Billboard Hot 100: 08/07/2021

[GW]

Aug 3, 2021 18:05:35 GMT -5 Verisimilitude said:

The Army are having meltdowns on Twitter. Truly the scariest stanbase of all time.

Billboard, in effect, aided and abetted the growing monster for awhile now.  Now they're going to have to figure out how to tame it.  And regardless of how (or if) they do it, it's going to be a mess until everyone grows up and snaps out of their cult-like obsession.  Which WILL happen eventually.

The legacy of BTS's popularity in the US is all but negated by the footnotes full of asterisks, and anyone who cares or pays attention to the charts--including the army themselves--knows it.  It's all so ridiculous.

[phieaglesfan712]

Aug 3, 2021 14:13:19 GMT -5 Rose "Payola" Nylund said:

Aug 3, 2021 13:32:52 GMT -5 phieaglesfan712 said:

My system is a lot easier because all you have to do is look up the position of the songs throughout their chart run, take the associated value, and add up. I think adding up the units sold method would get a little messy, and with so many songs charting below 50 this year (HER last few weeks, Savage Love’s last week, and OTM’s post-20 week), if those points count, then does BL’s stats from the Christmas week it was off the charts count, since it accumulated more stats? And if BL’s stats from that week do not count, then I can argue the system is arbitrary.

Every post you make makes me more and more certain that you actually have no idea about how charts work or what their purpose is. I’d also venture a guess that you’ve never taken any sort of statistics or basic science classes either because you seem to aggressively lack any sort of understanding about anything chart-related. It’s actually mind boggling. My suggestion is to try to learn - either through other people on here (feel free to ask questions) or attempting some sort of research. I’m being serious. You’re actually incorrect in one way or another with every claim and suggestion you make regarding charts. Like….not even an exaggeration.

Edit: and there’s nothing wrong with not understanding it or asking questions. As I’ve always said, it’s not that ignorance itself is bad, it’s what you do with it that matters. Do you want to remain ignorant and spew incorrect falsities, or do you genuinely want to learn and become more familiar and understanding? The choice is yours.

Okay,I'll try my best to learn about how the charts truly work. I know it's going to be difficult now that I'm 33 and have been following the charts for 10+ years, than it was when I was 22 and beginning at ATRL, but I'm going to give it a try. I never realized I was ignorant about how some of the things on the chart and how they work.

[nathanalbright]

Well, there are definitely some people here who have a good understanding of the charts and plenty of us who work hard to remind ourselves of the limits of our ignorance . Just keep learning and things will get better.

[kanimal]

Aug 3, 2021 17:40:13 GMT -5 kindofbiased said:

Army has already come to the conclusion that that was a direct attack on them because duh but I genuinely can’t tell what tone he was going for in that quote

I don't really see room for a positive interpretation, though.

He easily could have said "as long as BTS continues to post dominant sales" or "as long as BTS remains hot." But unless the word choice was just an unfortunate accident, "as many copies as they need" seems to imply an element of calculation.

[nathanalbright]

It's what we've been saying for what, two and a half months now?

[kindofbiased]

Aug 3, 2021 20:06:46 GMT -5 kanimal said:

Aug 3, 2021 17:40:13 GMT -5 kindofbiased said:

Army has already come to the conclusion that that was a direct attack on them because duh but I genuinely can’t tell what tone he was going for in that quote

I don't really see room for a positive interpretation, though.

He easily could have said "as long as BTS continues to post dominant sales" or "as long as BTS remains hot." But unless the word choice was just an unfortunate accident, "as many copies as they need" seems to imply an element of calculation.

Yea that was definitely my guess too, but you never know, he could've been congratulating them and it came off backhanded. Much more likely that it was negative tho and shows that there are likely some tensions at billboard abt this situation 

[fridayteenage]

i mean, his diction was accurate so.

[algo]

Aug 3, 2021 11:59:56 GMT -5 korbel16 said:

So .. did drivers license really miss the decade end list now ? This is insane lol 😭

i think the cutoff will be smaller this decade than the last. the 2010s were the biggest years of music consumption like ever so

[Ｓｏｕｎｄｃｌ🕤ｃｋ]

yeah, there's no way DL won't be on that list.

[After Minutes]

The worst (or best) part is that both BTS and Billboard are probably going to suffer from this in the long run.

For billboard - their credibility is simply going down the drain, as happened with the Grammies, and that'll make less and less artists actually care about how they perform on the charts. Mass-buying songs has zero relevance to a song's actual popularity, so why should they care about the charts if literally everyone knows that they have the biggest song in the country outside of a pretentious fanbase and a small group of chart-watchers? If this'll keep going on for the next year or two, I fully expect a different chart to overtake billboard as the industry standard, which also means that, while Billboard might be getting a few more clicks now, they themselves are simply going to become obscure rather soon.
As for the Army - them being cancerous is literally what most people know them for, and all it'd take for that to explode into and actually mainstream discussion is them getting called out. LNX might do it himself, but so might the XOfam or Kanye fans. While being a fan of 1D or JB might've been considered what we'd call cringe nowadays at worst, the Army is on a whole nother level, and with just how radical they're becoming, they're also making it much harder for non-K-pop fans to get into that music, which costs BTS and their label revenue. That also means that less mainstream artists are going to be willing to work with idols, since they'll be afraid of tarnishing their brand, which might be the nail in the coffin and final factor determining that K-pop doesn't become mainstream in the US.

[kierz7]

Aug 3, 2021 11:34:36 GMT -5 GW said:

Drivers License's run is very reminiscent of Adele's "Hello" - so massively huge out of the gate that it ran out of gas sooner than many monster hits that never reached similar heights, consumption-wise.

Indeed.

It reminds me Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” also.

It spent 14 weeks at #1, but only 16 weeks in the top 10 and just 28 weeks on the chart overall.

When a song is so massive upon release, it exhausts its sales/primary consumption much quicker than other slow-starter hits (in “DL’s” case, SPS) so a faster fall is expected.

[phieaglesfan712]

Aug 4, 2021 6:16:54 GMT -5 kierz7 said:

Aug 3, 2021 11:34:36 GMT -5 GW said:

Drivers License's run is very reminiscent of Adele's "Hello" - so massively huge out of the gate that it ran out of gas sooner than many monster hits that never reached similar heights, consumption-wise.

Indeed.

It reminds me Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” also.

It spent 14 weeks at #1, but only 16 weeks in the top 10 and just 28 weeks on the chart overall.

When a song is so massive upon release, it exhausts its sales/primary consumption much quicker than other slow-starter hits (in “DL’s” case, SPS) so a faster fall is expected.

To be fair, 28 weeks on the charts was still considered a long time when IWALY charted, and it was still a YE #1. In fact, it was #1 on the original Billboard's all-time list in 1994 (credits to tanooki): Attachment Deleted

I would have used One Sweet Day as a better example. It spent 16 weeks at #1, 19 weeks overall in the Top 10, and a total of 27 weeks on the charts, in a time when other songs like "Missing" spent 55 weeks on the chart and "Macarena" (the song that beat out OSD for the YE #1) spent 60 weeks.

[jayhawk1117]

Now will this make them buy MORE, to say fuck Billboard but also furthering the point made by Billboard?

Regardless, Billboard has only caused this mess. Even Life Goes On dropped over 20 spots and behind only 3 Christmas songs or something, something should've been done. When Good4U literally broke streaming records and debuted at 2 because of "sales", something should've been done. When Butter is outside of the TOP FUCKING 40 on streaming and top 20 on airplay despite being pushed and was STILL number one because "organic sales", something should've been done. Now they gotta face the music lmao

[phieaglesfan712]

I think the biggest mistake Billboard made that led up to this was removing UGC without addressing the website sales issue. Not all of it can be blamed on BTS, as artists exploited the rule as early as May 2020. Something should have been done when songs like THE SCOTTS, Stuck With U, Rain On Me, and Trollz were abusing the rules. The problem should have been apparent with songs like Dynamite and Franchise, but LGO should have been the last nail in the coffin. Billboard had many opportunites to do something about this, but allowed it to get way out of hand. They might as well not have made any changes in January 2020.

[wjr15]

Aug 4, 2021 9:58:03 GMT -5 phieaglesfan712 said:

I think the biggest mistake Billboard made that led up to this was removing UGC without addressing the website sales issue. Not all of it can be blamed on BTS, as artists exploited the rule as early as May 2020. Something should have been done when songs like THE SCOTTS, Stuck With U, Rain On Me, and Trollz were abusing the rules. The problem should have been apparent with songs like Dynamite and Franchise, but LGO should have been the last nail in the coffin. Billboard had many opportunites to do something about this, but allowed it to get way out of hand. They might as well not have made any changes in January 2020.

Cardigan and Willow too. Honestly the past year and a half has been filled with number one debuts that used loopholes in the rules and the second week drop for most of these songs show that.

[nathanalbright]

It's not hard to look at a chart run--as well as a component run--to see where songs are doing best and which songs are flashes in the pan and which ones linger.

[HamedM1 💔]

The Army makes every other fanbase look like heaven by comparison, I'm sorry for all the sane BTS fans out there, a truly underrepresented minority.

[phieaglesfan712]

[lurker2]

Yes. Ultimately the fault goes to I think Travis Scott for bundling back in the HITR vs Truth Hurts week, but from there The Weeknd (more mass buying Heartless week) -> the Barbz/TOTC (Say So week's publicity) -> Scooter (massbuying a non hit SWU week) -> ARMY (Dynamite weeks, the first multi week mass bought number one)

[bbdenney94]

Aug 4, 2021 11:11:54 GMT -5 HamedM1 💔 said:

The Army makes every other fanbase look like heaven by comparison, I'm sorry for all the sane BTS fans out there, a truly underrepresented minority.

Shout out to Nicky. Wherever you are in the world, we miss you and hope you're doing well.

[gikem]

Aug 4, 2021 14:45:17 GMT -5 lurker2 said:

Ultimately the fault goes to I think Travis Scott for bundling back in the HITR vs Truth Hurts week

Yes. I totally forgot about this, but I'm glad you brought it up. Before HITR came out, I had rarely if ever heard of any of these bundling/mass-buying tactics. Travis was really the one who opened the door for that to happen consistently throughout the past 2 years. His stans may be nowhere near as obnoxious or toxic as Army or the Barbz, but they are certainly smart enough to use website sales to their advantage.

[kimberly]

I don't think TOTC is at fault here. While I do agree predictions conceptually make chart-watching less fun and add fuel to the dumpster fire that is BTS Army, the overall popularity of prediction accounts (especially one as accurate and well-run as TOTC) had a net positive result for us in terms of transparency.

I think the end of digital music downloads is near. We've already witnessed Google shut down its version of iTunes (Google Play Music) last December, in favor of its music streaming service YouTube Music. I'm guessing we're not too far out from Apple making a similar move—as I mentioned somewhere on here before, converting iTunes customers into lifelong Apple Music subscribers is surely the most profitable business model for the company. As digital downloads go completely extinct, I'm hoping Billboard will step in and remove them from the Hot 100 formula.

Until that happens, they seem to be blissfully ignoring the elephant in the room. Though that might change soon, considering BTS Army is now attacking one of their editors.

[kierz7]

TOTC need to stop posting early predictions.

Once the army can’t see the predictions (sales) for “Butter”, they’ll inevitably stop purchasing the song, which will cause it to fall, and we’ll have ‘actual’, popular, number ones on the chart again.

Wishful thinking, but hey.

💀

[lurker2]

Aug 4, 2021 15:48:45 GMT -5 kierz7 said:

TOTC need to stop posting early predictions.

Once the army can’t see the predictions (sales) for “Butter”, they’ll inevitably stop purchasing the song, which will cause it to fall, and we’ll have ‘actual’, popular, number ones on the chart again.

Wishful thinking, but hey.

💀

I feel like the cat's out of the bag - with 6ix9ine leaking the formula, a reasonably intelligent ARMY could guesstimate what they need fairly accurately. AFAIK TOTC uses publically available data. Their only "sin" was making accurate, aesthetically pleasing, detailed predictions available to stan twitter - and frankly, that was a matter of time given how much data is publically available. If it weren't them, eventually another predictor would've done the same. Maybe Butter, Dynamite, or Willow would've been the equivalent to Say So, and we just delay the mass buying.

[phieaglesfan712]

Aug 4, 2021 15:57:41 GMT -5 lurker2 said:

Aug 4, 2021 15:48:45 GMT -5 kierz7 said:

TOTC need to stop posting early predictions.

Once the army can’t see the predictions (sales) for “Butter”, they’ll inevitably stop purchasing the song, which will cause it to fall, and we’ll have ‘actual’, popular, number ones on the chart again.

Wishful thinking, but hey.

💀

I feel like the cat's out of the bag - with 6ix9ine leaking the formula, a reasonably intelligent ARMY could guesstimate what they need fairly accurately. AFAIK TOTC uses publically available data. Their only "sin" was making accurate, aesthetically pleasing, detailed predictions available to stan twitter - and frankly, that was a matter of time given how much data is publically available. If it weren't them, eventually another predictor would've done the same. Maybe Butter, Dynamite, or Willow would've been the equivalent to Say So, and we just delay the mass buying.

fhas was doing that for years before TOTC. I wonder why website sales/mass buying wasn’t a problem then, and only became prevalent after the removal of UGC from the Hot 100 formula. I wonder if the impact of website sales/mass buying would be minimized if UGC was still in the Hot 100 formula.

[Lukas]

TOTC posting or not posting anything doesn't impact shit and you're just insanely stupid if you think otherwise....several ARMY accounts have gotten advanced enough to the point where they can predict the sales BTS needs to be #1 themselves and tell that to the entire fanbase. This would've happened eventually because people are getting smarter about charts, with or without TOTC. Also, most of that fanbase does not like prediction accounts that aren't ARMY because of their massive "trust issues", which is a them thing, but that should confirm that they don't care about what TOTC posts, if anything.

Also, in case you haven't noticed, TOTC has not posted any early predictions relating to BTS since Butter got released. All of their predictions have been done after the tracking week is over, where nothing can get manipulated then. Take it up with clout-chasing, arrogant, egotistical Winston on twitter if you don't want any early predictions for Butter, who, by the way, said the song was staying #1 this week and later adjusted it, backtracking.

UGC getting removed deweighed streaming, which in turn made sales more valuable. So yeah, it's much easier now for stan-driven songs to be #1.

Also, replying to someone who posted something about this earlier: Billboard is never gonna ever get dethroned as the flagship brand. They have all the history, the legacy, the clout, that they can really just do whatever they want and they'll remain relevant. No other company has charts that span decades of music data. Billboard does. The only way they're getting dethroned is if they just quit or disband, but that will never happen with the amount of clout and money they currently get.

[85la]

Aug 4, 2021 16:19:17 GMT -5 phieaglesfan712 said:

Aug 4, 2021 15:57:41 GMT -5 lurker2 said:

I feel like the cat's out of the bag - with 6ix9ine leaking the formula, a reasonably intelligent ARMY could guesstimate what they need fairly accurately. AFAIK TOTC uses publically available data. Their only "sin" was making accurate, aesthetically pleasing, detailed predictions available to stan twitter - and frankly, that was a matter of time given how much data is publically available. If it weren't them, eventually another predictor would've done the same. Maybe Butter, Dynamite, or Willow would've been the equivalent to Say So, and we just delay the mass buying.

fhas was doing that for years before TOTC. I wonder why website sales/mass buying wasn’t a problem then, and only became prevalent after the removal of UGC from the Hot 100 formula. I wonder if the impact of website sales/mass buying would be minimized if UGC was still in the Hot 100 formula.

In years past, digital sales were also much higher, so it would have been harder for mass-buying/fan campaigns to outsell the top-sellers.

[nathanalbright]

Imagine how fast butter would have melted before the pressure of a Hello or Uptown Funk sort of era. BTS doesn't have enough stans for massbuys to make an influence on that kind of level, especially with streaming and radio not being all that strong. It just happens that 2021 has been a period of rather weak peaks, which are ripe for exploitation.

[thyler]

i think totc is not at fault, but it did help fan the fire. when i first followed it last year, it was intended to be a small account for chart watchers and nerds to have a friendly discourse about the charts, not for stans wanting to manipulate the chart for their own gain. but you know, twitter stans found it and its reply section became the mess it is now.

[jayhawk1117]

It def ain't TOTC's fault but they certainly didn't help the situation