Billboard Hot 100: 02/20/2016 (PILLOWTALK #1)

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Yeah. The bottom line is $$ trumps everything, and during the 90s album sales were huge and super competitive. The labels made the decisions to not release certain songs as radio-only singles to increase album sales - knowing full well the Hot 100 rules at the time. The labels definitely profited, as did the artists, financially speaking... and their H100 singles chart histories were skewed in the process. Ultimately, I don't think any of them (artists included) were/are pressed about it, either. Only some of us chart geeks. God bless us. And, in fairness to Billboard, promoted radio singles had pretty much always been commercially available... so at the time, they were simply trying to get the labels to keep playing by that unwritten rule... but in some cases, labels said FU- we don't care about the H100 - we want more $$ and higher certifications. And that was that.

I remember the City of Angels soundtrack, specifically, had huge #1 radio hits like Uninvited and Iris, both of which had no single release (Iris did eventually after it peaked at radio)... and that album went #1 and sold over 5m copies in the US because of it. It went on to be one of the year's top 10 sellers, and one of the top 50 albums of the decade. Had those songs been singles, it's safe to say album sales/success would have been less... especially since it's a soundtrack, not an artist's studio album.

[jenglisbe]

Feb 11, 2016 11:17:17 GMT -5 @broccoli said:

I remember the City of Angels soundtrack, specifically, had huge #1 radio hits like Uninvited and Iris, both of which had no single release (Iris did eventually after it peaked at radio)... and that album went #1 and sold over 5m copies in the US because of it. It went on to be one of the year's top 10 sellers, and one of the top 50 albums of the decade. Had those songs been singles, it's safe to say album sales/success would have been less... especially since it's a soundtrack, not an artist's studio album.

In addition to songs not being released, some songs had limited commercial releases for the same reason. Several of Mariah's #1s were limited/deleted commercially, as were Celine's "Because You Loved Me" and "My Heart Will Go On." Even now people talk about the weeks at #1 for "MHWGO" not being representative of its popularity, but again that isn't Billboard's fault.

[Deleted]

^ absolutely.  it's label decisions for maximized profitability.  bottom line.  singles have always been intended as an album-selling tool, and the chart positions of singles were tools as well... so it was a balancing act in many cases.  let's have this song chart, hopefully go #1, then delete the single, and then use the chart position to make others want to buy the album.  and it worked a lot of the time.  And let's face it, ALL singles prior to the digital era were limited to varying degrees - as they had to be manufactured/shipped, etc. Nowadays "singles" can sell infinitely. That's a huge difference.

Anyway, it's the bypassing of the commercial single altogether that started to become a trend in the 90s, and Billboard stayed true to the chart, as the H100 was a SINGLES chart, not an album tracks chart.  It obviously has changed a lot over time (especially since then) and now it's simply THE HOT 100 where pretty much anything current can chart, single or video or album track or whatever... even old stuff can chart if it reaches a certain threshold, re-promoted or not.