Why do people say "It's harder to get a #1 these days."?

[Sherane Lamar]

It seems like whenever there's an article about somebody breaking a record for #1s, or for Top 10's, there's some novice in the comments talking about how much easier it is to do these days than it was back when the Beatles, or Michael Jackson, or whoever's record was being broken was active. 

But in reality, this seems to be the exact opposite of the truth. 

It seems like the most logical way to define how "EASY" or "HARD" it is to do something is by looking at how often it's actually been done. For example, before the mid 90's, it was "virtually impossible" to debut at #1. Nobody had ever done it before. So it's safe to say that it wouldn't be a very easy thing to do. In the late 90's, #1 debuts became more common. We had 4 #1 debuts in 1995, and 10 #1 debuts in the 4 year span from 1995-1998. We've never done either of those things again. It's pretty safe to say that in the late 90's, getting a #1 debut was "EASIER" than at any other point in history. But then during the 2000s decade, or more accurately, from 1999-2008, there were very few #1 debuts. Only American Idol contestants could manage to do it. Because of how few their was, we can logically say that it was "HARDER" of a thing to achieve than it was in the late 90's. But then in this decade, or more accurately, starting with Britney Spears in 2009, there are more #1 debuts than there were back in the 2000's decade. It's logical to say that getting a #1 debut is "EASIER" now than it was in the 2000s decade.

Now that we got that out of the way, and we established that generally, if something occurs more often, we can assume that it then means it's an "easier" thing to accomplish. Let's look at the number of Top 10s and #1 hits per year in the 1992 - present era vs the number of Top 10 and #1 hits per year in the 1959-1990 era. 

Counting top 10s would be a little bit tedious, but the conversation I recently got into, the other person brought up 1979 specifically, which has 86 Top 10 hits. The years this decade range from 55 Top 10 hits per year to 71 Top 10 hits per year, have basically been decreasing since 2011, and average at about 63 Top 10 hits per year. This includes any song that is in the Top 10 at any week of that year. It doesn't matter if it was in the Top 10 a different year as well. So based on this, it was about 33% easier to get a Top 10 in 1979 than it is at any point in the 2010's decade.

Counting #1s is a lot easier. You can just go through the front page of the Hot 100's chart archives for each year. 

2010: 17 #1s
2011: 14 #1s
2012: 13 #1s
2013: 11 #1s
2014: 10 #1s
2015: 9 #1s

2010's average so far: 12.33 per year.

1970: 21 #1s
1971: 19 #1s
1972: 22 #1s
1973: 27 #1s
1974: 36 #1s
1975: 35 #1s
1976: 26 #1s
1977: 29 #1s
1978: 20 #1s
1979: 24 #1s

1970's average: 25.9 per year. 

Based on this, it seems to be twice as "easy" to get a #1 in the 1970s than it is this decade. Even the least busy year of the 1970's (1978) is more busy than the busiest year of the 2010's (2010). It took like half an hour to compile those numbers, so I'd rather not do it for other decades right now.

I feel like most of the time when people bring up these "It was way harder to do it back in my day" they're saying it because of a combination of pessimism about the present and nostalgia over the past. That, and they dislike seeing modern artists exceed the records set by classic artists. And I'm sure because of this pessimism, many seeing these stats would immediately switch over to saying "look at how sad the music industry is these days, so few #1s". 

Another common thing I see people who purport this "easier to get a top 10/#1 now" nonsense say is that the reason it's easier now is because of the internet. I guess they see the 1 in 1,000,000 people who go viral on YouTube and assume that happens every week or something. In reality it seems like the more popular streaming gets, the less Top 10s and less #1s we have. While we'll have more #1s in 2016 than we've had in a while, we've seem nothing but a decrease from 2010-2015 in #1s per year. We've also seen a decrease in Top 10s per year every single year since 2011. 

Now if it was an article about an artist spending a certain amount of weeks at #1 or a certain amount of weeks on the Top 10, they'd have a point. It's easier for artists to spend a long time on the charts these days than it was in the 1959-1990 era, (which is actually the reason it's harder to go #1 or Top 10). If they said it was harder for a song to be as massive as Uptown Funk or Party Rock Anthem back in the day, they'd be right. If they said that people like Rihanna's records were helped by the popularity of collaboration in this era they'd be correct. If they said it was harder for an artist to amass as many weeks in the Top 10 as Katy Perry has, they'd be right, and if they said that it was harder to debut massive amounts of songs in the same week like Drake, Justin Bieber, Beyonce, Kanye, and Weeknd do, they'd also be right.

But for this, the evidence is completely contrary to the claim.

[BlueSwan]

Good post. It definitely seems harder to get to number one these days as there are so few number ones. Only true megahits and songs that explode out of the gate get to number one these days and plenty of really really humungous hits never make it. Max Martin might have 22 number one hits, but he has quite a few that you would *think* were number ones because of how massive they were (Since U Been Gone, I Want It That Way, Dynamite, Problem, I Knew You Were Trouble, Love Me Like You Do, Oops I Did It Again, and many many more).

But these things change quite a bit. There were a period in the 90's with very very few number ones as well. But yeah, in the 70's and 80's there were constantly new number ones.

[velaxti]

I agree with your post. The evidence shows that it's pretty hard to get #1/top 10 at the moment compared to most (not all) times in chart history. I don't think I've read the discussion/article you're talking about, but I've ended up in discussions like this before. I think people have fondness for artists from the past and they panic when their records get broken (e.g. when Glee Cast beat The Beatles there was a lot of this). I usually explain to them that it's JUST a record! It doesn't mean Glee Cast are more talented than The Beatles, it doesn't mean Glee Cast are more popular than The Beatles, it doesn't mean Glee Cast are more influential than The Beatles, it just means that Glee Cast had more songs chart on the Hot 100 than The Beatles! That's ALL it means.

It also annoys me the lack of looking up facts or statistics to back up their argument (I'm always the one who has to bring along the statistics). As I said earlier the evidence shows that it's pretty hard to get #1 now compared to the 1970's, but some people will just say it's easier because that's what seems right to them.

Another example similar to this was sales figures in the UK the past 10+ years.

From around 2000 onwards sales in the UK started declining. It was 2003 when sales really started getting quite low, and in 2004/2005 sales reached their absolute lowest, you had records being broken every other week to do with "lowest sales to reach top 10" or whatever. This got a fair amount of media attention and a lot of "old school" music fans seemed delighted at the prospect of sales being at a record low. Music is terrible today, sales at their all-time lowest, makes perfect sense to them!

Obviously, downloads started taking off, and they got added to the UK charts in 2005 or 2006 if I remember correctly. Even by 2007 sales were a lot better, and only a few years later sales were at their ALL TIME HIGHEST! So sales went from record lows to record highs in the space of less than a decade (they ended up peaking in 2012 and are now declining again). I think it was 2009 or 2010 which first broke the record for highest sales ever (and every year after that until 2012 broke the record). This does NOT make perfect sense to those same people, "Music is terrible today, sales are at their all-time highest". These people come up with different excuses to explain this away (there are valid reasons to be fair, but there were valid reasons for sales being at record lows in 2004/5 other than "Music is s**t today")..

However, the interesting, and annoying thing is, I would be getting in discussions with people in 2010/2011 about the state of the music industry, and people would say sales were at their all time lowest! I would tell them they're wrong and they're actually at their all time highest now, and they'd say stuff like "Well, they said in the news that they're at their all time lowest". I'd always have to explain to them that they were at their lowest 5/6 years ago (when they heard it in the news), but that they'd increased to an all-time high since then due to downloads.

But this shows their mentality. If someone tells them sales are at an all-time low, they accept and believe it very easily, and will continue to believe it for years. But a few years later when you tell them the opposite fact, that sales are now at their all-time highest, they have a lot more difficulty believing it, and in this case they do ask you for evidence/proof, and once they get the proof then they usually come up with excuses to explain how sales can be higher in 2010 than in the 1970s (there are valid reasons, for example singles are a lot cheaper in 2010 and easier to buy, also there's a higher population, but they never wanted to come up with any excuses when sales were at their all-time lowest a few years before, "Music today is terrible so sales are at their all-time lowest" was a good enough explanation for them!).

Also, the media in general reported a LOT on when single sales were at their all-time lowest. Regular articles for a couple of years. When sales were at their all-time highest, I saw hardly any media coverage on it, at most usually a quick mention of it in a music-related article in January after the year-end figures came out.

I wonder whether I am going to have this irrational nostalgia when I'm older. Maybe it's inevitable and happens to everybody haha.

[imbondz]

The title of this thread is the opposite of the main point correct?

Either way...the argument in my opinion is about how easy it is to consume music nowadays compared to back then. You had to leave your house to buy a record, cassette, Cd. Now you don't have to move. So all else being equal...it's much easier to do today than back then.

You can have a live Tv music show and the influence it's having on the music industry is instant. Back in the day, could be two weeks til you went to a music store. And the influence it had was much harder to compute without Soundscan.

[jebsib]

nikkilee, I love these topics you are coming up with!

You really have to earn top 10s these days... Particularly with streaming slowing everything down. Growing up in the 70s and 80s was great, as there were SO many top 10s (and they actually all felt HUGE - depending on the era). Now just because a new Rihanna song (say) is released, it doesn't automatically go top 10. There was a time in the late 80s when single sales were low and Thriller / Born in the USA had created a radio programming prerogative whereby just about anyone could get a string of top 10 hits. Richard Marx, Expose, Bon Jovi, Debbie Gibson, Gloria Estefan were almost assured top 10s with everything they released (alongside such naturals as MJ, Madonna, George Michael, et al)

[Devil Marlena Nylund]

May 22, 2016 12:18:09 GMT -5 imbondz said:

The title of this thread is the opposite of the main point correct?

Either way...the argument in my opinion is about how easy it is to consume music nowadays compared to back then. You had to leave your house to buy a record, cassette, Cd. Now you don't have to move. So all else being equal...it's much easier to do today than back then.

You can have a live Tv music show and the influence it's having on the music industry is instant. Back in the day, could be two weeks til you went to a music store. And the influence it had was much harder to compute without Soundscan.

On the flipside, there's so much more variety these days that no two people have the same taste in music. The same could be said for back in the 60s but the options in those days was limited mainly to radio and TV, magazines too, I suppose. So if you had radio and tv appearances planned well enough, that's all you'd need. Today, there's so much more to take into consideration. It's easier to consume music, but it's also easier to not consume music too (ie. easier to ignore the hits).

[Deleted]

My observation is that people make statements based off their impressions of reality, but few actually fact-check those impressions. When a sizable number of people have the same impression, it leads to confirmation bias. Anyone who says that it's easier to get a #1 these days is clearly not a true chart follower. That's an easy thing to double check and quickly discover that it's the opposite.

The flip side of it being harder to get a #1 these days is that if you do manage to reach # 1, it's easier to get a long-running #1 hit; It's also easier for any C-list celebrity to get a bit of press for doing or saying something due to social media and a tabloid culture that didn't exist before. So people are noticing these #1 hits more often now b/c those songs are hanging around longer than the revolving door of mostly forgotten** '70s and '80s #1s. They see all the viral sensations and headlines, or they see how Rihanna racks up number ones with ease and Katy tied MJ's record. And they conflate all these different types of ubiquity with each other and think, 'man, damn near anyone can get a #1 these days." Rihanna and Katy aren't at all representative of how 'easy' it is though, and all it takes is ten to twenty minutes on Wikipedia to see that. That is what many fail to understand. Like, you might have someone complain about the "Disney kids" for example, same way people complained about the boy bands in the late 90s/early 2000s. But the only "Disney kid" with a #1 (and she only has one) is Miley, and the only boy band with a #1 (and they only had one) is *NSYNC. The real heart of the complaint is that it's easier to be a celebrity these days, but for some reason people mistakenly think that equates to it being easier to dominate the charts as well.



**Edit - forgotten now. I'm sure back then they didn't seem forgettable at all.