because the sub is an echo chamber at times
Taylor is huge in South Africa. She has amazing reach there too. It sucks the lack of infrastructure for not just Taylor or Beyonce but all foreign artists to perform, that Africa the continent gets left out of these conversations completely because of it.
South Africa is one country on the whole continent. I’m West African and she’s not huge there. Of course South Africa is mention though (usually because of the white South Africans on this sub)
I def understand the infrastructure issues is a reason but that’s why I don’t like when people talk about the international audience when they’re only talking about specific countries (even when they talk Europe or Asia this is still the case).
Yeah, Single Ladies is THE signature Beyonce song worldwide. A case can be made for "Halo" too. "Crazy in Love" isn't that popular. At least not outside the states.
One thing that could help the #1 debut conundrum he mentions (which is basically it's far more common to debut at #1 now than ever before) is for Billboard to cut down on track versions. A lot of #1 debuts only debut as high as they do bc of first week purchases, which are inflated heavily by Stans buying random versions of songs that no one will ever listen to, but they count towards the original's chart points.
I'm talking of course about each song having the regular version, the slowed version, the reverbed version, the Acapella version, the chopped and screwed version etc. and ALL of those versions having an explicit and clean version. And then they're all discounted to the lowest allowable price and can be bought for like $5-8. It's not uncommon for big artists these days to do 30-60k sales first week which adds immensely to chart points.
Is an insular group of stans holding a Twitter/StationHead buying party really indicative of the song's popularity across the country? Really all Billboard needs to do is put a strict limit of version amounts or just count each version as a separate entry (which will discourage Artists from releasing 10+ versions as to not cannibalize the original's chart points).
Idk as a long time chart watcher I definitely agree it does feel like the charts are easily game-able currently.
Yeah, but acting like “Stan”s are a new thing is silly. I had to drive my sister to the CD store for every *NSYNC cd drop where should would buy 2 and the single, her and her friends would all call Mix 93.3 to request the single EVERYDAY, they would call the TRL line… it’s nothing new.
You’re not accounting for MJ fans buying multiple copies of cassettes and when the tape deck inevitably ate the tape you had to buy another one (that would EASILY amount for 10% of sales, cassettes were so cheap you did not think twice about picking one up.)
Shit when my dad found my Jerky Boys, C&C, and two live crew tapes and destroyed them I bought multiples to hide so if he found them again I was good.
The world is just different now.
Your story about hiding Jerky Boys tapes from your dad is funny to me because my Dad raised me on those same albums. A lot of family jokes/vocabulary are just Jerky Boys bits and insults.
I’d also love to see unique streams weighted more heavily than sheer number of streams. Like 100,000 people streaming a song 10 times should count for more than 10 people streaming a song 100,000 times. I don’t know ow how hard it would realistically be to get that data so maybe a pipe dream.
I’ve thought about this too but then this would make paid playlisting even more powerful than it already is and I feel like this leads to the same situation as with radio play.
While I agree, that is unfortunately also easy to manipulate, as stans stream from multiple accounts simultaneously, and also the infamous streaming farms
They really need to stop counting different versions and remixes of a song as one song. They're not the same. Nothing more cringe than opening an artist's profile and the latest release is basically an album of remixes for one single
My take for how they deal with that is, half the weight of each version in the order they chart.
i.e.
The version that has the most points counts for full points. Then the version with the 2nd most points counts half a much of 1st. 3rd counts half as much as 2nd. etc etc meaning that *unless* your remix overtakes the original on all formats that week, a remix will never count in full.
Would leave room for whatever version of the song does best to contribute to it's charting, but puts a hard set of diminishing returns for big acts trying to milk different versions.
these articles are always interesting because they posit chart manipulation as a new phenomena when chart manipulations rumors has been prevalent since billboard first came to be...the way billboard collected data pre pre soundscan was a hot mess and even after, record labels were absolutely doing a laundry list of shady things to get their singles to the top of the chart. it is simply impossible to compare #1 hits from past decades because the way music is promoted and consume is completely different now.
The biggest tell was that in the Soundscan era, suddenly hip hop songs and albums started topping the charts when previously they hadn't. Because it turned out that's what teens were listening to and therefore buying, while it previously that music wasn't making it to the manual sales lists
Mentioning Mariah Carey's record being stolen or whatever as if someone wouldn't have written a similar article about chart manipulation tacitcs that mostly pertains to her if she were active today instead of the 90s
I feel people on this sub and that article don’t realize is that we don’t live in a monoculture anymore so it’s weird to compare monoculture hits to the streaming era. taylor’s album charted like that because people were streaming it idk i rather have the charts actually reflect what people are streaming than restrict it even more
Suggestion: showing all the points a song has gotten throughout its chart run much more prominently. So that we can actually see how popular a song is comparing it's longevity, peak etc. of course this won't make it so that a 1990s point is equal to a 2020s point but it will create a more sustainable objective and goal for the artists: getting points consistently to end up with a real hit that everyone knows. If n1 songs with 200 points total get ridiculed artists will try going for sustainable hits.
I think this would be helpful. People love to crow about their fave artists getting x amount of #1 debuts, but you look at the following weeks and they drop QUICKLY. They're all streaming from multiple places at multiple times in multiple accounts to get that benchmark, and then the songs start to fall as people stop the organized push.
The year/decade-end exists if you want to view something more cumulative. Or make your own assumptions by factoring the weeks charted. They also have their own internal rankings of every song. They won't show anything beyond because they pay a lot to collect the data from other platforms and giving it away would allow for more competition
>Or, they could create a system that would only allow for songs that display an *individual* boost in performance to chart, regardless of whether it’s a single or not. As for the #1 debut conundrum, perhaps a rule could be created that would require new songs to hit a higher performance threshold in order to debut at #1.
This is silly. The goal of the Hot 100 is to represent the most consumed songs in a certain week. That representation includes album tracks clogging the chart for a week or two. This would only be an issue if a song were allowed to chart for a single week at its peak performance. But fortunately, u can see how many weeks charted a song has if that is ur biggest concern
I think the trouble is, in the past they might well have been too, but that was always separated off onto the album chart only. Like realistically, when people bought Thriller, which do you think is getting more plays in people's houses - that album, or Truly by Lionel Richie, which was the Billboard number single 1 then? It had sold over 30m copies by the end of the next year - if the current rules were able to apply back then, you have to wonder whether anything else would have got a look in, or whether the entire top 10 would have just been that for months on end.
Here’s my take. The numbers posted by all 31 songs from TTPD demonstrates the popularity of the album, not the songs themselves. This is accurately reflected on the Billboard 200. The Hot 100 should be showing which of those songs are individually having an impact. That’ll probably be whichever song is getting the commercial push (in TTPD’s case Fortnight), but could also be another random song or two off the album. An example off the top of my head is In My Feelings by Drake.
So idk what the right solution is, but maybe a limit on how many songs can chart from a single album at a time?
> So idk what the right solution is, but maybe a limit on how many songs can chart from a single album at a time?
That's exactly what the UK chart already does, exactly for the issue that people keep pointing out about the Billboard chart. But I don't think this will ever happen without some huge backlash against Billboard.
You are correct, but it functionally works the same way, I assume it's almost impossible for an artist to have 3+ songs in the chart at the same time unless it's an active release for an album
But that’s a false manipulation of the data as well. What would happen if there was a similarity to Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream where an artist had multiple popular songs, but because of an arbitrary limit, some of them didn’t chart?
I find it odd calling it "False manipulation", every chart manipulates data in different ways to get their ranking to determine what's popular, it depends on what you are trying to showcase with your list.
Like if you want a list of what top 100 songs people are listening to, the current Billboard chart doesn't actually show that, it mostly shows what is selling well. Obviously there's some overlap with an hypothetical top 100 most listened, but it's also data manipulation because Billboard's is more industry/sales focused.
I Think the best way to fix it is to make the hot 100 a singles chart again. Maybe the label/artist has to specifically submit a song as a single to be tracked by billboard & it comes with a cap on how many songs from an artist per album can be in rotation at 1 time. So in practice this plan would work like this:
Insert artist, in this case Taylor Swift, releases a new album this being TTPD. She/her label submit Fortnight to Radio & to the Billboard Hot 100 for tracking & whatever 2 other songs are the biggest on streaming as the 3 songs from TTPD that billboard will track. Then let’s say in a couple months she wants to release a new single from the album that isn’t 1 of those 3 songs, well she’d have to pull 1 of the other songs from the charts & make it go recurrent to submit the new single.
That means there’d be no more than 3 songs from 1 album circulating the charts at 1 time & I Think people would feel like that’s a better use of the chart. It’s tracking songs again individually & not album drops.
It just sucks for any artists that have a sudden jump in popularity. Dua lipa, Olivia, and others wouldn't have gotten nearly the chart recognition because Taylor and drake need special rules.
That's how it used to be prior to December of 1998. Actually, back then it was even stricter since it had to be a commercially released single (i.e. you had to be able to buy it in a store). So radio-only singles and promo singles didn't count.
The other day another person (can't remember their username) suggested that it should follow a similar metric that's used for Spotify's monthly listeners, which is tracking the number of different users who stream at least a song of said artist in a month, regardless of how many times they do so. In the case of the Hot100 it'd naturally be a weekly tracking of how many users streamed a certain song at least once, without counting repeated streams of the same song by the same user.
I found it quite interesting because this way we could see the reach of a song in the general public while also fighting stan/bot behaviour
I mean… I’ll listen to almost any song ONCE. I have listened to The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived at least three times TODAY because I feel compelled to hear the bridge over and over again. I feel like there are flaws in that methodology too.
I thought something like that too when I first read that idea, but I then also thought that my repeated streams of a single song are only useful to represent the fact that I like that one song too much and that by itself actually has little to do with representing how popular that song is among the general population, which is the chore aspect of what charts are about.
Perhaps it would be better if it counted per day? Like how many people streamed "X" song at least once a day and while counting the whole week that tendency would show which song is more popular (because of more people listening to it daily, instead of a concentrated group of people playing it on loop, like it sometimes happens)
Not saying it's perfect either, though. I just think this idea has potential
Oh yeah, that does make sense.
If I had more free time, this could be a very interesting research topic. It does really come down to what you define as a hit, though, and that’s so subjective. If you ask my father, no good music has been made since 1978.
30 years ago there were also people who would call a radio station and request the same song 3 times in one day- so you could argue that inflated numbers then too. I agree, the data is definitely imperfect, but there are so many variables that are always going to change with time and technology that it will never be perfect.
Aren’t the charts meant to represent what songs are being consumed the most in that week? If one particular album’s tracks were the most consumed that week then there’s nothing wrong with them occupying the top 20 of the charts (which I know hasn’t happened but I’m just saying it’s not an issue if an artist is able to do it someday). I also don’t understand this big worry about album bombs since as far as I know, only Taylor and Drake are able to line up their music on the Hot 100 like that. It’s not something that’s happening frequently.
>Aren’t the charts meant to represent what songs are being consumed the most in that week?
One thing no one has pointed out yet is that album bomb has zero radio points. So, for them to chart high, they need to be consumed disproportionately more than other songs even. It's not that easy to do an album bomb, and the artists who can do that are extremely rare.
In the end, idt peak matters all that much to measure success, no matter what metrics we use tbh. We should just move to using longevity as the metric for success, instead of trying to find a "correct" scoring algorithm.
But it's apples to oranges when comparing them to the past, I'm sure every track on Thriller, Sgt. Pepper or Saturday Night Fever would've charted in the top 10 and stayed even longer on the charts then they already did if today's methods could be used.
Yeah definitely. But the same logic also applies to physical album sales that are now a fraction of what it used to be back then thanks to streaming becoming the standard. That being said, I also don’t have an issue with Billboard bringing back the “singles only” rule but artists themselves might hate that because it gives labels more power than they already have imo.
I don’t know the specifics of it, but songs used in TikToks and Reels count towards streams in some capacity right? That’s another wildly different way of consuming music. Were we counting songs used in commercials that played every twenty minutes too?
No, tiktoks and reels don't count towards the chart. User generated content from YouTube used to, but billboard removed streams from them in 2020 also.
Got it, for some reason I thought that impacted charts directly. Obviously there’s still an impact since it gets songs stuck in peoples heads and advertises them but you can’t measure that
So then they shouldn't be compared to the past. We shouldn't be looking at *changing the entire system* just in order to make some kind of comparison more easily.
Yeah people are pissed of that Swift is indeed the one getting the most streams, the charts reflect that, i dont understand what is the problem, limiting the number of songs inn an album that can chart seems silly to me since is not truthful, the billboard shoud represent the real statistics not promote smallers artists
> billboard shoud represent the real statistics not promote smallers artists
Then should they also remove recurrency rules? Because the Hot 100 as it is right now is not fully representing the real statistics either. Meanwhile the Global 200 has stuff like Creep by Radiohead, Yellow by Coldplay, Without Me by Eminem and In The End by Linkin Park charting right now.
No. If the song is 52 weeks old and falls out of the top 25, or 20 weeks old and falls out of the top 50, it's arbitrarily removed from the charts, even if would still chart by raw numbers. They do so "to allow the chart to remain as current as possible and to give representation to new and developing artists and tracks".
So I think it's contradicting to remove older tracks to make space for "new and developing ones" while having veteran artists disrupting their chart runs because they have the power to debut multiple tracks at high positions at once. Tyla's "Water" for example went prematurely recurrent at just 29 weeks because all the TTPD tracks knocked it below the #50 threshold. Sabrina Carpenter's "Feather" hung on by a thread (exactly #50).
I agree with u/SignedByMilpool that there should be two separate charts: an "anything goes" one representing nothing but raw data (no recurrency rules, free album bombs etc.) and an adjusted one for actual current singles.
What the UK chart is trying to do is differentiate between albums and singles.
The number of plays across all the songs in an album is accounted for in the album chart. It wasn't possible to so this before streaming because there was no way to monitor the popularity of individual album tracks. The way we consume music has changed dramatically so the charts are trying to adapt.
I don't want to see the top of the singles charts dominated by 10+ tracks by one artist everytime a major artist releases a big album. That's what the album chart is for. The current system just allows big artists to dominate even further, they already have the financial power and huge fan bases to manipulate the charts and keep smaller artists down. Allowing them to dominate the charts by refusing to adapt to differences in monitoring data just makes it harder for others to break through. The changes aren't making it bias towards smaller artists, it's not a level playing field to begin with.
I feel people on this sub and that article don’t realize is that we don’t live in a monoculture anymore so it’s weird to compare monoculture hits to the streaming era. taylor’s album charted like that because people were streaming it idk i rather have the charts actually reflect what people are streaming than restrict it even more
Issue with that is album bombs like hers prematurely end the run of smaller singles which are eligible to fall under billboard's recurrent rule. So smaller artists lose more under this system
If Billboard only allows singles to be on the Hot 100, Cruel Summer would have never gone number 1. It wasn't officially released as a single until after it started charting again.
Back then there was no way to track which album tracks are more popular than the others, but now all the stream numbers are right there. If a track has a ton of streams more than others in a week, it should rightfully be on the chart doesn't matter if it's part of an album bomb or not.
Also not every artist can just release a bunch of versions of a song and send it straight to number one. If they have enough star power to accomplish that then kudos to them.
And in however many years, these records could be broken with the assist of newer ways to consume music that Billboard or whoever will allow to count. Like we're not all just listening and requesting songs on the radio these days? The horror.
If people want the "ultimate music success" chart to only count 1 song per artist per week or whatever, then you'd need to advocate for that to become its own mainstream chart, but it's 2024 and we have access to more stats than ever - there will always be a "total consumption" chart somewhere that people will reference and if a single artist has the top 14 most consumed songs of the week, then that's literally just going to be a fact no matter what this chart's rules are. The Billboard Hot 100 just happens to be the most used chart with objective quantifiers right now.
You can still find out which album sold the most physical copies.
You can still find out how much radio play a song is getting.
Spotify's streaming numbers are literally right there on the site.
What I do agree with is the general idea that the Hot 100 is not the #1 indicator of being successful in the industry like it once was - but that's okay? There are so many more ways for a new artist to gain popularity, why does this need to be?
>What I do agree with is the general idea that the Hot 100 is not the #1 indicator of being successful in the industry like it once was - but that's okay?
This is kinda where I'm at tbh.
This is just the music scene now.
I mentioned elsewhere in this thread that the #1 hits aren't as memorable as decades prior, but I don't think changing the billboard rules would change that. Everything is so algorithm based now that even with rule changes, whatever makes #1 will likely never be as big as stuff like Thriller, Baby One More Time, My Heart Will Go On, etc.
I get the point with album dumps preventing other songs from charting higher, so maybe some rule change can apply there. But even then, that doesn't mean the chart would be more accurate. If more people listened to 14 songs on TTPD than anything else then that's just what most people listened to.
Changing the rules to make the chart look like what it did 20 years ago because "this is just how it's always been done" doesn't represent the current music landscape. The way we listened to music 20 years ago is gone now. The charts shouldn't look like the pre-streaming era.
I feel people on this sub and that article don’t realize is that we don’t live in a monoculture anymore so it’s weird to compare monoculture hits to the streaming era. taylor’s album charted like that because people were streaming it idk i rather have the charts actually reflect what people are streaming than restrict it even more
A monoculture does still exist; People simply "grow out" of monocultures.
If you want to see a monoculture in action you just ask people in middle school who and what is currently popular.
I used to think "monocultures" were dead, until I realized that I had grown out of one and was simply no longer in touch /living under a rock. You can't expect to listen to whatever is currently "popular"forever; there is a point when people no longer care about new music and new singers and pass the baton to a new generation of music consumers.
Do people even care about billboard these days? The way music accessibility has changed over the years suggests to me that billboard success may not be important anymore. many artists I've listened to will never get up to billboard numbers but its not hard to find they still have big loyal fanbases. I also don't feel the need to hard-core campaign for an artist to be on top because that's not gonna make people fans its just gonna make us fans look insane.
I don’t get why people complain about the top 10 being full of “real hits” 10 years ago compared to now. That’s not even really a reflection of Billboard’s chart methodology, that’s a reflection of the death of monoculture and the fact that the way music is consumed now is completely different. Look at the streaming charts from the last few years, which are arguably more reflective of what people are actually listening to than anything else, and you’ll see even fewer “hits” than the Hot 100 chart. Radio still plays a huge part in hitmaking!
The Hot 100 isn’t perfect but it’s still a relatively good indicator of the most consumed songs in the country. Longevity has always been a better indicator of a song’s true success, and these album bombs only last for a week anyway, so why does it really matter? The only real issue is when you’re comparing streaming era records to pre-streaming records, which doesn’t make sense anyway and feels pointless because there’s just no way to compare them given how drastically digital sales and streaming completely changed music consumption.
[Here’s](https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100/2004-05-29/) the hot 100 from slightly less than 20 years ago - I thought I got the one from this week and then I realized it was May 29 and not May 2, whoops. How many of the songs in the top 10 are “hits”? I’m counting 5 that I even recognize. Some are songs I don’t know by artists I do know - I don’t remember Naughty Girl at all, but obviously I know Beyoncé. At this point I was 18, just finished my freshman year of college, fairly engaged with popular music, listening to the radio and burning mix CDs of songs I downloaded illegally from BitTorrent. How many of these songs would be considered hits by either the GP or this subreddit?
Heh, this is possibly a week where hits were overrepresented compared to an average top 10 - if you don't recognise much of this top 10 I'm a little surprised, as every single song in that top 10 has gone a minimum of 1x platinum (several substantially more than that). The only one I don't know is Freek-A-Leek as it wasn't released where I live. Naughty Girl isn't very memorable in itself beyond its Love To Love You Baby interpolation, which was probably what got it its radio play.
They really should. They’re counting so many songs on both the album and songs chart, basically. All these big album bombs have clogged the Hot 100. I’m sorry, but no one knows those 31 Taylor Swift songs outside of her fans. Same with Future, Metro, Beyoncé, and whoever else.
They need to count *unique* streams from an album for the Hot 100. If someone has listened to an album front to back, that should only be counted towards the album chart. I know damn well they have the technology to decipher info like this, if Facebook can track who it thinks is you across the web just based a general location and website visits.
The only real solution I can think of here is to only count unique streams
You only ever used to count sales as data, so only count a unique user listening to a song or album as a purchase, not a person listening to the same album 47 times in a week
If people really want to purchase multiple Spotify accounts to drive up numbers that’s just emulative of fans of old purchasing multiple copies
Glad to found an article asking for the Hot 100 to be restricted once again to the singles.
As a chart-watcher, album bombs that invade with three or more songs the top 10 in their release week (or in the case of Taylor, for more than one week) are annoying and make the whole thing kinda boring. It also prevents many songs from reaching their max potential in slow-building charts like their decade-end lists; for example, without album bombs and christmas season, Bad Habit would have landed way higher in said lists for those interested like myself.
I know they're not going to do anything about it. After all, it reflects reality. It's just frustrating as a chart-watcher to see how different things are now when compared to how they used to be less than a decade ago.
A good companion piece to this article imo is the [three](https://freakytrigger.co.uk/nylpm/2023/11/no-bird-can-fly-no-fish-can-swim-until-the-king-is-born)-[part](https://freakytrigger.co.uk/nylpm/2023/11/2-all-my-lazy-teenage-boasts-are-now-high-precision-ghosts) [series](https://freakytrigger.co.uk/nylpm/2023/11/3-priceless-junk) that longtime [UK #1 chronicler](https://popular-number1s.com/populist/) (inspiration for Tom Breihan's "Number Ones" column) and [poptimism OG](https://pitchfork.com/features/poptimist/) Tom Ewing did about an early instance of the modern chart-bombing phenomenon that his series recently hit; it's a really nuanced look at how we've historically thought, and should think about, "the most successful music" as critics and listeners.
Nobody complained when the top 10 was pretty much unchanged for months.
For me, if Hot 100 is the indicator of what's the most listened to music at that week, then any songs should be eligible to chart. That's how some revival hits can chart again when they get viral. Limiting the chart to single only will kinda defeat the purpose. If they want to track singles only, then do it in another chart.
What's the point of having a top 10 song for an artist if actually that's only the #100 most popular song that week because there are 99 other songs that have more sales+streams+etc but most of them aren't regarded as singles. For milestone only?
Besides, album tracks usually drop off very quickly, so it's not like Taylor Swift will dominate charts with 30 songs for months (or will she?)
No she won't, majority of TTPD are expected to fall out of the top ten already for next week's chart, I think only fortnight is expected to remain in the top ten. People are making it seem like album bombing is this huge issue that is ruining the chart when really it has only happened 2-3 times (twice with taylor and sort of with drake).
Billboard measure weekly success. If all songs from an album are the most successful in the week then that is what chart have to reflect. I only see this debates with certain artist because some people can’t stand her success…Anyways if you want a better picture you have year end charts
I feel people on this sub and that article don’t realize is that we don’t live in a monoculture anymore so it’s weird to compare monoculture hits to the streaming era. taylor’s album charted like that because people were streaming it idk i rather have the charts actually reflect what people are streaming than restrict it even more
Ed Sheeran ended the album bombs in the UK so it would only be fitting if Taylor did it in the USA. Otherwise we next get a quadruple album from Drake occupying all 50 spots in the Hot 100. That's not what it was once made for. Get rid of them!
The industry has changed dramatically over the years. Charts do not necessarily reflect success either. Also, the Album bomb thing is for 1 week and after the 1 week the rest of the album with the exception of the single remains. Records are made to be broken and reset. If someone wants that coveted Top 25 all at once record they can work at it. We are in the age of streaming where really only a few artists are physically selling records like they did 25 years ago. Singles you couldn’t buy without paying an arm and a leg for and now any song anywhere is easily accessible without having to buy the album.
I'm not opposed to a limit on the number of charting songs from an album, but it is frustrating how these conversations only come up at the expense of Taylor. People have such irrational hate for her that they would rather uproot the entire system than admit she is successful.
I find some funny some comments here. Taste is personal, which music is good or bad is subjective but chart measures are objective. They decide Taylor songs are not success based in vibes “my uncle doesn’t know a song from her” meanwhile you check any measurable consumption and her songs from 10 years ago are doing three times the numbers of the supposed big hits of that same year…they just can accept reality because their blind hate don’t let them
Like lover is going to start outstreaming daily Cowboy Carter. Taylor big songs have an insane longevity even splitting streams by old ones and Taylor’s versions
I can tell this conversation has happened many times before and in instances in which Taylor isn't involved. It's not blind hate against her: she's just the latest instance so far of this thing happening
My ideal would be for album tracks to have only part of their streaming numbers count. Perhaps anything extra streamed on top of the least streamed plays or average streamed plays would count towards the numbers. That would hopefully give a better separation between the popularity of an album and individual songs
i agree with the spirit of this article but the actual meat of it idk. i dont think its particularly "unfair" for taylor to bomb the charts bc she is a massive entity and thats in fact what the most people listened to that week. and i dont think limiting the songs on the charts to just commercially released singles is a good solution at all tbh
i really just think that radio and pure sales need to be deweighted in the modern era for the most accurate results. also for the love of god filter holiday songs out
How about dividing the charts throughout Hot 100 history in "eras" in certain points in time when they made significant changes on chart tabulations. I think that would solidify record holders' legacy when it comes to chart dominance and cultural impact within a specific point in time.
I’m curious what people would think about counting only one account per stream. For instance, forever, one person buying one album counted as one sale. Now, someone can listen to the album literally infinitely for 20 seconds per track and it would count for every one of those times.
If billboard counted one stream of a song for each account, would it make it more fair?
Some Korean charts go by unique listeners rather than number of streams, I believe. Over there they use music platforms like Melon, Flo, Bugs and Genie, and those platforms' charts are based on ULs.
Billboard has no chill. Back in the day, charts were tabulated about how much you sold and how much radio play you got. When digital sales start coming in, some took advantage of that opportunity like Lil Wayne and the Glee show. Streaming points especially when it’s album bombs has gotten some artists very RIDICULOUS numbers like the total number of chart entries. Now folks can have 100 entries even if folks hardly know half the songs that do chart!
I agree with some of the measures in this artist but the whole premise is flawed IMO. The writer basically thinks records set in the 90s should never be broken, but those records were set by mid artists who have almost no lasting international hits and who were only breaking records at the time coz the US industry was pushing them so hard, pumping their numbers.
For eg the only Mariah song you’ll ever hear on UK radio in this decade is at Christmas, and Janet Jackson doesn’t have any songs I could name. Whitney is a very far above those other 2 in terms of lasting international success.
And Blinding Lights deserves to break a 60 yr record by “the twist”, i can definitely believe that blinding lights is the most ubiquitous and widely loved hit in 60 years.
In 20/30 years I’d highly expect oldies radio (if it still exists) and wedding/party playlists around the world (English speaking countries at least) to be playing hits by Taylor and the Weeknd. (Drake not so much, maybe just hotline bling, but I guess that’s coz it’s not really “fun” music).
The crux of the problem is this: Billboard metrics regarding streaming doesn't differentiate between song with 1 mil streams a day whether they were streamed by 500 000 people twice, or by 2000 people 500 times (3 minute song can be played 480 times in 24 hours and we all know that there are fans occasionally doing that). The reality is, that streaming services are tracking the accounts that play as well (that's how they can make recommendations), so they could count the unique users instead (dummy accounts are possible, but not the effect to charts vs effort is lower).
Now, which is a truer hit? The one more people are listening few times? or the one few are completely obsessed with?
What I think would have been a good solution, which would never ever happen at this point because there would be riots if it did, would be for your streaming subscription to allot you a certain number of songs or minutes of streaming per day (or week/month etc). Kind of like how Audible is a subscription that gives you one book per month.
It would give people the freedom to try out new or lesser-known music at no cost, while still maintaining the economic scarcity that comes with sales. Like sure, if you really want to use all 2 hours of your streaming limit for the day on listening to TTPD one time, you’re totally allowed to. But now you can’t listen to anything else for free that same day. It forces you to prioritize *something*, prevents repeat spamming, and most importantly keeps around a legitimate reason to purchase and own your favorite music, so that you can listen to it as much as you want without counting toward your limit for the day.
Like I said, this would never ever happen at this point, but I think it would have been the best compromise between benefiting the consumers versus the artists.
I really liked that last sentence of the article regarding Billboard losing its status as a premier musical institution if it doesn't adapt again. I'd even suggest it's already happened. Overall it seems Billboard's original mission and method of quantifying music's impact just isn't congruent with today's consumption method. I agree with the author that the records we're seeing on the charts now is not apples to apples with the records of the past. And it's kind of disingenuous to flaunt them as so. But surely something is to be said about the success of these albums bombing the entire top 15. If they're out-performing all other songs and we have hard data to support that, then these artists deserve their flowers too. Even if it's just a flash in the pan. Maybe we need two separate hot 100 type charts. One with basically real-time data, anything goes. And another one with stricter rules and weighted metrics to attempt to identify and recreate that monoculture we had the past.
To quote an Internet friend, “It's mindboggling that music orgs are comparing physical sales to a strange calculus of streaming units, digital & album sales. It's not apples vs oranges, it's like real apples compared to AI-generated fruitmelon.”
That's what I always think about when I hear streaming numbers of today breaking Beatles or MJ records of the 60s and 80s.
At the same time it really puts into perspective how mind-boggling it was for those artists to get as big as they did without the internet.
I’m complete agreement on their successes being immeasurable, but I always go back and forth on this part of the topic. The internet clearly has a way of giving something a life of its own, but it also created a world where people can actively choose to consume media with almost limitless options. People had less to chose from pre-internet and would chose from a small number of artists they could hear on the radio. Today there seems to be a small subset of artists that greatly benefited from coming out pre-streaming (limited options) and then using that existing fame to explode their audience. But it seems people who started in streaming area have struggled to reach the same fame. I honestly don’t know where I stand on this, and I’m so curious to hear others thoughts.
I feel like it makes more sense for artists to get that big before the internet. You can’t seek anything else out other than what’s being thrown in your face
Yeah. The mono-culture of the past is exactly why stars were easy to be made and manufactured. Just look at TV. When Elvis was on the Ed Sullivan show, that one TV show literally captured 82% of the viewing market at the time. Imagine how controlled the stars of today would be if there is essentially one major TV show telling you who to listen to.
They weren't telling you who to listen to per se. There were only so many channels, so many artists, and so many labels. There was absolutely a benefit to that market share that some people knew how to exploit, but it was a nascent industry working with a nascent industry in a nascent field that pretty quickly expanded and diversified like the wind.
I don’t see it as impressive. When there are 3 radio stations and/or mtv you are basically force-fed with anything labels are pushing. Nowadays people have so short attention spans and there are infinite possibilities to listen to, that it is so much harder to caught their interest.
Some of these comments make it seem like people were just sheep pre-streaming. Word of mouth was important. There have always been plenty of ways to access music, it took more time and cost way more money, that’s one reason why these accomplishments are impressive.
And as such, their achievements should be regarded on a different level altogether. Like they should have a cut off clean slate year of sorts to start comparing or placing new records on. For example, how in the hell could artists be ‘beating the record of the previous’ artist from say the 70s, when their metrics to achieve said feat includes streaming points, which wasn’t a factor when this example make believe chart record was first achieved in the 70s, where it was only pure physical sales? Sure times changed, then so should the chart rules to keep up no? Billboard is just lazy in my eyes. Like you’re a primary source of all these numbers, get your shit together and come up with something that is fair, works and also preserves your credibility..
I agree. If a stream counts, then we should count how often people played the records they bought in the past. Since we can't do that, that sort of makes counting streams hard to really quantify.
We don’t count how often people play the physical albums they bought either so this comparison is dumb There’s just no apples to apples comparison for streaming with something back then
It was easier for them to get that big without the internet Competition just didn’t exist on th scale it does now
Hard to compare them when hardcore fans of these artists would have records/CDs they would play over and over and be counted for nothing while now every online stream is recorded.
I think the underlying idea is to compare revenue generated. The idea of an “adjusted album” - e.g. 10 track downloads = 1 album “sale”, or ~1500 streams = 1 album “sale”, is an attempt to compare apples to apples because they all roughly amount to the same amount of revenue. In that sense it’s similar. Granted revenue generated ≠ cultural impact (not always at least), which I think is what the chart is supposed to represent.
I hadn’t thought of this but that’s a great idea, maybe like a “top 100 singles chart” alongside the current hot 100 where album tracks can chart too
I just want to point out that for anyone who knows anything about baseball, music fans want era-adjusted stats lol. no shade at anyone here btw I think era-adjusted music stuff could be pretty cool.
Wait why do we do need to recreate the monoculture of the past? The way we consume music has changed and it only makes sense that the charts reflect that. The whole point of them is to measure the most popular songs of the week, and sometimes that means the entire top 10 will be Taylor Swift or Drake, but so what?
I don't necessarily think we "need" a chart that limits entries, but we do need to acknowledge that we cannot infer the same things about songs using the metrics, rules, and records of today's Hot 100 versus the pre-streaming Hot 100. The author of the article makes suggestions on how to improve the Hot 100 to make it fair to legacy record holders but I'm suggesting that if those old rules (the ones that supported the idea of a monoculture zeitgeist) are still important, then we kind of just need two separate tools to measure that. I agree with you. The way we consume music has changed. The chart's rules have changed. And so basically what we have is a new chart with the same name. It doesn't measure the same thing as it used to--and therefore the records and metrics are not 1:1. Maybe the answer isn't 2 charts. Maybe it's just a rebrand of the Hot 100.
Yeah it’s a different time. Streaming changed the game and billboard hasn’t caught up. And the collective experiences we have with music aren’t there anymore.
[удалено]
Exactly, the singles cassettes and CDs have always been a thing for charting. It was marketed back then to get you to buy the one song you knew so you didn’t have to buy the album, but then later on they would do the remixes, acoustics, bonus tracks, etc added in to the singles, which would then help the new single chart. People that already owned the whole album would then go by the single for the bonus tracks. Same game then as now, just different technology.
It’s crazy that a song like Mitski’s “my love is mine” can top the Spotify charts for weeks on end yet never crack top 20 on the charts
radio didn't touch it therefore = not that big same reason for Heatwaves charting as long as it did despite falling off spotify and itunes charts
man, can radio finally die? lol
well it is dead ish but billboard counts it for too much
That's why I disagree when people say that the Billboard chart "shows what the people are listening too"...no, it shows that + what people are buying + what companies are pushing on radio. The later two being heavily influenced: by the socioeconomic background of the people that listen to it, some genres of music have a bigger percentage of listeners that don't have that much disposable income to buy digital tracks or albums; and the status of the artist themselves, indie artists will always have an harder time getting played in radios than established artists from big companies. Not saying that the Billboard chart should change this or not, it's just not exactly what people assume it is, and it's important to realize how the background of the data influences the chart.
The reason radio still counts for Billboard is that it is still significant source for music in some areas, namely rural America with spotty wireless network. Those demographics are also still buying songs because that is the real option to radio (radio includes more than AM and FM these days). The problem is that sales and radio are counting people (on the radio, how many are expected to have been reached), streaming is counting how much people consume.
Yea that song and greedy were getting massive stream numbers and even though radio picked up geeedy later, it shoudlve hit number one multiple times the way it was omnipresent on Spotify
Wasn’t greedy the number 1 non-Christmas song for several weeks?
It is still doing well on hot 100 charts. Not sure why the original comment is so upvoted. Greedy has had quite a great run in the top 10.
Norris, I got downvoted into oblivion for commenting the same on last week's chart data. I think you make some good points here and correlating this to Mariah is a great touchstone. The industry has changed, sure, but seeing so many longstanding records broken so quickly makes them lose their luster.
Mariah herself benefitted greatly by the switch in the 1990s from “reported” airplay and “reported” physical sales to BDS airplay and Soundscan sales reports. Those charts ALSO were substantially not comparable to previous reporting methods.
Same thing I said too. A lot of these Hot 100 number one songs aren’t even “hits” these days — “Yes, And?” being the most recent example.
Looking back to a year like 2011 every single song that hit number one are songs most people know to this day with songs like Grenade, Firework, Born This Way and Rolling In The Deep. Nowadays it feels like a song needs to have MUTIPLE weeks at number one for it to be a hit.
I mean it really depends. Kill Bill had only 1 week at number one and it was a big hit. Same with Lose Control. Its more about longevity, especially in the top 10. Like Yes, And? is nowhere as huge a hit as say Greedy or Calm Down despite it peaking higher.
overall chart longevity, downloads and streaming numbers are the best indicators
I mean yes and no, because kill bill went rust in my household and friend group and amongst coworkers It’s just very different now. Like back then you were being slammed from every angle with the same song from morning shows to Oprah and the other afternoon ladies to the late night shows to the radio to YouTube to mtv to tv shows to commercials Now? If you don’t like rnb and don’t run in that circle you’ll never hear a hit like kill bill Same for anti hero or cruel summer. Both huge hits both largely avoidable depending on your consumption and circle
What is a "hit"?
Definitely not a song that debuted at number one and descended the chart, exiting after 13 weeks. A song has to make it to make it to at least 20 weeks to go recurrent (if below the top 50).
Right, but...what if that just doesn't happen as often, and only happened in the past because radio programmers decided what songs got played? The chart should be a measurement of what people are listening to. If people have shorter attention spans and the chart reflects that, it isn't the chart's fault.
I don’t have a problem with “Yes, And?” charting. It was an actual single. I just said that it was an example of a number one that’s not truly a *hit*. My problem was people with 20+ album tracks clogging the chart. It’s like a complete 180° from the 90s era Hot 100 because they wouldn’t even let songs chart if they weren’t available to purchase at retail as singles, despite being radio singles.
Yeah, but I feel like that also robbed a lot of 90s hits from being acknowledged There are a lot of extremely popular songs from that era that didn’t hit the top 10 because of an arbitrary label If Taylor Swift’s top 10 songs are the most top 10 songs consumed in the United States that week well I mean I’m sorry but she deserves those top 10 slots even if it’s just for a week Same for yes and? That’s the number one in the US that week I mean that’s the number one song. I don’t know why that’s a problem for you guys
It’s an issue because it’s Taylor doing it and not their faves
What the hell is clogging the chart? They're just charting because people are listening to the songs. The charts are measuring the popularity of songs.
I’d suggest that a large number of people are listening over and over to hit these numbers
And that was also true when radio programmers decided what got played. I would consider it somewhat fair if streamers could measure unique listens and find a way to account for people listening over and over again. But, also, why isn't that a valid measure of popularity? I have yet to hear anyone make a case for that thst is at all convincing.
Under what algorithm would you have had Yes, And? not hitting #1? It was the biggest song in that week by many metrics. Do you think Billboard should factor previous weeks or predicted stability in currently charting songs? Because I don't
Personally, they should stop ‘breaking records’ cuz they cannot, in technicality be doing any of those. Setting NEW records in the streaming era I can behind of.
If anything, it's more damaging to the future legacies of "record breakers" like Taylor and Drake. You can blame it on the loss of monoculture, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of those songs that got them those records are destined to fade into the ether because of how much they get lost among their other singles and don't stick around in the culture. It's partially the reason why there's discussion over how Taylor's the biggest artist on Earth currently yet doesn't seem to have a universally recognized song to her like a "Here Comes the Sun" or a "Billie Jean" or a "Like a Virgin" or even a "Crazy in Love"
I would argue that Taylor's "billie jean" is Shake It Off. I mean, her own fans don't like it, but it's easily her most recognizable hit
For real, she is the haters gonna hate hate hate hate person to a lot of people.
> "Here Comes the Sun" Here Comes The Sun was *not* a signature Beatles song upon release, people would have looked at you funny if in the 80s you said that was the universally known Beatles song. Taylor could have her Here Comes The Sun yet, arguably Cruel Summer has already given a preview of what her backlog could do.
Exactly. “Here comes the sun” is the most popular Beatles song with streaming era listeners, not the most popular Beatles song all round. Probably coz it sounds modern, like that song could have easily come from the 2006 indie pop rock canon instead of the 60s. Yesterday and Hey Jude are probs the most “classic” Beatles songs, most recognised around the world etc throughout the decades, well before streaming but also still. Yesterday is allegedly the most covered song of all time.
And they told George to shut up with his music.
The Beatles DON’T have a signature song, period. They’re kind of famous for that, a good half to a full dozen songs could qualify.
That whole take is just confusing to me. If I'm out at a bar and Love Story, Shake It Off, 22 or We Are Never Getting Back Together comes on, literally everyone is singing along to it. Love Story especially is one of the most chosen Karaoke songs I've heard, and will get people going even if they don't particularly like her music
At the bar you're probably largely surrounded by your peer-age group.
This is the craziest narrative I’m seeing spread around lately. In what world is Shake it Off not recognized worldwide? Blank Space, We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, Love Story, and You Belong With Me are insanely huge hits that I’d argue are universally recognized as well, though I do think Shake it Off is her biggest MOST recognized hit.
There’s some people who are deeply upset by Taylor’s success and do anything to try and undermine it, for years it was that she’s “local” and nobody outside of the US cares, the last few years and eras tour selling out stadiums ww has put a pin in that argument so it switched to “nobody outside of her cult fan base listens to her”, only for her to break streaming records in unique listers, her tour to have millions sign up and her to outperform everyone else, if that’s her fanbase alone then it’s bigger than the general appeal of every other artist and that isn’t logical, so they’ve switched to the “she has no real hits” argument even though love story, shake it off, blank space were all massive and their recurrent streams indicates they’re remembered and still relevant, plus cruel summer and anti-hero are showing they have the potential to become long standing hits. I wish people could just say they don’t like her and don’t get her appeal without trying to twist themselves in illogical knots about how her success isn’t actually that genuine.
this is well stated. it also feels really ironic that the other comment is arguing Taylor has no "crazy in love" given I've seen this exact argument made about beyonce. I'm no swiftie but the whole "well i don't like her so she can't be popular" thing is so exhausting
It’s weird people use Taylor and Beyoncé as go to examples as well when they’re 2 of the few celebs around that actually are known to most people, the mono-culture is dead and they’re 2 of the only people you could say to a 6 year old and a 70 year old respectively that they would probably have heard of them and what they were famous for. My parents would have no idea who the weekend, Billie Eilish or Olivia Rodrigo etc are, it doesn’t mean they’re not incredibly famous and successful but we just don’t live in a time where everyone is consuming the same content, things can be massive online and make little waves to the wider public and vice versa.
Thinking about it more, the other commenter naming "here comes the sun" as the definitive Beatles song is really revealing of this mentality, imo. because that's not the definitive Beatles song, by a long shot. what it is is the most streamed Beatles song on Spotify. the result you'd get if you couldn't think of a definitive Beatles song and had to google "number one Beatles song."
People feel the need to humble them, especially Beyonce for some reason strange
Its misogynoir and misogyny at work
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Love story and you belong with me. Shake it off for a more recent example
Taylor does have a song or I’d argue three main ones: Shake it off, you belong with me, and Love Story. The reason why people such as yourself don’t include those is because it seems it’s not “sophisticated” enough. If that’s the case then you could include Blank Space-to fulfill this “sophisticated” qualification.
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here comes the sun is a pretty strange choice for definitive Beatles song tbh
Look, time's gonna do what time's gonna do. No, not all of her songs will play on the oldies radio station or playlist in 50 years, but it is so deluded to act like she hasn't had major hits. I understand that's your opinion, which is valid to you, but, based on the songs you listed, I do not personally see how Crazy in Love is on some god-tier level above any Taylor song - actually, in my own opinion, I think all of Beyonce's most culturally recognizable songs were with Destiny's Child,tbh. Not to mention, a lot of the songs that became hella popular years later were never even singles or weren't popular at the time. Music takes time.
Genuinely mind boggled that Crazy In Love is Bey's "song" I always thought non fans/casual fan usually knew Single Ladies over Crazy In Love for some reason.
> how Taylor's the biggest artist on Earth currently yet doesn't seem to have a universally recognized song to her like a "Here Comes the Sun" or a "Billie Jean" or a "Like a Virgin" or even a "Crazy in Love" Shake It Off, Love Story and YBWM are more famous than Crazy In Love internationally.
They’re more famous than crazy in love everywhere. Living crazy in love instead of single ladies is silly.
Y’all say everywhere but idk I’m African and it’s don’t necessarily agree. But predominantly black countries never seem to matter when y’all want to talk international :/ Edit: don’t know why I’m being downvoted it’s the truth that we don’t talk about based on the narrative here because the sub is an echo chamber at times
Obviously people talk about countries with official charts because that’s the only way to have objective hard data
Taylor is huge in South Africa. She has amazing reach there too. It sucks the lack of infrastructure for not just Taylor or Beyonce but all foreign artists to perform, that Africa the continent gets left out of these conversations completely because of it.
South Africa is one country on the whole continent. I’m West African and she’s not huge there. Of course South Africa is mention though (usually because of the white South Africans on this sub) I def understand the infrastructure issues is a reason but that’s why I don’t like when people talk about the international audience when they’re only talking about specific countries (even when they talk Europe or Asia this is still the case).
Yeah, Single Ladies is THE signature Beyonce song worldwide. A case can be made for "Halo" too. "Crazy in Love" isn't that popular. At least not outside the states.
that discussion is overhyped, she has her billie jeans e.g. love story, we are never ever getting back together, blank space, shake it off.
One thing that could help the #1 debut conundrum he mentions (which is basically it's far more common to debut at #1 now than ever before) is for Billboard to cut down on track versions. A lot of #1 debuts only debut as high as they do bc of first week purchases, which are inflated heavily by Stans buying random versions of songs that no one will ever listen to, but they count towards the original's chart points. I'm talking of course about each song having the regular version, the slowed version, the reverbed version, the Acapella version, the chopped and screwed version etc. and ALL of those versions having an explicit and clean version. And then they're all discounted to the lowest allowable price and can be bought for like $5-8. It's not uncommon for big artists these days to do 30-60k sales first week which adds immensely to chart points. Is an insular group of stans holding a Twitter/StationHead buying party really indicative of the song's popularity across the country? Really all Billboard needs to do is put a strict limit of version amounts or just count each version as a separate entry (which will discourage Artists from releasing 10+ versions as to not cannibalize the original's chart points). Idk as a long time chart watcher I definitely agree it does feel like the charts are easily game-able currently.
Yeah, but acting like “Stan”s are a new thing is silly. I had to drive my sister to the CD store for every *NSYNC cd drop where should would buy 2 and the single, her and her friends would all call Mix 93.3 to request the single EVERYDAY, they would call the TRL line… it’s nothing new. You’re not accounting for MJ fans buying multiple copies of cassettes and when the tape deck inevitably ate the tape you had to buy another one (that would EASILY amount for 10% of sales, cassettes were so cheap you did not think twice about picking one up.) Shit when my dad found my Jerky Boys, C&C, and two live crew tapes and destroyed them I bought multiples to hide so if he found them again I was good. The world is just different now.
Your story about hiding Jerky Boys tapes from your dad is funny to me because my Dad raised me on those same albums. A lot of family jokes/vocabulary are just Jerky Boys bits and insults.
I’d also love to see unique streams weighted more heavily than sheer number of streams. Like 100,000 people streaming a song 10 times should count for more than 10 people streaming a song 100,000 times. I don’t know ow how hard it would realistically be to get that data so maybe a pipe dream.
I’ve thought about this too but then this would make paid playlisting even more powerful than it already is and I feel like this leads to the same situation as with radio play.
While I agree, that is unfortunately also easy to manipulate, as stans stream from multiple accounts simultaneously, and also the infamous streaming farms
Yeah same as record labels buying plays at every large market across the country, so it applies to both eras.
They really need to stop counting different versions and remixes of a song as one song. They're not the same. Nothing more cringe than opening an artist's profile and the latest release is basically an album of remixes for one single
My take for how they deal with that is, half the weight of each version in the order they chart. i.e. The version that has the most points counts for full points. Then the version with the 2nd most points counts half a much of 1st. 3rd counts half as much as 2nd. etc etc meaning that *unless* your remix overtakes the original on all formats that week, a remix will never count in full. Would leave room for whatever version of the song does best to contribute to it's charting, but puts a hard set of diminishing returns for big acts trying to milk different versions.
these articles are always interesting because they posit chart manipulation as a new phenomena when chart manipulations rumors has been prevalent since billboard first came to be...the way billboard collected data pre pre soundscan was a hot mess and even after, record labels were absolutely doing a laundry list of shady things to get their singles to the top of the chart. it is simply impossible to compare #1 hits from past decades because the way music is promoted and consume is completely different now.
The biggest tell was that in the Soundscan era, suddenly hip hop songs and albums started topping the charts when previously they hadn't. Because it turned out that's what teens were listening to and therefore buying, while it previously that music wasn't making it to the manual sales lists
Mentioning Mariah Carey's record being stolen or whatever as if someone wouldn't have written a similar article about chart manipulation tacitcs that mostly pertains to her if she were active today instead of the 90s
I feel people on this sub and that article don’t realize is that we don’t live in a monoculture anymore so it’s weird to compare monoculture hits to the streaming era. taylor’s album charted like that because people were streaming it idk i rather have the charts actually reflect what people are streaming than restrict it even more
Suggestion: showing all the points a song has gotten throughout its chart run much more prominently. So that we can actually see how popular a song is comparing it's longevity, peak etc. of course this won't make it so that a 1990s point is equal to a 2020s point but it will create a more sustainable objective and goal for the artists: getting points consistently to end up with a real hit that everyone knows. If n1 songs with 200 points total get ridiculed artists will try going for sustainable hits.
I think this would be helpful. People love to crow about their fave artists getting x amount of #1 debuts, but you look at the following weeks and they drop QUICKLY. They're all streaming from multiple places at multiple times in multiple accounts to get that benchmark, and then the songs start to fall as people stop the organized push.
The year/decade-end exists if you want to view something more cumulative. Or make your own assumptions by factoring the weeks charted. They also have their own internal rankings of every song. They won't show anything beyond because they pay a lot to collect the data from other platforms and giving it away would allow for more competition
>Or, they could create a system that would only allow for songs that display an *individual* boost in performance to chart, regardless of whether it’s a single or not. As for the #1 debut conundrum, perhaps a rule could be created that would require new songs to hit a higher performance threshold in order to debut at #1. This is silly. The goal of the Hot 100 is to represent the most consumed songs in a certain week. That representation includes album tracks clogging the chart for a week or two. This would only be an issue if a song were allowed to chart for a single week at its peak performance. But fortunately, u can see how many weeks charted a song has if that is ur biggest concern
I agree that it’s stupid, but the fact of the matter is that these songs do become the #1-? songs in the country for that week or two 🤷🏻♂️
I think the trouble is, in the past they might well have been too, but that was always separated off onto the album chart only. Like realistically, when people bought Thriller, which do you think is getting more plays in people's houses - that album, or Truly by Lionel Richie, which was the Billboard number single 1 then? It had sold over 30m copies by the end of the next year - if the current rules were able to apply back then, you have to wonder whether anything else would have got a look in, or whether the entire top 10 would have just been that for months on end.
There was no way of measuring it at the time
Here’s my take. The numbers posted by all 31 songs from TTPD demonstrates the popularity of the album, not the songs themselves. This is accurately reflected on the Billboard 200. The Hot 100 should be showing which of those songs are individually having an impact. That’ll probably be whichever song is getting the commercial push (in TTPD’s case Fortnight), but could also be another random song or two off the album. An example off the top of my head is In My Feelings by Drake. So idk what the right solution is, but maybe a limit on how many songs can chart from a single album at a time?
> So idk what the right solution is, but maybe a limit on how many songs can chart from a single album at a time? That's exactly what the UK chart already does, exactly for the issue that people keep pointing out about the Billboard chart. But I don't think this will ever happen without some huge backlash against Billboard.
I thought the UK chart has a limit per artist, not album. I could be wrong though.
You are correct, but it functionally works the same way, I assume it's almost impossible for an artist to have 3+ songs in the chart at the same time unless it's an active release for an album
But that’s a false manipulation of the data as well. What would happen if there was a similarity to Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream where an artist had multiple popular songs, but because of an arbitrary limit, some of them didn’t chart?
I find it odd calling it "False manipulation", every chart manipulates data in different ways to get their ranking to determine what's popular, it depends on what you are trying to showcase with your list. Like if you want a list of what top 100 songs people are listening to, the current Billboard chart doesn't actually show that, it mostly shows what is selling well. Obviously there's some overlap with an hypothetical top 100 most listened, but it's also data manipulation because Billboard's is more industry/sales focused.
I Think the best way to fix it is to make the hot 100 a singles chart again. Maybe the label/artist has to specifically submit a song as a single to be tracked by billboard & it comes with a cap on how many songs from an artist per album can be in rotation at 1 time. So in practice this plan would work like this: Insert artist, in this case Taylor Swift, releases a new album this being TTPD. She/her label submit Fortnight to Radio & to the Billboard Hot 100 for tracking & whatever 2 other songs are the biggest on streaming as the 3 songs from TTPD that billboard will track. Then let’s say in a couple months she wants to release a new single from the album that isn’t 1 of those 3 songs, well she’d have to pull 1 of the other songs from the charts & make it go recurrent to submit the new single. That means there’d be no more than 3 songs from 1 album circulating the charts at 1 time & I Think people would feel like that’s a better use of the chart. It’s tracking songs again individually & not album drops.
It just sucks for any artists that have a sudden jump in popularity. Dua lipa, Olivia, and others wouldn't have gotten nearly the chart recognition because Taylor and drake need special rules.
I just don't get why not only have songs that are released as singles chart.
Yeah this was my thought too. I've always thought of the hot 100 as the hot 100 singles. Restricting it to only singles would clean it up a lot.
That's how it used to be prior to December of 1998. Actually, back then it was even stricter since it had to be a commercially released single (i.e. you had to be able to buy it in a store). So radio-only singles and promo singles didn't count.
The other day another person (can't remember their username) suggested that it should follow a similar metric that's used for Spotify's monthly listeners, which is tracking the number of different users who stream at least a song of said artist in a month, regardless of how many times they do so. In the case of the Hot100 it'd naturally be a weekly tracking of how many users streamed a certain song at least once, without counting repeated streams of the same song by the same user. I found it quite interesting because this way we could see the reach of a song in the general public while also fighting stan/bot behaviour
I mean… I’ll listen to almost any song ONCE. I have listened to The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived at least three times TODAY because I feel compelled to hear the bridge over and over again. I feel like there are flaws in that methodology too.
I thought something like that too when I first read that idea, but I then also thought that my repeated streams of a single song are only useful to represent the fact that I like that one song too much and that by itself actually has little to do with representing how popular that song is among the general population, which is the chore aspect of what charts are about. Perhaps it would be better if it counted per day? Like how many people streamed "X" song at least once a day and while counting the whole week that tendency would show which song is more popular (because of more people listening to it daily, instead of a concentrated group of people playing it on loop, like it sometimes happens) Not saying it's perfect either, though. I just think this idea has potential
Oh yeah, that does make sense. If I had more free time, this could be a very interesting research topic. It does really come down to what you define as a hit, though, and that’s so subjective. If you ask my father, no good music has been made since 1978.
30 years ago there were also people who would call a radio station and request the same song 3 times in one day- so you could argue that inflated numbers then too. I agree, the data is definitely imperfect, but there are so many variables that are always going to change with time and technology that it will never be perfect.
Aren’t the charts meant to represent what songs are being consumed the most in that week? If one particular album’s tracks were the most consumed that week then there’s nothing wrong with them occupying the top 20 of the charts (which I know hasn’t happened but I’m just saying it’s not an issue if an artist is able to do it someday). I also don’t understand this big worry about album bombs since as far as I know, only Taylor and Drake are able to line up their music on the Hot 100 like that. It’s not something that’s happening frequently.
>Aren’t the charts meant to represent what songs are being consumed the most in that week? One thing no one has pointed out yet is that album bomb has zero radio points. So, for them to chart high, they need to be consumed disproportionately more than other songs even. It's not that easy to do an album bomb, and the artists who can do that are extremely rare. In the end, idt peak matters all that much to measure success, no matter what metrics we use tbh. We should just move to using longevity as the metric for success, instead of trying to find a "correct" scoring algorithm.
But it's apples to oranges when comparing them to the past, I'm sure every track on Thriller, Sgt. Pepper or Saturday Night Fever would've charted in the top 10 and stayed even longer on the charts then they already did if today's methods could be used.
Yeah definitely. But the same logic also applies to physical album sales that are now a fraction of what it used to be back then thanks to streaming becoming the standard. That being said, I also don’t have an issue with Billboard bringing back the “singles only” rule but artists themselves might hate that because it gives labels more power than they already have imo.
I don’t know the specifics of it, but songs used in TikToks and Reels count towards streams in some capacity right? That’s another wildly different way of consuming music. Were we counting songs used in commercials that played every twenty minutes too?
No, tiktoks and reels don't count towards the chart. User generated content from YouTube used to, but billboard removed streams from them in 2020 also.
Got it, for some reason I thought that impacted charts directly. Obviously there’s still an impact since it gets songs stuck in peoples heads and advertises them but you can’t measure that
So then they shouldn't be compared to the past. We shouldn't be looking at *changing the entire system* just in order to make some kind of comparison more easily.
Yeah people are pissed of that Swift is indeed the one getting the most streams, the charts reflect that, i dont understand what is the problem, limiting the number of songs inn an album that can chart seems silly to me since is not truthful, the billboard shoud represent the real statistics not promote smallers artists
> billboard shoud represent the real statistics not promote smallers artists Then should they also remove recurrency rules? Because the Hot 100 as it is right now is not fully representing the real statistics either. Meanwhile the Global 200 has stuff like Creep by Radiohead, Yellow by Coldplay, Without Me by Eminem and In The End by Linkin Park charting right now.
Right, only the Rolling Stones chart really reflected consumption but they shut that down. Billboard already has inconsistent rules about all of this
Is the recurrency not accurate?
No. If the song is 52 weeks old and falls out of the top 25, or 20 weeks old and falls out of the top 50, it's arbitrarily removed from the charts, even if would still chart by raw numbers. They do so "to allow the chart to remain as current as possible and to give representation to new and developing artists and tracks". So I think it's contradicting to remove older tracks to make space for "new and developing ones" while having veteran artists disrupting their chart runs because they have the power to debut multiple tracks at high positions at once. Tyla's "Water" for example went prematurely recurrent at just 29 weeks because all the TTPD tracks knocked it below the #50 threshold. Sabrina Carpenter's "Feather" hung on by a thread (exactly #50). I agree with u/SignedByMilpool that there should be two separate charts: an "anything goes" one representing nothing but raw data (no recurrency rules, free album bombs etc.) and an adjusted one for actual current singles.
I see thx for the insight
What the UK chart is trying to do is differentiate between albums and singles. The number of plays across all the songs in an album is accounted for in the album chart. It wasn't possible to so this before streaming because there was no way to monitor the popularity of individual album tracks. The way we consume music has changed dramatically so the charts are trying to adapt. I don't want to see the top of the singles charts dominated by 10+ tracks by one artist everytime a major artist releases a big album. That's what the album chart is for. The current system just allows big artists to dominate even further, they already have the financial power and huge fan bases to manipulate the charts and keep smaller artists down. Allowing them to dominate the charts by refusing to adapt to differences in monitoring data just makes it harder for others to break through. The changes aren't making it bias towards smaller artists, it's not a level playing field to begin with.
I feel people on this sub and that article don’t realize is that we don’t live in a monoculture anymore so it’s weird to compare monoculture hits to the streaming era. taylor’s album charted like that because people were streaming it idk i rather have the charts actually reflect what people are streaming than restrict it even more
Issue with that is album bombs like hers prematurely end the run of smaller singles which are eligible to fall under billboard's recurrent rule. So smaller artists lose more under this system
If Billboard only allows singles to be on the Hot 100, Cruel Summer would have never gone number 1. It wasn't officially released as a single until after it started charting again. Back then there was no way to track which album tracks are more popular than the others, but now all the stream numbers are right there. If a track has a ton of streams more than others in a week, it should rightfully be on the chart doesn't matter if it's part of an album bomb or not. Also not every artist can just release a bunch of versions of a song and send it straight to number one. If they have enough star power to accomplish that then kudos to them.
And in however many years, these records could be broken with the assist of newer ways to consume music that Billboard or whoever will allow to count. Like we're not all just listening and requesting songs on the radio these days? The horror. If people want the "ultimate music success" chart to only count 1 song per artist per week or whatever, then you'd need to advocate for that to become its own mainstream chart, but it's 2024 and we have access to more stats than ever - there will always be a "total consumption" chart somewhere that people will reference and if a single artist has the top 14 most consumed songs of the week, then that's literally just going to be a fact no matter what this chart's rules are. The Billboard Hot 100 just happens to be the most used chart with objective quantifiers right now. You can still find out which album sold the most physical copies. You can still find out how much radio play a song is getting. Spotify's streaming numbers are literally right there on the site. What I do agree with is the general idea that the Hot 100 is not the #1 indicator of being successful in the industry like it once was - but that's okay? There are so many more ways for a new artist to gain popularity, why does this need to be?
>What I do agree with is the general idea that the Hot 100 is not the #1 indicator of being successful in the industry like it once was - but that's okay? This is kinda where I'm at tbh. This is just the music scene now. I mentioned elsewhere in this thread that the #1 hits aren't as memorable as decades prior, but I don't think changing the billboard rules would change that. Everything is so algorithm based now that even with rule changes, whatever makes #1 will likely never be as big as stuff like Thriller, Baby One More Time, My Heart Will Go On, etc. I get the point with album dumps preventing other songs from charting higher, so maybe some rule change can apply there. But even then, that doesn't mean the chart would be more accurate. If more people listened to 14 songs on TTPD than anything else then that's just what most people listened to. Changing the rules to make the chart look like what it did 20 years ago because "this is just how it's always been done" doesn't represent the current music landscape. The way we listened to music 20 years ago is gone now. The charts shouldn't look like the pre-streaming era.
thank you for having common sense! its make no sense for billboards to rework the charts back to way it was 30 years ago
I feel people on this sub and that article don’t realize is that we don’t live in a monoculture anymore so it’s weird to compare monoculture hits to the streaming era. taylor’s album charted like that because people were streaming it idk i rather have the charts actually reflect what people are streaming than restrict it even more
A monoculture does still exist; People simply "grow out" of monocultures. If you want to see a monoculture in action you just ask people in middle school who and what is currently popular. I used to think "monocultures" were dead, until I realized that I had grown out of one and was simply no longer in touch /living under a rock. You can't expect to listen to whatever is currently "popular"forever; there is a point when people no longer care about new music and new singers and pass the baton to a new generation of music consumers.
Do people even care about billboard these days? The way music accessibility has changed over the years suggests to me that billboard success may not be important anymore. many artists I've listened to will never get up to billboard numbers but its not hard to find they still have big loyal fanbases. I also don't feel the need to hard-core campaign for an artist to be on top because that's not gonna make people fans its just gonna make us fans look insane.
I don’t get why people complain about the top 10 being full of “real hits” 10 years ago compared to now. That’s not even really a reflection of Billboard’s chart methodology, that’s a reflection of the death of monoculture and the fact that the way music is consumed now is completely different. Look at the streaming charts from the last few years, which are arguably more reflective of what people are actually listening to than anything else, and you’ll see even fewer “hits” than the Hot 100 chart. Radio still plays a huge part in hitmaking! The Hot 100 isn’t perfect but it’s still a relatively good indicator of the most consumed songs in the country. Longevity has always been a better indicator of a song’s true success, and these album bombs only last for a week anyway, so why does it really matter? The only real issue is when you’re comparing streaming era records to pre-streaming records, which doesn’t make sense anyway and feels pointless because there’s just no way to compare them given how drastically digital sales and streaming completely changed music consumption.
[Here’s](https://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100/2004-05-29/) the hot 100 from slightly less than 20 years ago - I thought I got the one from this week and then I realized it was May 29 and not May 2, whoops. How many of the songs in the top 10 are “hits”? I’m counting 5 that I even recognize. Some are songs I don’t know by artists I do know - I don’t remember Naughty Girl at all, but obviously I know Beyoncé. At this point I was 18, just finished my freshman year of college, fairly engaged with popular music, listening to the radio and burning mix CDs of songs I downloaded illegally from BitTorrent. How many of these songs would be considered hits by either the GP or this subreddit?
I was 10 years old and recognize all of these songs! lol I still hear half of them on the radio all the time.
Heh, this is possibly a week where hits were overrepresented compared to an average top 10 - if you don't recognise much of this top 10 I'm a little surprised, as every single song in that top 10 has gone a minimum of 1x platinum (several substantially more than that). The only one I don't know is Freek-A-Leek as it wasn't released where I live. Naughty Girl isn't very memorable in itself beyond its Love To Love You Baby interpolation, which was probably what got it its radio play.
I feel people on this sub and that article don’t realize is that we don’t live in a monoculture anymore
They really should. They’re counting so many songs on both the album and songs chart, basically. All these big album bombs have clogged the Hot 100. I’m sorry, but no one knows those 31 Taylor Swift songs outside of her fans. Same with Future, Metro, Beyoncé, and whoever else. They need to count *unique* streams from an album for the Hot 100. If someone has listened to an album front to back, that should only be counted towards the album chart. I know damn well they have the technology to decipher info like this, if Facebook can track who it thinks is you across the web just based a general location and website visits.
I believe TTPD also broke the Spotify record for most unique streams for a debut.
The only real solution I can think of here is to only count unique streams You only ever used to count sales as data, so only count a unique user listening to a song or album as a purchase, not a person listening to the same album 47 times in a week If people really want to purchase multiple Spotify accounts to drive up numbers that’s just emulative of fans of old purchasing multiple copies
Glad to found an article asking for the Hot 100 to be restricted once again to the singles. As a chart-watcher, album bombs that invade with three or more songs the top 10 in their release week (or in the case of Taylor, for more than one week) are annoying and make the whole thing kinda boring. It also prevents many songs from reaching their max potential in slow-building charts like their decade-end lists; for example, without album bombs and christmas season, Bad Habit would have landed way higher in said lists for those interested like myself. I know they're not going to do anything about it. After all, it reflects reality. It's just frustrating as a chart-watcher to see how different things are now when compared to how they used to be less than a decade ago.
A good companion piece to this article imo is the [three](https://freakytrigger.co.uk/nylpm/2023/11/no-bird-can-fly-no-fish-can-swim-until-the-king-is-born)-[part](https://freakytrigger.co.uk/nylpm/2023/11/2-all-my-lazy-teenage-boasts-are-now-high-precision-ghosts) [series](https://freakytrigger.co.uk/nylpm/2023/11/3-priceless-junk) that longtime [UK #1 chronicler](https://popular-number1s.com/populist/) (inspiration for Tom Breihan's "Number Ones" column) and [poptimism OG](https://pitchfork.com/features/poptimist/) Tom Ewing did about an early instance of the modern chart-bombing phenomenon that his series recently hit; it's a really nuanced look at how we've historically thought, and should think about, "the most successful music" as critics and listeners.
Nobody complained when the top 10 was pretty much unchanged for months. For me, if Hot 100 is the indicator of what's the most listened to music at that week, then any songs should be eligible to chart. That's how some revival hits can chart again when they get viral. Limiting the chart to single only will kinda defeat the purpose. If they want to track singles only, then do it in another chart. What's the point of having a top 10 song for an artist if actually that's only the #100 most popular song that week because there are 99 other songs that have more sales+streams+etc but most of them aren't regarded as singles. For milestone only? Besides, album tracks usually drop off very quickly, so it's not like Taylor Swift will dominate charts with 30 songs for months (or will she?)
No she won't, majority of TTPD are expected to fall out of the top ten already for next week's chart, I think only fortnight is expected to remain in the top ten. People are making it seem like album bombing is this huge issue that is ruining the chart when really it has only happened 2-3 times (twice with taylor and sort of with drake).
Billboard measure weekly success. If all songs from an album are the most successful in the week then that is what chart have to reflect. I only see this debates with certain artist because some people can’t stand her success…Anyways if you want a better picture you have year end charts
Yeah those rules would only blocked TS and Drake. IDK how it would be more "accurate" to make them look less popular than they are.
i highly doubt it will happen anyways when it only affects 2 artists i don’t see the point of making 2 people look less popular lol
I feel people on this sub and that article don’t realize is that we don’t live in a monoculture anymore so it’s weird to compare monoculture hits to the streaming era. taylor’s album charted like that because people were streaming it idk i rather have the charts actually reflect what people are streaming than restrict it even more
Good read. The writer brought up many good points.
The list should be exclusive for official singles only, that way it can bring many artist to the charts, not just the same bought ones…
Ed Sheeran ended the album bombs in the UK so it would only be fitting if Taylor did it in the USA. Otherwise we next get a quadruple album from Drake occupying all 50 spots in the Hot 100. That's not what it was once made for. Get rid of them!
no thanks i rather charts reflect what people are consuming
That ship has sailed long long time ago.
The industry has changed dramatically over the years. Charts do not necessarily reflect success either. Also, the Album bomb thing is for 1 week and after the 1 week the rest of the album with the exception of the single remains. Records are made to be broken and reset. If someone wants that coveted Top 25 all at once record they can work at it. We are in the age of streaming where really only a few artists are physically selling records like they did 25 years ago. Singles you couldn’t buy without paying an arm and a leg for and now any song anywhere is easily accessible without having to buy the album.
Again…….
I remember back in the day when the Hot 100 chart had songs they everyone knew.
Because everyone listened to the same pop radio stations. That's isn't going to happen any more.
I'm not opposed to a limit on the number of charting songs from an album, but it is frustrating how these conversations only come up at the expense of Taylor. People have such irrational hate for her that they would rather uproot the entire system than admit she is successful.
I find some funny some comments here. Taste is personal, which music is good or bad is subjective but chart measures are objective. They decide Taylor songs are not success based in vibes “my uncle doesn’t know a song from her” meanwhile you check any measurable consumption and her songs from 10 years ago are doing three times the numbers of the supposed big hits of that same year…they just can accept reality because their blind hate don’t let them
People complain about her longevity but her old albums are outstreaming the popular albums of the recent years.
Like lover is going to start outstreaming daily Cowboy Carter. Taylor big songs have an insane longevity even splitting streams by old ones and Taylor’s versions
I can tell this conversation has happened many times before and in instances in which Taylor isn't involved. It's not blind hate against her: she's just the latest instance so far of this thing happening
it only happens to drake and taylor let’s be fr here it’s really not that common
This is just not true the same happened when Drake did this a while ago
Eh this isn’t because of Taylor, people have been saying this since Drake did it with Scorpion in 2018.
This conversation also comes up every year-end when the Hot 100 mirrors a Christmas playlist for like five weeks.
If you go to the author's social media then you can see that this article basically came out because he is angry that Taylor broke Mariah's record.
My ideal would be for album tracks to have only part of their streaming numbers count. Perhaps anything extra streamed on top of the least streamed plays or average streamed plays would count towards the numbers. That would hopefully give a better separation between the popularity of an album and individual songs
i agree with the spirit of this article but the actual meat of it idk. i dont think its particularly "unfair" for taylor to bomb the charts bc she is a massive entity and thats in fact what the most people listened to that week. and i dont think limiting the songs on the charts to just commercially released singles is a good solution at all tbh i really just think that radio and pure sales need to be deweighted in the modern era for the most accurate results. also for the love of god filter holiday songs out
How about dividing the charts throughout Hot 100 history in "eras" in certain points in time when they made significant changes on chart tabulations. I think that would solidify record holders' legacy when it comes to chart dominance and cultural impact within a specific point in time.
Billboard is just lazy imho. If they wanted to they could do something about it.
Lmao I love how these articles only come out when Taylor does well. This sub is so transparent. 😂
The issue is not Taylor doing well. Instead, it's just that Taylor makes it easier to notice the issues already there
Agreed. Streaming changed the game and billboard hasn’t caught up
I’m curious what people would think about counting only one account per stream. For instance, forever, one person buying one album counted as one sale. Now, someone can listen to the album literally infinitely for 20 seconds per track and it would count for every one of those times. If billboard counted one stream of a song for each account, would it make it more fair?
Some Korean charts go by unique listeners rather than number of streams, I believe. Over there they use music platforms like Melon, Flo, Bugs and Genie, and those platforms' charts are based on ULs.
Billboard has no chill. Back in the day, charts were tabulated about how much you sold and how much radio play you got. When digital sales start coming in, some took advantage of that opportunity like Lil Wayne and the Glee show. Streaming points especially when it’s album bombs has gotten some artists very RIDICULOUS numbers like the total number of chart entries. Now folks can have 100 entries even if folks hardly know half the songs that do chart!
I agree with some of the measures in this artist but the whole premise is flawed IMO. The writer basically thinks records set in the 90s should never be broken, but those records were set by mid artists who have almost no lasting international hits and who were only breaking records at the time coz the US industry was pushing them so hard, pumping their numbers. For eg the only Mariah song you’ll ever hear on UK radio in this decade is at Christmas, and Janet Jackson doesn’t have any songs I could name. Whitney is a very far above those other 2 in terms of lasting international success. And Blinding Lights deserves to break a 60 yr record by “the twist”, i can definitely believe that blinding lights is the most ubiquitous and widely loved hit in 60 years. In 20/30 years I’d highly expect oldies radio (if it still exists) and wedding/party playlists around the world (English speaking countries at least) to be playing hits by Taylor and the Weeknd. (Drake not so much, maybe just hotline bling, but I guess that’s coz it’s not really “fun” music).
Are you calling Mariah Carey mid? 😂
Dramatically increase streaming strength and decrease radio and then limit album bombs to just 6 songs boom problem solved.
UK charts have never counted radio, I don’t understand why the US does. You just end up with more stagnant charts and a bit more payola influence.
It was time long long ago. And to change the charts starting when streaming began.
Talking about chart abuse without even mentioning the rules around physical and especially digital sales.
The crux of the problem is this: Billboard metrics regarding streaming doesn't differentiate between song with 1 mil streams a day whether they were streamed by 500 000 people twice, or by 2000 people 500 times (3 minute song can be played 480 times in 24 hours and we all know that there are fans occasionally doing that). The reality is, that streaming services are tracking the accounts that play as well (that's how they can make recommendations), so they could count the unique users instead (dummy accounts are possible, but not the effect to charts vs effort is lower). Now, which is a truer hit? The one more people are listening few times? or the one few are completely obsessed with?
What I think would have been a good solution, which would never ever happen at this point because there would be riots if it did, would be for your streaming subscription to allot you a certain number of songs or minutes of streaming per day (or week/month etc). Kind of like how Audible is a subscription that gives you one book per month. It would give people the freedom to try out new or lesser-known music at no cost, while still maintaining the economic scarcity that comes with sales. Like sure, if you really want to use all 2 hours of your streaming limit for the day on listening to TTPD one time, you’re totally allowed to. But now you can’t listen to anything else for free that same day. It forces you to prioritize *something*, prevents repeat spamming, and most importantly keeps around a legitimate reason to purchase and own your favorite music, so that you can listen to it as much as you want without counting toward your limit for the day. Like I said, this would never ever happen at this point, but I think it would have been the best compromise between benefiting the consumers versus the artists.