This year there was no song of the summer

[Rose "Payola" Nylund]

Rolling Stone printed this article that I thought was interesting and maybe of interest for discussion on here.

www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/no-song-of-the-summer-731943/

This bit jumped out at me in particular as something that rarely gets acknowledged on here - how arbitrary the charts can be these days.

What about the charts, which surely can give a definitive answer? Sadly, we can’t look to their numbers to settle the debate. Because music charts nowadays compare streaming numbers against traditional album sales — to a somewhat arbitrary rate of 1,500 streams equalling one album purchase, which is made even murkier by some chart-makers deciding to weigh paid streams more than free streams — they don’t reveal popularity so much as gameability. (Anyone can essentially hack their way to number one with the right release strategy or enough fanbase enthusiasm.)

[tanooki]

The demographic differences between who tunes into radio and who streams is pretty big, but I do agree about trying to compare streaming to sales. It is ultimately arbitrary and the two formats are really different.

[iHype.]

What.... blatant lie, lol.

In My Feelings was #1 on Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, and despite their misleading graph YouTube for the overall Summer. It was totally dominant. Their YouTube number for IMF makes no sense considering it broke the streaming record, and did over 50m+ views per week on YouTube at its height.

It was very dominant across all consumption formats. Even on radio, it still reached #6 at Pop, #1 on Rhythmic, and #1 on Urban. So if you listened to radio throughout the Summer, you heard the song many times most likely, even though they're trying to literally suggest the opposite.

Drake’s“In My Feelings,” for instance, racked up 171,933,952 U.S. Spotify streams largely off the backs of viral online memes. It didn’t crack the Top 10 on iHeart’s stations. So if you’re someone who listens to music only via the radio, you might have totally missed how dominant the song was in the millennial zeitgeist this summer.

IMF also got lots of news coverage which many big hits don't get, in addition to large social media coverage because it was so viral, so I mean... it definitely wasn't some fluke they're trying to make it out to be, that only a small amount of people were aware of. 

[Au$tin]

Yeah, my 50 year old mom that barely knows anything outside of the current top ten on AC knew about IMF.

[tanooki]

Yeah, the title of the article is just bogus. Sure, IMF wasn't a Despacito-level smash but it doesn't need to be

[Mauricio]

Nov 11, 2018 19:14:05 GMT -5 Au$tin said:

Yeah, my 50 year old mom that barely knows anything outside of the current top ten on AC knew about IMF.

I shouldn't have laughed 

[Rose "Payola" Nylund]

I barely know In My Feelings tbh

[Mayman]

Nov 11, 2018 19:19:34 GMT -5 Rose "Payola" Nylund said:

I barely know In My Feelings tbh

It's okay, my grandmother doesn't know it much either.

[thegreatdivine]

And I'm sure some people didn't know about/care for One Dance when it was the Song of the Summer in 2016, too. It's funny even insinuating that a song wasn't a summer smash because you didn't hear it every single place you went or because your GRANDMOTHER didn't know it. Songs like Despacito don't come around often, Summer or not. Those kinds of hits are very few and far between. We do have an official Song of the Summer this year, but everyone is free to disregard that and come up with their own ideas.

[Choco]

It's probably technically IMF, but it's one of the smaller ones in recent years. It's longevity was pretty poor and the meme made it get old faster than the usual hit, which probably doesn't help it's case... but I guess the numbers still back it up.

[Rose "Payola" Nylund]

Nov 11, 2018 19:25:42 GMT -5 Mayman said:

Nov 11, 2018 19:19:34 GMT -5 Rose "Payola" Nylund said:

I barely know In My Feelings tbh

It's okay, my grandmother doesn't know it much either.

I heard it plenty but I wouldn’t say it was inescapable the way many others have been.

[thegreatdivine]

Nov 11, 2018 19:58:51 GMT -5 Choco said:

It's probably technically IMF, but it's one of the smaller ones in recent years. It's longevity was pretty poor and the meme made it get old faster than the usual hit, which probably doesn't help it's case... but I guess the numbers still back it up.

Not "guess" or "probably" when the numbers back it up and it was the hottest song this Summer. You can say you didn't like it or you preferred another song, but Songs of the Summer aren't required to last through the Summer into the Fall. One Dance also did 10 weeks at #1 even though it's run started much earlier. By the time the Summer of 2016 was rounding up, it wasn't the #1 song anymore, but even beyond numbers, you knew it was the song that defined the Summer that year. IMF was the song most people played the most during THE SUMMER, which is what matters here. That song was everywhere you went in the US during the Summer. Clubs, radio, BBQ's, blasting out of randoms cars, etc. It did 10 weeks at #1 and came just in time for the Summer. It was enough to reach #1 on Billboard's Song of the Summer chart by the end of the Summer, too and that just further validated it.

[Kris]

With how customizable Spotify and Apple Music are now, Song of the Summer is rather subjective. For example the song I played the most this summer was probably One Foot by Walk the Moon or Lullaby by Sigala. In My Feelings doesn't have 1 play on my Spotify. Pretty soon with how accessible every song in the world is, SOTS will be rather irrelevant.

[thegreatdivine]

I kind of agree with their point on how the Song of the Summer title won't hold any weight any longer in the future because of current music trends, but it still doesn't mean IMF wasn't the Song of the Summer this year by every metric and by logical reasoning. Everyone will always have their favorite songs, but there's a large sample size that supports the validity of IMF being given that title, regardless of whatever that Rolling Stone article suggests.

[shrk314]

Honestly, Gods Plan is the only song this entire year that really felt like a huge hit, and its already forgotten.

[willapted33]

In My Feelings wasn't anywhere near as big as it was in the US in Australia

our SOTS would've been Shotgun by George Ezra, Be Alright by Dean Lewis or Youngblood by 5SOS

[Deleted]

Nov 11, 2018 22:51:24 GMT -5 shrk314 said:

Honestly, Gods Plan is the only song this entire year that really felt like a huge hit, and its already forgotten.

I like it

[ahmiizafii]

Nov 12, 2018 1:26:09 GMT -5 willapted33 said:

In My Feelings wasn't anywhere near as big as it was in the US in Australia

our SOTS would've been Shotgun by George Ezra, Be Alright by Dean Lewis or Youngblood by 5SOS

Someone has Taste.

[willapted33]

Nov 12, 2018 2:04:15 GMT -5 ahmiizafii said:

Nov 12, 2018 1:26:09 GMT -5 willapted33 said:

In My Feelings wasn't anywhere near as big as it was in the US in Australia

our SOTS would've been Shotgun by George Ezra, Be Alright by Dean Lewis or Youngblood by 5SOS

Someone has Taste.

they're better than In My Feelings that's for sure...

I'd prefer Lucid Dreams, Sicko Mode & Better Now to be our big summer songs lol

[mkarns]

Nov 11, 2018 19:58:51 GMT -5 Choco said:

It's probably technically IMF, but it's one of the smaller ones in recent years. It's longevity was pretty poor and the meme made it get old faster than the usual hit, which probably doesn't help it's case... but I guess the numbers still back it up.

Seems reasonable, but other songs seemed bigger in terms of how much they were played, such as Better Now or Girls Like You.

Regarding In My Feelings, to me at least it got more buzz and attention from the viral memes and clips, such as the dance challenge, than the song itself which wasn't omnipresent on radio, in public, etc. to the degree that one would associate with a true "song of the summer". (I personally didn't find it all that memorable when removed from the memes, but YMMV.) I also wonder just how much all those clicks of seeing people dancing to it, viral memes, etc. should be counted as actual streams or listens to the song. In a sense it's 2018's version of Harlem Shake, which raised similar questions, though at least IMF is an actual song that did become a top 10 radio hit from a top selling album.

[kcdawg13]

I Like It, Nice For What, In My Feelings, Boo'd Up, Better Now, Girls Like You, etc.

This article is bullshit.

[Enigma.]

what is this even

[thegreatdivine]

Nov 12, 2018 4:58:00 GMT -5 Codex said:

Nov 11, 2018 19:09:58 GMT -5 iHype. said:

What.... blatant lie, lol.

In My Feelings was #1 on Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, and despite their misleading graph YouTube for the overall Summer. It was totally dominant. Their YouTube number for IMF makes no sense considering it broke the streaming record, and did over 50m+ views per week on YouTube at its height.

It was very dominant across all consumption formats. Even on radio, it still reached #6 at Pop, #1 on Rhythmic, and #1 on Urban. So if you listened to radio throughout the Summer, you heard the song many times most likely, even though they're trying to literally suggest the opposite.
IMF also got lots of news coverage which many big hits don't get, in addition to large social media coverage because it was so viral, so I mean... it definitely wasn't some fluke they're trying to make it out to be, that only a small amount of people were aware of. 

What is misleading about their youtube statistics? Reaching #1 on Rhythmic/Urban doesn't mean much if it only reached #6 on Pop, which is still the biggest radio format, and the reason why it only peaked at #4 (?) on the overall airplay chart. This is probably the first year in a while where the "song of the summer" didn't even go top 3 on airplay.

Hearing IMF 3 times on radio over the summer doesn't compare to hearing Call Me Maybe every 10 minutes in 2012.

It not reaching #1 on Pop radio has nothing to do with the song and everything to do with how Pop radio treats rap records. God's Plan and Nice for What didn't reach #1 on Pop radio, too. Still, In My Feelings was the most streamed and the most purchased song during the summer. It was everywhere. And it's the official Billboard Song of the Summer, regardless of how anyone feels about it.

[Keelzit]

This 'achievement' is embarrassing anyway. Similar to how stan twitter makes up random 'records' based on their faves' stats to make them seem more successful than they actually are. It holds absolutely no merit and no importance at all.

[divasummer]

I personally think the example of "In My Feelings" and the "Song of The Summer" was bad.
The article should of been about why it's harder to find "certified smash hits" everyone knows now a days.

"In My Feelings" felt like a song of the Summer to me.
I heard it on the radio, saw a couple of stories about it on the NEWS, heard about the dance and challenges etc etc.

The Summer's only 2and a half months....

Maybe this Summer the music was weak for mainstream hits??

[iHype.]

Nov 12, 2018 4:58:00 GMT -5 Codex said:

Nov 11, 2018 19:09:58 GMT -5 iHype. said:

What.... blatant lie, lol.

In My Feelings was #1 on Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, and despite their misleading graph YouTube for the overall Summer. It was totally dominant. Their YouTube number for IMF makes no sense considering it broke the streaming record, and did over 50m+ views per week on YouTube at its height.

It was very dominant across all consumption formats. Even on radio, it still reached #6 at Pop, #1 on Rhythmic, and #1 on Urban. So if you listened to radio throughout the Summer, you heard the song many times most likely, even though they're trying to literally suggest the opposite.
IMF also got lots of news coverage which many big hits don't get, in addition to large social media coverage because it was so viral, so I mean... it definitely wasn't some fluke they're trying to make it out to be, that only a small amount of people were aware of. 

What is misleading about their youtube statistics? Reaching #1 on Rhythmic/Urban doesn't mean much if it only reached #6 on Pop, which is still the biggest radio format, and the reason why it only peaked at #4 (?) on the overall airplay chart. This is probably the first year in a while where the "song of the summer" didn't even go top 3 on airplay.

Hearing IMF 3 times on radio over the summer doesn't compare to hearing Call Me Maybe every 10 minutes in 2012.

The YouTube number is clearly incorrect, as stated. IMF got over 50 million streams in a week on YouTube during a week at its height. In its two peak weeks the song did 100 million from YouTube. It did not do just 138 million in 3 months. The Billboard Hot 100 articles are literally easily findable to when it was doing 100 million streams a week (and On-Demand only represented 50m~).

Therefore for the Summer it was #1 at:
- iTunes
- Spotify
- Apple Music
- YouTube

And received news coverage and social media coverage (a huge medium to reach people who don’t even keep up with current mainstream music period). It was a clear huge hit.

Also, Call Me Maybe never even reached #1 on overall radio, thus discrediting your own argument and the article’s. Guess it wasn’t a “real” Song of the Summer?

Next you’re going to argue over how peaking #2 versus #4 on radio is some huge difference in order to pretend IMF wasn’t undeniably the biggest song of Summer 2018 and for the sake of an entirely arbitrary argument. Lmao.

[Fat Ass Kelly Price]

Nov 12, 2018 4:58:00 GMT -5 Codex said:

Nov 11, 2018 19:09:58 GMT -5 iHype. said:

What.... blatant lie, lol.

In My Feelings was #1 on Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, and despite their misleading graph YouTube for the overall Summer. It was totally dominant. Their YouTube number for IMF makes no sense considering it broke the streaming record, and did over 50m+ views per week on YouTube at its height.

It was very dominant across all consumption formats. Even on radio, it still reached #6 at Pop, #1 on Rhythmic, and #1 on Urban. So if you listened to radio throughout the Summer, you heard the song many times most likely, even though they're trying to literally suggest the opposite.
IMF also got lots of news coverage which many big hits don't get, in addition to large social media coverage because it was so viral, so I mean... it definitely wasn't some fluke they're trying to make it out to be, that only a small amount of people were aware of. 

What is misleading about their youtube statistics? Reaching #1 on Rhythmic/Urban doesn't mean much if it only reached #6 on Pop, which is still the biggest radio format, and the reason why it only peaked at #4 (?) on the overall airplay chart. This is probably the first year in a while where the "song of the summer" didn't even go top 3 on airplay.

Hearing IMF 3 times on radio over the summer doesn't compare to hearing Call Me Maybe every 10 minutes in 2012.

Your best argument in this post is the #4 peak in overall airplay. The pop peak and the anecdotal evidence are not strong leads.

So it peaked at #4 in composite AirPlay. What was its peak AI? Was the difference between #3 and #4 during its peak significant? If not, does this criterion still hold up as a valid reasoning for why IMF was not the SOTS?

Let’s discuss.

[Enigma.]

I think the biggest reason is that radio is so slow. Lucid Dreams and GLY peaked on sales and streaming during the summer but airplay kicked in later. IMF on the other hand was more polarizing and mediocre callout scores destroyed it. It's not the song's fault really, it's the system and radio's need to control everything.

[mkarns]

Nov 12, 2018 12:01:21 GMT -5 Enigma. said:

I think the biggest reason is that radio is so slow. Lucid Dreams and GLY peaked on sales and streaming during the summer but airplay kicked in later. IMF on the other hand was more polarizing and mediocre callout scores destroyed it. It's not the song's fault really, it's the system and radio's need to control everything.

Maybe the callout was affected by the memes and viral dance challenge that gave it so much buzz? A lot of people probably came to see it as a novelty hit, or got tired of hearing it or about it well before its airplay peaked.

[mkarns]

Nov 12, 2018 9:53:59 GMT -5 iHype. said:

Also, Call Me Maybe never even reached #1 on overall radio, thus discrediting your own argument and the article’s. Guess it wasn’t a “real” Song of the Summer?

Next you’re going to argue over how peaking #2 versus #4 on radio is some huge difference in order to pretend IMF wasn’t undeniably the biggest song of Summer 2018 and for the sake of an entirely arbitrary argument. Lmao.

"Call Me Maybe" hit #1 on Mediabase (Pulse Music's usual frame of reference for radio) and #1 on the Billboard Mainstream Top 40 chart. Where else was it supposed to hit #1 to satisfy your criteria?