Billboard Hot 100 08/30/2014

[YourFaveIsAFlop]

My issue with it is that Billboard isn't totally arbitrary in what they allow to chart from viral videos. Billie Jean suddenly appearing at #14 because it was playing in the background of a kid dancing? If he had been dancing to a song other than MJ, the week Xscape was dropping, would they have let it chart at all?

[jayhawk1117]

Aug 21, 2014 12:29:17 GMT -5 JamaicaFunk² said:

I would guess that the top 3 on next week's Hot 100 will be all solo females: Taylor, Nicki, and Meghan.
Girl power!!! It's not often that females run the music business.

unless anaconda's performance is a live tv equivalent to wrecking ball, there is no way its in the top 3

[Verisimilitude]

Aug 21, 2014 13:04:01 GMT -5 YourFaveIsAFlop said:

My issue with it is that Billboard isn't totally arbitrary in what they allow to chart from viral videos. Billie Jean suddenly appearing at #14 because it was playing in the background of a kid dancing? If he had been dancing to a song other than MJ, the week Xscape was dropping, would they have let it chart at all?

They must have changed the rules since then since Beyonce's "Crazy In Love" never reentered after being featured in the trailer to "50 Shades Of Grey" since that had LOADS of views.

[Rose "Payola" Nylund]

Aug 21, 2014 12:53:35 GMT -5 @markg94 said:

Whatever. A 30-second sample (it's not even the whole damn song! That just goes to show how irrelevant it was and how those views had nothing to do with the song and hence shouldn't be counted towards the popularity of the song. If anything make some viral dance chart or something) of a track that happened to be playing in the background of videos of people flopping around like dipshits being the 4th most popular song of the year is preposterous. How in the hell was it more popular than Can't Hold Us, Mirrors, Just Give Me A Reason, When I Was Your Man, etc.? Those were some of the biggest hits of the year. You'd be lucky to find 1% of people who would say that they liked Harlem Shake more than any of those songs last year, let alone all the ones below them. I get that it was popular, but there's no way in hell that it was the most popular song at the time or that it wS remotely close to being the 4th most popular song of the year. When I first read both the March 2nd weekly and the year-end, I thought it was a joke: that Billboard was trolling. I couldn't believe when it was actually legit.

You could play Harlem Shake for a lot of people and many would recognize it as much as they would Can't Hold Us or whatever, because everyone remembers the videos which were centred AROUND the song itself. so you might say the music was irrelevant for the videos but those 30-second videos were based around the song and the drop. It was kind of the point...
The dickhead in me would also suggest Harlem Shake is MORE recognizable than Mirrors because Mirrors sounds so much like other JT hits that it sometimes takes me longer to realize it isn't Cry Me A River or What Goes Around...Comes Around than it would to recognize the music to Harlem Shake.

And again, Billboard doesn't measure most liked. That's what the Pulse 100 Chart does in the personal charts section. Check it out, yo.

Anyway, stop arguing because you clearly haven't updated what a 'hit' is in your own lexicon. Times have changed. If you can't deal with it, stop following the charts.

[YourFaveIsAFlop]

Aug 21, 2014 13:11:52 GMT -5 Verisimilitude said:

Aug 21, 2014 13:04:01 GMT -5 YourFaveIsAFlop said:

My issue with it is that Billboard isn't totally arbitrary in what they allow to chart from viral videos. Billie Jean suddenly appearing at #14 because it was playing in the background of a kid dancing? If he had been dancing to a song other than MJ, the week Xscape was dropping, would they have let it chart at all?

They must have changed the rules since then since Beyonce's "Crazy In Love" never reentered after being featured in the trailer to "50 Shades Of Grey" since that had LOADS of views.

Crazy in Love may have been because the song was licensed to be used in the ad. But then we also have the issue of how Shakira's La La La was able to chart off YouTube views and little more when the video for it was a 3 minute Activia ad.

[moore746]

The reason for T-Swift's decline seems so apparent to me, I'm surprised no one has brought it up: the fact that she so wholly, blatantly dropped any semblance of her country roots.

[Gary]

Decline? I guess I am in the minority here. This song will move the biggest numbers of any song so far this year.

I don't read "a career in decline" from that.

[Linnethia Monique]

Aug 21, 2014 13:06:24 GMT -5 jayhawk1117 said:

Aug 21, 2014 12:29:17 GMT -5 JamaicaFunk² said:

I would guess that the top 3 on next week's Hot 100 will be all solo females: Taylor, Nicki, and Meghan.
Girl power!!! It's not often that females run the music business.

unless anaconda's performance is a live tv equivalent to wrecking ball, there is no way its in the top 3

24 Million Views of Anaconda in under 2 days, Top 5 on iTunes, and has Airplay all are equaling a pretty huge jump next week on the Hot 100.

[rimetm]

Aug 21, 2014 13:22:27 GMT -5 YourFaveIsAFlop said:

Aug 21, 2014 13:11:52 GMT -5 Verisimilitude said:

They must have changed the rules since then since Beyonce's "Crazy In Love" never reentered after being featured in the trailer to "50 Shades Of Grey" since that had LOADS of views.

Crazy in Love may have been because the song was licensed to be used in the ad. But then we also have the issue of how Shakira's La La La was able to chart off YouTube views and little more when the video for it was a 3 minute Activia ad.

No, that's not the reason. There are two more solid ones that I can think of: The big one is that it is in fact a completely different arrangement and version. The vocals aren't the same, the beat isn't the same, and the segments used in the trailer are too spread out to effectively be tracked as a cohesive song. If Boneless without the vocals is charted separately and Latch's acoustic version that axes Disclosure does as well, then I think that's what's happening here.

Actually, there's an even more solid reason: it's not been released for consumer purchase (Don't let the various versions on iTunes fool you; not one of them is the genuine article from what I can tell). Since it wasn't sent for radio adds and since its only streaming presence is the trailer for which it is not tracked, there is literally no way it could get points from that version.

[JamaicaFunk²]

Aug 21, 2014 13:11:52 GMT -5 Verisimilitude said:

Aug 21, 2014 13:04:01 GMT -5 YourFaveIsAFlop said:

My issue with it is that Billboard isn't totally arbitrary in what they allow to chart from viral videos. Billie Jean suddenly appearing at #14 because it was playing in the background of a kid dancing? If he had been dancing to a song other than MJ, the week Xscape was dropping, would they have let it chart at all?

They must have changed the rules since then since Beyonce's "Crazy In Love" never reentered after being featured in the trailer to "50 Shades Of Grey" since that had LOADS of views.

But the YouTube video in question would have to be categorized under "music" on YouTube in order to count for billboard chart, right? I remember it being mentioned before on Pulse.
If that's the case, I doubt the movie trailer is categorized under "music".

[Verisimilitude]

Aug 21, 2014 14:38:01 GMT -5 JamaicaFunk² said:

Aug 21, 2014 13:11:52 GMT -5 Verisimilitude said:

They must have changed the rules since then since Beyonce's "Crazy In Love" never reentered after being featured in the trailer to "50 Shades Of Grey" since that had LOADS of views.

But the YouTube video in question would have to be categorized under "music" on YouTube in order to count for billboard chart, right? I remember it being mentioned before on Pulse.
If that's the case, I doubt the movie trailer is categorized under "music".

The videos that featured Beyonce's "Get Me Bodied", Bon Jovi's "Livin' On A Prayer", and the aforementioned "Billie Jean" had nothing to do with music either. Billboard makes up their own rules, period.

[Deleted]

Aug 21, 2014 14:38:01 GMT -5 JamaicaFunk² said:

Aug 21, 2014 13:11:52 GMT -5 Verisimilitude said:

They must have changed the rules since then since Beyonce's "Crazy In Love" never reentered after being featured in the trailer to "50 Shades Of Grey" since that had LOADS of views.

But the YouTube video in question would have to be categorized under "music" on YouTube in order to count for billboard chart, right? I remember it being mentioned before on Pulse.
If that's the case, I doubt the movie trailer is categorized under "music".

Which is why 30-second dance memes shouldn't be categorized under "music". I wonder what kind of drugs the people were on when putting them under that category. It should clearly be under "dance" or something similar because the dance meme videos didn't have anything to do birth the actual song itself. No one actually watched the videos thinking "hey I really want to listen to this song so I'm gonna watch some dance video instead of just going to the official audio for the song for no apparent reason because it's the actual song that I'm interested in and not the dance".

[Rose "Payola" Nylund]

Your passion toward the song reaching #1 is clouding your judgment, imo. If this were a pop song by a popular pop singer that eventually got radio airplay following the meme explosion, I doubt most people would have ever been angry about the situation.

[Adonis the DemiGod!]

Aug 21, 2014 14:49:04 GMT -5 Rose "Payola" Nylund said:

Your passion toward the song reaching #1 is clouding your judgment, imo. If this were a pop song by a popular pop singer that eventually got radio airplay following the meme explosion, I doubt most people would have ever been angry about the situation.

People just hate that their fave could never.

[Gary]

Taylor Swift's "decline" is not exciting enough for this week's singles news I guess, or the Iggy/Ariana domination of the current top 10.



Judging by the number of pages devoted to it, "Harlem Shake" based on this thread is one of the hottest songs of the week.


There has been discussion for months about was it really "popular" enough as a song to be #1 LAST YEAR. Popularity doesn't necessarily mean "like" or "dislike"(I get that people here hate it), the mere fact that it is being so heavily discussed over a year later means its impact was big and its ranking was deserved.

[Deleted]

Nope. If it were to reach #1 once it got enough points from actual views from people listening to the song (even if that was as a result of attention being drawn to the song itself from some viral dance meme, but not the views for the dance meme video itself) and from sales and airplay, then regardless of whether I liked the song or not I would not think that it was inaccurate representation of what's popular. That was the case with Gangnam Style (though it being supposedly less popular than One More Night at the time was clearly preposterous). It generated attention because of the dance, but people weren't watching the OFFICIAL video over and over again to see him horse dancing if they did not like the song, and plus it did very well on iTunes and even got decent airplay. I agree the dance may have been what drew the attention, but when people were spamming the like butting for the OFFICIAL music video and buying the song, clearly they liked it and thus that translates into song popularity. Popularity of a song due to a video should count if and only if people click the video for the song. Otherwise it's measuring the popularity of the meme, not the song. Make a separate chart for that, if you want. But that shouldn't be confused and mixed together with actual song popularity. And HS did generate popularity in such form, and that's fine! It sold over 300k in a week so top 10, maybe even top 5 for its sales and the streams for the track itself would've been more than reasonable (it peaked at #6 in Canada which seemed quite legitimate) but certainly NOT #1. It is about the amount of people that show interest in a particular song, not the amount of people that happen to hear it and POSSIBLY recognize it while their intent is to look at something completely different. Otherwise they might as well just count when 5 seconds of a song is playing in a movie trailer, how many times the camera in a store catches someone picking up an album cover, or even how many times someone google searches "hats" and when they type the first two letters they see "Harlem Shake" come up in the suggestions and that will be no less accurate.

[Deleted]

Aug 21, 2014 15:02:32 GMT -5 Gary said:

There has been discussion for months about was it really "popular" enough as a song to be #1 LAST YEAR. Popularity doesn't necessarily mean "like" or "dislike"(I get that people here hate it), the mere fact that it is being so heavily discussed over a year later means its impact was big and its ranking was deserved.

No it's not because of how amazing or interesting the song was, it was about how people are still really pissed about the change in methodology which unfairly deprived other songs that were truly popular and about how many of us are still pissed off about how UNDESERVED it was. Well people seem to have forgotten it including myself but now that the topic managed to come up it reminded me of what happened last year and it still cheeses me to this day. I'm pretty sure 95% of people who don't follow the charts don't even remember that Harlem Shake exists (and haven't remembered its existence for over a year now).

[lyhom]

Aug 21, 2014 15:16:10 GMT -5 @markg94 said:

Aug 21, 2014 15:02:32 GMT -5 Gary said:

There has been discussion for months about was it really "popular" enough as a song to be #1 LAST YEAR. Popularity doesn't necessarily mean "like" or "dislike"(I get that people here hate it), the mere fact that it is being so heavily discussed over a year later means its impact was big and its ranking was deserved.

No it's not because of how amazing or interesting the song was, it was about how people are still really pissed about the change in methodology which unfairly deprived other songs that were truly popular and about how many of us are still pissed off about how UNDESERVED it was. Well people seem to have forgotten it including myself but now that the topic managed to come up it reminded me of what happened last year and it still cheeses me to this day. I'm pretty sure 95% of people who don't follow the charts don't even remember that Harlem Shake exists (and haven't remembered its existence for over a year now).

Just stop. Please.

[Deleted]

Aug 21, 2014 15:23:42 GMT -5 lyhom said:

Aug 21, 2014 15:16:10 GMT -5 @markg94 said:

No it's not because of how amazing or interesting the song was, it was about how people are still really pissed about the change in methodology which unfairly deprived other songs that were truly popular and about how many of us are still pissed off about how UNDESERVED it was. Well people seem to have forgotten it including myself but now that the topic managed to come up it reminded me of what happened last year and it still cheeses me to this day. I'm pretty sure 95% of people who don't follow the charts don't even remember that Harlem Shake exists (and haven't remembered its existence for over a year now).

Just stop. Please. 

Why are you telling ME to stop and no one else? Just because you disagree with my logic? Don't be quoting ME  and telling me that I'M. The one that needs to stop.
and you people need to watch the video about it from ADoseOfBuckley, from a rational, logical man. He is better at explaining why Billboard Hot 100 is completely useless if it just measures the most used songs. Seriously, they might as well just count "song popularity" if someone searches for some food on google and they see a suggestion saying a song name. Ugh, I give up on humanity.

[Gary]

Aug 21, 2014 15:16:10 GMT -5 @markg94 said:

Aug 21, 2014 15:02:32 GMT -5 Gary said:

There has been discussion for months about was it really "popular" enough as a song to be #1 LAST YEAR. Popularity doesn't necessarily mean "like" or "dislike"(I get that people here hate it), the mere fact that it is being so heavily discussed over a year later means its impact was big and its ranking was deserved.

No it's not because of how amazing or interesting the song was, it was about how people are still really pissed about the change in methodology which unfairly deprived other songs that were truly popular and about how many of us are still pissed off about how UNDESERVED it was. Well people seem to have forgotten it including myself but now that the topic managed to come up it reminded me of what happened last year and it still cheeses me to this day. I'm pretty sure 95% of people who don't follow the charts don't even remember that Harlem Shake exists (and haven't remembered its existence for over a year now).

You remember it, it had an impact on you. Because of the methodology thing, you remember the song quite well.  "Impact" to me is a component of popularity. In this thread alone you have at least 7  8 posts on the subject.   

This is not new news, it happened over a year ago.    Your memory didn't fade, I am sure then "95%" of people who don't follow the charts" probably have a good memory too.

[Deleted]

Aug 21, 2014 15:38:09 GMT -5 Gary said:

Aug 21, 2014 15:16:10 GMT -5 @markg94 said:

No it's not because of how amazing or interesting the song was, it was about how people are still really pissed about the change in methodology which unfairly deprived other songs that were truly popular and about how many of us are still pissed off about how UNDESERVED it was. Well people seem to have forgotten it including myself but now that the topic managed to come up it reminded me of what happened last year and it still cheeses me to this day. I'm pretty sure 95% of people who don't follow the charts don't even remember that Harlem Shake exists (and haven't remembered its existence for over a year now).

You remember it, it had an impact on you. Because of the methodology thing, you remember the song quite well.  "Impact" to me is a component of popularity. In this thread alone you have at least 7  8 posts on the subject.   

This is not new news, it happened over a year ago.    Your memory didn't fade, I am sure then "95%" of people who don't follow the charts" probably have a good memory too.

Well then you might as well call "Friday" by Rebecca Black one of the most successful songs of all time.
there's no way I would remember that song if it weren't for the uproar caused by it. Impact =/= popularity. Friday has an impact too. Just because people are interested in a viral meme that happens to have a song playing, doesn't mean that a significant portion of them give a shit about the song itself. And those that do took the time to listen to it and enjoy it. And I totally think that THAT should count, because it reflects the success of a song. It doesn't make sense to call a song successful just because a lot of people knew about it due to a meme associated with it. Whatever, it's not even that important. I just hope that no viral meme will happen again or that Billboard will be more rational about it and account for actual SONG popularity.

[Mr. Thonk Eyes]

IMO I think YouTube views should ONLY count if it's the OFFICIAL SONG

[Deleted]

The charts were never made to be a measure of what will be remembered in X amount of years from now.

[Deleted]

Aug 21, 2014 15:43:14 GMT -5 @gagalicious said:

The charts were never made to be a measure of what will be remembered in X amount of years from now.

They were also never made to be a measure of what the most watched dance is, the most watched movie trailer is, the song with the most google searches with 3 or more common letters is, or even what the most talked about song is (if that's the case then why should Gangnam Style have peaked at #2 when it was waaaaaaay more talked about than the number one song at the time?)
they were made to be a measure of what the most successful song is at a time. And I think that's enough on this topic. It has no relevance to this week's chart. I do agree though that streams for a SONG (yes, the actual song itself) are a better indicator of popularity than radio because it's more subjective to what people actually want to listen to. A viral dance meme, however, is infinitely less subjective to that than even radio, because the radio stops playing a song when they see that people aren't interested in hearing it.

[lyhom]

Aug 21, 2014 15:32:00 GMT -5 @markg94 said:

Aug 21, 2014 15:23:42 GMT -5 lyhom said:

Just stop. Please. 

Why are you telling ME to stop and no one else? Just because you disagree with my logic? Don't be quoting ME  and telling me that I'M. The one that needs to stop.
and you people need to watch the video about it from ADoseOfBuckley, from a rational, logical man. He is better at explaining why Billboard Hot 100 is completely useless if it just measures the most used songs. Seriously, they might as well just count "song popularity" if someone searches for some food on google and they see a suggestion saying a song name. Ugh, I give up on humanity.

I have my problems with the way Billboard counts streaming, but if you're just going to say the same old argument that's been refuted a thousand times over in this thread alone, then there's no keeping this already way too long debate going.

(also adoseofbuckley's character a rational logical man lol)

[Deleted]

Aug 21, 2014 15:49:31 GMT -5 lyhom said:

Aug 21, 2014 15:32:00 GMT -5 @markg94 said:

Why are you telling ME to stop and no one else? Just because you disagree with my logic? Don't be quoting ME  and telling me that I'M. The one that needs to stop.
and you people need to watch the video about it from ADoseOfBuckley, from a rational, logical man. He is better at explaining why Billboard Hot 100 is completely useless if it just measures the most used songs. Seriously, they might as well just count "song popularity" if someone searches for some food on google and they see a suggestion saying a song name. Ugh, I give up on humanity.

I have my problems with the way Billboard counts streaming, but if you're just going to say the same old argument that's been refuted a thousand times over in this thread alone, then there's no keeping this already way too long debate going.

(also adoseofbuckley's character a rational logical man lol)

Well it still makes more sense to just say it in ye real for everyone to stop this discussion rather than only the person who you supposedly aren't in disagreement with. They're doing their part in keeping this going too.

[damazz09]

Clearly @markg94 is trolling us and this is getting ridiculous. Moving on...

Looking forward to seeing things shake up in the next two weeks (Taylor and vmas)

[Gary]

Aug 21, 2014 15:40:36 GMT -5 @markg94 said:

Aug 21, 2014 15:38:09 GMT -5 Gary said:

You remember it, it had an impact on you. Because of the methodology thing, you remember the song quite well.  "Impact" to me is a component of popularity. In this thread alone you have at least 7  8 9  12 posts on the subject.   

This is not new news, it happened over a year ago.    Your memory didn't fade, I am sure then "95%" of people who don't follow the charts" probably have a good memory too.

Well then you might as well call "Friday" by Rebecca Black one of the most successful songs of all time.
there's no way I would remember that song if it weren't for the uproar caused by it. Impact =/= popularity. Friday has an impact too. Just because people are interested in a viral meme that happens to have a song playing, doesn't mean that a significant portion of them give a s**t about the song itself. And those that do took the time to listen to it and enjoy it. And I totally think that THAT should count, because it reflects the success of a song. It doesn't make sense to call a song successful just because a lot of people knew about it due to a meme associated with it. Whatever, it's not even that important. I just hope that no viral meme will happen again or that Billboard will be more rational about it and account for actual SONG popularity.

I am not saying one song or another is successful.   I am not arguing for or against Billboard's method change from 2013.

You are making assumptions that 95% of all people not posting here are forgetful.  I am willing to bet that many of  those familiar with Harlem Shake enough to watch the video at that  time in 2013 remember it today, Alzheimers doesn't set in that quickly.  Those who passed on that "pop culture" moment in time probably did forget or never cared to begin with. 

VH1 may likely cover this song when they do the pop culture moments of 2013 show at some point.

I am suggesting that with the amount of time you are devoting to this over a year later suggests that you remember it well, it doesn't matter if you liked it or not.  It had an impact on you.    Does that mean impact = popularity? no.  I never said that.  It is certainly a component though.

I don't agree or disagree with the points you are making. I do however disagree with making a Spring 2013 issue the central theme of the 8/30/2014 thread

So what did you think of the Taylor Swift song?

[rimetm]

So, what are the odds for next week that:

1. "Bailando" and "Rather Be" will keep bulleting (they bullet this week despite the position drops)
2. They have a shot at the top 10 over the falling "Latch" and "Maps"
3. "Shake It Off" and "Anaconda" won't end up blocking them from their prime shot at the top 10

I was hopeful, but then this little chain of probabilities struck me...

[Deleted]

Aug 21, 2014 15:48:49 GMT -5 @markg94 said:

Aug 21, 2014 15:43:14 GMT -5 @gagalicious said:

The charts were never made to be a measure of what will be remembered in X amount of years from now.

They were also never made to be a measure of what the most watched dance is, the most watched movie trailer is, the song with the most google searches with 3 or more common letters is, or even what the most talked about song is (if that's the case then why should Gangnam Style have peaked at #2 when it was waaaaaaay more talked about than the number one song at the time?)

"Gangnam Style" being blocked had way more to do with airplay playing a factor than anything else.

I'm not the biggest fan of the YouTube inclusion either, and the bizarre rules around it. It was actually the last straw that made me stop following the Hot 100 entirely. (That and it being too boringly slow). But what can I really do about it? I don't work for Billboard and have no say over the methodology.