Billboard Hot 100: 08/29/15 (#MESS)

[House Lannister]

Aug 18, 2015 14:20:01 GMT -5 @markg94 said:

Aug 18, 2015 14:18:02 GMT -5 imbondz said:

Good point. Tho I'm still thinking billboard has to be involved someway of double checking all the figures. We all were surprised at the #7 debut and felt something was wrong. Surely Billboard could have raised flags.

If only they saw it that way when Harlem Shake was deemed #1...

I still refuse to believe that song hit number 1.

Anyway, Billboard/Soundscan/whoever has egg on their face with High on the Beach like they failed Egg Russian Roulette on the Tonight Show.  

It's one thing to miss a spot or two, but 44?  All I have to say to that is wow.

[Caviar]

I'm certain heads are rolling in the Billboard offices.

[House Lannister]

Aug 17, 2015 15:01:02 GMT -5 kanimal said:

Aug 17, 2015 14:21:08 GMT -5 House Lannister said:

Probably the same thing that happened last week with Cool for the Summer.  Kworb's projections are normally pretty good, but once in a while something gets missed that leads to a headscratcher.  

Perhaps Del Ray sold a bunch of copies in an outlet that he doesn't use in his projections?

So there's actually a chance the Kworb projection WAS on point regarding Demi.  While Billboard hasn't updated the chart position, Republic today reported a cumulative sales figure that is about 10K higher than it would have been if CFTS only sold 51K last week.  Could mean there was a retroactive revision.

Kanimal:  And apparently it took place this week.

Thinking About You:  I kinda thought maybe there was some outlets not covered by Kworb's projections like a Wal-Mart or F.Y.E. or something like that.  But apparently, Kworb is the man and Billboard got it wrong.  Apparently explaining the revision.

And congrats to Selena making it back up to the top 10.

[pizza]

Aug 17, 2015 13:36:38 GMT -5 pizza said:

#1 - Cheerleader
#2 - Can't Feel My Face
#3 - Watch Me
#4 - Lean On
#5 - The Hills
#6 - Fight Song
#7 - Trap Queen
#8 - My Way
#9 - Bad Blood
#10 - Good For You
#13 - 679
#15 - Photograph
#16 - Cool For The Summer
#26 - Drag Me Down
#51 - High By The Beach

Updated

[wavey.]

Yeah, Billboard was definitely "high by the computers" cause..

[renfield75]

I think this is the most embarrassing mistake I've ever seen Billboard make (not counting deliberate bad decisions like not counting Michael Jackson's "Number Ones" on the BB200 when it was the best-selling album in the country for 6 weeks).

[crystalphnx]

Aug 18, 2015 15:21:08 GMT -5 renfield75 said:

I think this is the most embarrassing mistake I've ever seen Billboard make (not counting deliberate bad decisions like not counting Michael Jackson's "Number Ones" on the BB200 when it was the best-selling album in the country for 6 weeks).

I don't want to go into broken record mode here, but I don't see how it's Billboard's mistake, apart from "they should've caught it sooner" - which is still debatable, as others have said, because Billboard employees likely aren't checking iTunes and/or Kworb on a daily or hourly basis. Even if Billboard did visit Kworb, it seems reasonable that they would trust the service they've been using since 1991 over a fan-made website (even though us chart followers know how reliable Kworb can be.) Lana's an established act, it's a lead single, and it did race to No. 1 on iTunes - the 248k figure only looked totally bizarre to us because we saw Kworb's estimation and took that seriously.

Either Apple gave incorrect data to SoundScan, or SoundScan incorrectly tracked the sales from iTunes. Nielsen SoundScan is an information and sales tracking system. Billboard uses the data they receive from SoundScan, they don't directly track it themselves. This is even explained in their re-write of yesterday's article:

UPDATED Aug. 18, 2:15 p.m.: This story has been updated to reflect new chart data, which was reprocessed by Nielsen Music following the story's original Monday posting. As a result, Lana Del Rey's "High By the Beach" debuts at No. 51 on the Billboard Hot 100 instead of No. 7. On Digital Songs, it debuts at No. 10 instead of No. 1, with 67,000 sold, instead of 248,000, as originally reported. The information below has been updated to reflect corrected data.

[Rose "Payola" Nylund]

Nominate for Mess of the Year for the PMA!

[Ky]

Aug 18, 2015 15:32:14 GMT -5 crystalphnx said:

Aug 18, 2015 15:21:08 GMT -5 renfield75 said:

I think this is the most embarrassing mistake I've ever seen Billboard make (not counting deliberate bad decisions like not counting Michael Jackson's "Number Ones" on the BB200 when it was the best-selling album in the country for 6 weeks).

I don't want to go into broken record mode here, but I don't see how it's Billboard's mistake, apart from "they should've caught it sooner" - which is still debatable, as others have said, because Billboard employees likely aren't checking iTunes and/or Kworb on a daily or hourly basis. Even if Billboard did visit Kworb, it seems reasonable that they would trust the service they've been using since 1991 over a fan-made website (even though us chart followers know how reliable Kworb can be.) Lana's an established act, it's a lead single, and it did race to No. 1 on iTunes - the 248k figure only looked totally bizarre to us because we saw Kworb's estimation and took that seriously.

Either Apple gave incorrect data to SoundScan, or SoundScan incorrectly tracked the sales from iTunes. Nielsen SoundScan is an information and sales tracking system. Billboard uses the data they receive from SoundScan, they don't directly track it themselves. This is even explained in their re-write of yesterday's article:

UPDATED Aug. 18, 2:15 p.m.: This story has been updated to reflect new chart data, which was reprocessed by Nielsen Music following the story's original Monday posting. As a result, Lana Del Rey's "High By the Beach" debuts at No. 51 on the Billboard Hot 100 instead of No. 7. On Digital Songs, it debuts at No. 10 instead of No. 1, with 67,000 sold, instead of 248,000, as originally reported. The information below has been updated to reflect corrected data.

Yeah, but Billboard is the one using the data and presenting the results as the reliable and trusted source so they're on the hook to make sure what they're getting from any partner makes sense and they make a judgment call on whether it's reliable to use or not. It's a pretty standard thing to do with data because things go wrong all the time. They made the call that this info was reliable and unfortunately for them, other people caught the (large) mistake before they did. I bet they'll have several checks in place going forward to make sure it doesn't happen again, and it'll be things that they probably could've done this week.

[Caviar]

We're not even into the busy 4th quarter yet! Imagine this error happening on the Billboard 200?!

[crystalphnx]

Aug 18, 2015 16:20:51 GMT -5 Ky said:

Yeah, but Billboard is the one using the data and presenting the results as the reliable and trusted source so they're on the hook to make sure what they're getting from any partner makes sense and they make a judgment call on whether it's reliable to use or not. It's a pretty standard thing to do with data because things go wrong all the time. They made the call that this info was reliable and unfortunately for them, other people caught the (large) mistake before they did. I bet they'll have several checks in place going forward to make sure it doesn't happen again, and it'll be things that they probably could've done this week.

But this partner in question isn't some random little startup Billboard took a chance on - it's Nielsen, the global information and measurement company that's been around since 1923 and in partnership with Billboard since 1991. It makes perfect sense that Billboard would trust Nielsen over Kworb.net (and this is assuming that Billboard even has any awareness of Kworb.)

I'm not saying Billboard is 100% blameless, but it just seems backwards to point most/all the fingers at them instead of at the service that actually tracks and collects the sales data. That service screwed up and gave Billboard a figure that was off, which Billboard put into its usual formula. Billboard's "mistake" was trusting a service they've used (which has been very reliable for the most part) for the past 24 years.

It's like...if Grandma mailed you a birthday card, but you never received it - would you get upset at Grandma, or the USPS? Sure, Grandma could've just emailed you or used FedEx instead...but she's not the one who actually lost the card.

[renfield75]

Billboard should have realized that estimate was waaaaaaay off. You keep saying they probably don't know about Kworb. Maybe not. But this is a hobby for us and we all knew that number was fishy. IT'S BILLBOARD'S JOB to be aware of drastic anomalies like that. They see building numbers as they come in. That article should never have been posted. And if they didn't catch an error that big, or if Neilsen didn't, then what smaller mistakes have gotten through?

[85la]

Aug 18, 2015 14:22:52 GMT -5 HolidayGuy said:

Was just going to say that Billboard staff may not monitor kworb for estimates or even keep iTunes rankings on its radar- but, it should.

Oh, I'm sure they do, there's no question about it. And they have better, more accurate numbers than we get. For heaven's sake, they actually subscribe to Nielsen, they get daily numbers and updates!!!

[Clauss]

[Glove Slap]

Looks like the mental retardation of the writing staff has bled into the compilers as well. Embarrassing.

[85la]

Seems like more things than HBTB might have been f'd up if they aren't posting the charts until tomorrow. They could just be re-running everything to be safe, but if they're still unsure why would they feel comfortable updating the article with the revised top ten so soon?.....

[Ky]

Aug 18, 2015 17:31:51 GMT -5 85la said:

Seems like more things than HBTB might have been f'd up if they aren't posting the charts until tomorrow. They could just be re-running everything to be safe, but if they're still unsure why would they feel comfortable updating the article with the revised top ten so soon?.....

Good question. I would think they'd want to comb through everything before they post. I wonder if they'll do the Monday announcements the next few weeks.

[crystalphnx]

Aug 18, 2015 17:00:41 GMT -5 renfield75 said:

Billboard should have realized that estimate was waaaaaaay off. You keep saying they probably don't know about Kworb. Maybe not. But this is a hobby for us and we all knew that number was fishy.

Which we knew...because of Kworb. If we didn't have Kworb's constant pop bar updates and weekly sales estimates, we wouldn't have the 67k figure that made 248k seem "waaaaaaay off." The 67k figure wasn't common knowledge - it was an estimate given by one fan-made site that many at Pulse happen to visit regularly.

Nielsen made a mistake with Lana's figures. Kworb did not make a mistake with Lana's figures. That doesn't mean that Kworb is an overall better service than Nielsen. This is just one mistake Nielsen made that Kworb didn't - but the reverse could happen even more frequently.

Nielsen doesn't have a 100% perfect sales tracking system. Such a thing probably doesn't exist. You can say "This is their job so they should be able to do it flawlessly", but that doesn't make 100% flawless execution actually possible.

Aug 18, 2015 17:00:41 GMT -5 renfield75 said:

But this is a hobby for us and we all knew that number was fishy. IT'S BILLBOARD'S JOB to be aware of drastic anomalies like that. They see building numbers as they come in. That article should never have been posted. And if they didn't catch an error that big, or if Neilsen didn't, then what smaller mistakes have gotten through?

Exactly, we're hobbyists. We don't know what it's like to actually work at Billboard and do their job. It's easy to jump on a forum and criticize when something goes wrong, but there's surely a ton about the situation that we don't understand.

Also, Billboard IS correcting the charts, before they're released in full to the public. People are talking as though Billboard just swept this under the rug and moved on. They published one article using the incorrect data, which was up for less than 24hrs, before rectifying the situation. The charts weren't uploaded, the magazine wasn't on newsstands.

I started this line of discussion mostly to clarify that Billboard doesn't directly track sales. Billboard didn't come up with the 248k figure, they were given it by a reliable service. If people still want to place the blame with them anyway, I just gotta let it go.

[Deleted]

Well actually even without the estimates it was pretty obvious that something was wrong with the 248k figure...it would imply that HBTB sold almost as much as Drag Me Down the week before even though we all know it wasn't #1 on iTunes for nearly as long as DMD. If the number had been off by 40k-50k I would've probably believed it but it being off by nearly 200k should make it pretty damn obvious that something's not right here IMO...

[Rose "Payola" Nylund]

Regardless of who's "fault" it is, it's a pretty big mistake to make. And not even for us chart-watchers but for the industry itself. It's an unprofessional mistake and imagine the reaction from Lana's camp and record label. They must have knew there was a mistake when they saw the song as high as it was in sales reports.

[Deleted]

Aug 18, 2015 17:00:41 GMT -5 renfield75 said:

Billboard should have realized that estimate was waaaaaaay off. You keep saying they probably don't know about Kworb. Maybe not. But this is a hobby for us and we all knew that number was fishy. IT'S BILLBOARD'S JOB to be aware of drastic anomalies like that. They see building numbers as they come in. That article should never have been posted. And if they didn't catch an error that big, or if Neilsen didn't, then what smaller mistakes have gotten through?

This.

Billboard has been really messy recently.

[THINKIN BOUT YOU]

It feels like they are a confederacy of slackers and all, like ANYONE in this forum could've done a better job avoiding such a far-off apocalypse..
On the bright side, billboard IS making some certain progress towards more unbiased stuff.. As lame as the song is, I'm actually impressed in a way that "trap queen"'s streaming is not burned down by billboard deliberately. They did erase some of the songs' high streaming in 2013 like the fox, roar and we can't stop.. Now at least they're not so ratty in terms of fairness.. and they do let one-week chart-topper happen now!!!!

[Deleted]

They all must have all been high by the beach when compiling this chart.

[vipanonymous]

LOL Last time i've seen this mess was with Mariah with Memoirs of An Imperfect Angel sales counted into Betcha Gon' Know song. I'm quite sad for Lana, but i know she doesn't even care.

[imbondz]

Aug 18, 2015 17:00:41 GMT -5 renfield75 said:

Billboard should have realized that estimate was waaaaaaay off. You keep saying they probably don't know about Kworb. Maybe not. But this is a hobby for us and we all knew that number was fishy. IT'S BILLBOARD'S JOB to be aware of drastic anomalies like that. They see building numbers as they come in. That article should never have been posted. And if they didn't catch an error that big, or if Neilsen didn't, then what smaller mistakes have gotten through?

That was my thought too.

[imbondz]

Aug 18, 2015 18:17:48 GMT -5 Rose "Payola" Nylund said:

Regardless of who's "fault" it is, it's a pretty big mistake to make. And not even for us chart-watchers but for the industry itself. It's an unprofessional mistake and imagine the reaction from Lana's camp and record label. They must have knew there was a mistake when they saw the song as high as it was in sales reports.

Maybe they had integrity and reported it?

[jebsib]

Also it is good that we live in an age where we have someone open like Gary Trust tweeting, who will undoubtably explain in due course.

As mentioned above, the charts weren't published, the magazine not published.

It was worse in the pre internet days when dead songs flew up the chart without explanation or #1 songs dropped to #15 three weeks running (see 1974)...

[85la]

To me, the mistake seems so gross that corruption or manipulation is a more likely explanation. Either that or Nielsen was hacked. It doesn't take an idiot to see that a song that was only out for 4 days of the week and only #1 on iTunes for 1-2 of those days can't sell nearly twice as much as the #2 song for the whole week.

[Rose "Payola" Nylund]

Aug 18, 2015 20:50:49 GMT -5 imbondz said:

Aug 18, 2015 18:17:48 GMT -5 Rose "Payola" Nylund said:

Regardless of who's "fault" it is, it's a pretty big mistake to make. And not even for us chart-watchers but for the industry itself. It's an unprofessional mistake and imagine the reaction from Lana's camp and record label. They must have knew there was a mistake when they saw the song as high as it was in sales reports.

Maybe they had integrity and reported it?

Possibly.

My point was that the people defending Billboard as if people are unfairly insulting it should probably take a more realistic view that yeah, just because it's possible to screw up occasionally, doesn't excuse how big of a screw up this was and the potential it has to remove some of BB's credibility for the ones they matter most to.

[imbondz]

I've been following Billboard for years, this is one of the biggest mess ups I can remember. Hope they explain it.