Billboard Hot 100: 09/18/2021

[felipe]

Sept 14, 2021 23:23:24 GMT -5 dremolus - solarpunk said:

Sept 14, 2021 21:23:00 GMT -5 felipe said:

I do understand your point, but on the other hand this rule hurts acts who are great sellers. Many people streamed Drake's songs intead of buying the album and he gets rewarded on both the Top 200 and the Hot 100. Now look at Taylor Swift and an album like Folklore, 600k people chose to buy the album upon release instead of streaming the songs millions of times for free. And how does the Hot 100 reflect that? It doesn't.

1. folklore was still streamed a ton, breaking records and Taylor got three debuts in the Top 10.

2. The buying of the album wasn't of the individual songs. We're talking about the songs chart, not the album charts.

3. No one really buys songs anymore. Outside of K-Pop stans and MAGA chuds, radio and streaming are the predominantly platforms of consumption, of course they're weighed more

Yes, we are talking about the songs chart. Are you assuming that people who bought the album didn't listen to the songs? The Hot 100 accounts when somebody listens to Drake's album for free on Spotify but doesn't account when people listen to the Taylor Swift album they paid for.

[dremolus - solarpunk]

Sept 15, 2021 6:25:51 GMT -5 felipe said:

Sept 14, 2021 23:23:24 GMT -5 dremolus - solarpunk said:

1. folklore was still streamed a ton, breaking records and Taylor got three debuts in the Top 10.

2. The buying of the album wasn't of the individual songs. We're talking about the songs chart, not the album charts.

3. No one really buys songs anymore. Outside of K-Pop stans and MAGA chuds, radio and streaming are the predominantly platforms of consumption, of course they're weighed more

Yes, we are talking about the songs chart. Are you assuming that people who bought the album didn't listen to the songs? The Hot 100 accounts when somebody listens to Drake's album for free on Spotify but doesn't account when people listen to the Taylor Swift album they paid for.

But they do. It's just that Drake had bigger numbers. 

[Rose "Payola" Nylund]

Sept 14, 2021 23:09:42 GMT -5 85la said:

Sept 14, 2021 13:53:50 GMT -5 Rose "Payola" Nylund said:

Okay but how do we go about not allowing songs that people are actually listening to from charting on the basis that…they’re not singles? There are too many of them? What? Agree or not, recurrent rules do serve a purpose (personally, I think recurrent rules no longer work to benefit the chart but that’s a different issue). The fact of the matter is, (and it can’t really be disputed), Drake songs were listened to the most this past week. There’s no way around that barring some BTS chart manipulation situation. That’s literally all there is to it. Maybe if general radio and sales were at 90s level or 2000s level numbers, there wouldn’t be a Drake domination (or whatever album bomb of the week is going on), but the biggest hits of the time are no longer that big.

"not allowing songs that people are actually listening to from charting" - this is not what I said, I said limit their impact somehow, not preventing all of them from charting entirely, whether it be through capping chart points at a certain level, maximum # of songs per artist per certain region of the chart (i.e. the top ten), etc.

"there are too many of them" - quite simply yes. to limit any one artist from completely dominating the chart.

"Drake songs were listened to the most this past week" - ok, but as I keep mentioning, the Hot 100 chart is already not a straight-line ranking of the most-consumed songs by raw points each week because recurrent rules continually remove certain songs, so subjective criteria are already thrown in as to limit what the chart reflects is "popular" or "the most listened to." This is something you guys have still not addressed: why are the recurrent rules ok, but limiting album bombs isn't? They would both work to prevent certain songs and certain artists from dominating too much or for too long - it's the same concept.

I’ve already said I think Billboard should get rid of recurrent rules, though I understand why they’re there. I don’t think they’re serving their purpose anymore because music consumption has changed and the length of a song’s popularity sometimes can be really drawn out as we’ve seen from streaming trends. Despite that, recurrent rules are meant to keep the chart fresh in an “okay, this song has made its point. Let’s move on” sort of way. Having a rule for album bombs is simply because you don’t think an artist should dominate in a single week because…?

[Rose "Payola" Nylund]

Sept 15, 2021 6:31:57 GMT -5 dremolus - solarpunk said:

Sept 15, 2021 6:25:51 GMT -5 felipe said:

Yes, we are talking about the songs chart. Are you assuming that people who bought the album didn't listen to the songs? The Hot 100 accounts when somebody listens to Drake's album for free on Spotify but doesn't account when people listen to the Taylor Swift album they paid for.

But they do. It's just that Drake had bigger numbers. 

They don’t though. Unless it changed?

[dremolus - solarpunk]

Sept 15, 2021 6:41:32 GMT -5 Rose "Payola" Nylund said:

Sept 15, 2021 6:31:57 GMT -5 dremolus - solarpunk said:

But they do. It's just that Drake had bigger numbers. 

They don’t though. Unless it changed?

Actually I went back to what cardigan's debut numbers on Spotify were and yeah I was right: Girls Want Girls, Way 2 Sexy, Fair Trade, Champagne Poetry, and Knife Talk all had more streams in one week. In fact W2S and GWG had a 4M point lead. 

But I think something else that's being forgotten about this convo is that the charts last August were way stronger than they are now. Maybe if the charts were as strong as they were last year, Drake wouldn't hold the Top 10 (he might still have the Top 5 though)

[felipe]

Sept 15, 2021 6:31:57 GMT -5 dremolus - solarpunk said:

Sept 15, 2021 6:25:51 GMT -5 felipe said:

Yes, we are talking about the songs chart. Are you assuming that people who bought the album didn't listen to the songs? The Hot 100 accounts when somebody listens to Drake's album for free on Spotify but doesn't account when people listen to the Taylor Swift album they paid for.

But they do. It's just that Drake had bigger numbers. 

So how does the Hot 100 account for people who listen to the Taylor Swift album they bought? Because last time I checked, it didn't.

[rimetm]

Sept 15, 2021 6:25:51 GMT -5 felipe said:

Sept 14, 2021 23:23:24 GMT -5 dremolus - solarpunk said:

1. folklore was still streamed a ton, breaking records and Taylor got three debuts in the Top 10.

2. The buying of the album wasn't of the individual songs. We're talking about the songs chart, not the album charts.

3. No one really buys songs anymore. Outside of K-Pop stans and MAGA chuds, radio and streaming are the predominantly platforms of consumption, of course they're weighed more

Yes, we are talking about the songs chart. Are you assuming that people who bought the album didn't listen to the songs? The Hot 100 accounts when somebody listens to Drake's album for free on Spotify but doesn't account when people listen to the Taylor Swift album they paid for.

Not being able to capture a certain chunk of information doesn’t justify excluding an adjacent obtainable chunk though. Otherwise, the switch to MRC/SoundScan would’ve been considerably later as the data pool for sales only covered half of the market including a major chain holding out. This is what I mean when I say limiting album bombs doesn’t fit with the chart ethos. While they may occasionally be slow to react to new things, the goal has stayed rather consistent to reflect as much direct music consumption as accurately as possible.

[dremolus - solarpunk]

Sept 15, 2021 2:34:27 GMT -5 Enigma. said:

I don't think it matters when the song are hits? Drake will have a new entry this week (Way 2 Sexy around #10) which makes it a legitimate hit there. Again, it's not a flawless system, but gives more chances to different artists to chart well.

Well it's not really a matter of when songs are hits, it's just a bit annoying that a good chunk of popular albums wont be seen on a chart about measuring popularity. And yeah I guess it gives different artists time to shine as well but: 1. I'd rather have a chart be accurate than entertaining also 2. considering how often UK radio will rotate out songs, I dont think it would be that much of a difference if the 3 song rule was taken out. 

[Groovy]

Sept 15, 2021 7:15:33 GMT -5 felipe said:

Sept 15, 2021 6:31:57 GMT -5 dremolus - solarpunk said:

But they do. It's just that Drake had bigger numbers. 

So how does the Hot 100 account for people who listen to the Taylor Swift album they bought? Because last time I checked, it didn't.

Isn’t that still streaming?

[strongerq]

Sept 15, 2021 8:34:52 GMT -5 Groovy said:

Sept 15, 2021 7:15:33 GMT -5 felipe said:

So how does the Hot 100 account for people who listen to the Taylor Swift album they bought? Because last time I checked, it didn't.

Isn’t that still streaming?

Nah, felipe is saying when a physical album is bought and someone listens to it, it doesn't count.

Since there isn't a way to measure how many times the CD/Vinyl/Cassette has been played.

But since it is 2021 and physical sales are extreemly low & digital albums almost extinct. Not like much value has been lost. Now the discussion weather they should have counted back in the day when physicals were big is different topic.

[Rose "Payola" Nylund]

Sept 15, 2021 7:04:55 GMT -5 dremolus - solarpunk said:

Sept 15, 2021 6:41:32 GMT -5 Rose "Payola" Nylund said:

They don’t though. Unless it changed?

Actually I went back to what cardigan's debut numbers on Spotify were and yeah I was right: Girls Want Girls, Way 2 Sexy, Fair Trade, Champagne Poetry, and Knife Talk all had more streams in one week. In fact W2S and GWG had a 4M point lead. 

But I think something else that's being forgotten about this convo is that the charts last August were way stronger than they are now. Maybe if the charts were as strong as they were last year, Drake wouldn't hold the Top 10 (he might still have the Top 5 though)

No, I mean physical albums aren’t counted toward the Hot 100 when streaming albums is.

Definitely agree with your second point.

[felipe]

Sept 15, 2021 8:45:46 GMT -5 strongerq said:

Sept 15, 2021 8:34:52 GMT -5 Groovy said:

Isn’t that still streaming?

Nah, felipe is saying when a physical album is bought and someone listens to it, it doesn't count.

Since there isn't a way to measure how many times the CD/Vinyl/Cassette has been played.

But since it is 2021 and physical sales are extreemly low & digital albums almost extinct. Not like much value has been lost. Now the discussion weather they should have counted back in the day when physicals were big is different topic.

While your argument is true to an extent, Folklore sold 600k copies in a week last year. That number is an abnormality, I know, just like Drake's. But the Hot 100 only reflected Drake's abnormality.
Even if we think about much smaller numbers like Halsey last week, her debut was mostly driven by pure sales, so if people had streamed those songs instead she'd have gotten a few debuts on the Hot 100. So there's definitely a tendency on the Hot 100 to benefit acts who do better at streaming instead of sales.

[jenglisbe]

Sept 15, 2021 9:26:08 GMT -5 felipe said:

Sept 15, 2021 8:45:46 GMT -5 strongerq said:

Nah, felipe is saying when a physical album is bought and someone listens to it, it doesn't count.

Since there isn't a way to measure how many times the CD/Vinyl/Cassette has been played.

But since it is 2021 and physical sales are extreemly low & digital albums almost extinct. Not like much value has been lost. Now the discussion weather they should have counted back in the day when physicals were big is different topic.

While your argument is true to an extent, Folklore sold 600k copies in a week last year. That number is an abnormality, I know, just like Drake's. But the Hot 100 only reflected Drake's abnormality.
Even if we think about much smaller numbers like Halsey last week, her debut was mostly driven by pure sales, so if people had streamed those songs instead she'd have gotten a few debuts on the Hot 100. So there's definitely a tendency on the Hot 100 to benefit acts who do better at streaming instead of sales.

Streams of songs are certainly counted whereas listening to songs in a physical format is not, but fans know this so they can stream if they want plays counted for the Hot 100. More so, as has been said, there isn't a way to count plays made on a CD or vinyl so there is no real solution to the issue. (It's also possible some people buy the physical product and then don't listen to it, or only listen to one particular song.)

[Rose "Payola" Nylund]

Sept 15, 2021 9:29:26 GMT -5 jenglisbe said:

Sept 15, 2021 9:26:08 GMT -5 felipe said:

While your argument is true to an extent, Folklore sold 600k copies in a week last year. That number is an abnormality, I know, just like Drake's. But the Hot 100 only reflected Drake's abnormality.
Even if we think about much smaller numbers like Halsey last week, her debut was mostly driven by pure sales, so if people had streamed those songs instead she'd have gotten a few debuts on the Hot 100. So there's definitely a tendency on the Hot 100 to benefit acts who do better at streaming instead of sales.

Streams of songs are certainly counted whereas listening to songs in a physical format is not, but fans know this so they can stream if they want plays counted for the Hot 100. More so, as has been said, there isn't a way to count plays made on a CD or vinyl so there is no real solution to the issue. (It's also possible some people buy the physical product and then don't listen to it, or only listen to one particular song.)

The same can be said about physical singles and they continue to count.

[jenglisbe]

Sept 15, 2021 9:31:56 GMT -5 Rose "Payola" Nylund said:

Sept 15, 2021 9:29:26 GMT -5 jenglisbe said:

Streams of songs are certainly counted whereas listening to songs in a physical format is not, but fans know this so they can stream if they want plays counted for the Hot 100. More so, as has been said, there isn't a way to count plays made on a CD or vinyl so there is no real solution to the issue. (It's also possible some people buy the physical product and then don't listen to it, or only listen to one particular song.)

The same can be said about physical singles and they continue to count.

Of course, and BTS issues aside, to me it's a reason physical sales should count "more." In theory we know people are listening to that specific song, though mass sales are of course not the same there.

But this is all just a reality of where we are; streaming is relatively new, and there is no clear equivalent from the past. Sales and airplay have changed tabulation methods and format, but at least they were equivalent in a sense. We all know that has changed the charts in many wats, and makes comparisons between eras very though. It is what it is, though, and streaming obviously needs to be included.

[dremolus - solarpunk]

Sept 15, 2021 9:31:56 GMT -5 Rose "Payola" Nylund said:

Sept 15, 2021 9:29:26 GMT -5 jenglisbe said:

Streams of songs are certainly counted whereas listening to songs in a physical format is not, but fans know this so they can stream if they want plays counted for the Hot 100. More so, as has been said, there isn't a way to count plays made on a CD or vinyl so there is no real solution to the issue. (It's also possible some people buy the physical product and then don't listen to it, or only listen to one particular song.)

The same can be said about physical singles and they continue to count.

I think it's just one of those mysterious grey area's that current technology cant really solve. We'll never know if those who bought physical copies of albums actually listened to the album on vinyl or if they did it for collection. 

Sstreaming is a more immediate and measurable thing though, and even radio can have records of listeners tuning in. I'm comfortable not really caring about album sales impact singles performances because as I said, there's no tangible method of knowing how many times a physical was played once bought. 

[Rose "Payola" Nylund]

Sept 15, 2021 9:38:37 GMT -5 dremolus - solarpunk said:

Sept 15, 2021 9:31:56 GMT -5 Rose "Payola" Nylund said:

The same can be said about physical singles and they continue to count.

I think it's just one of those mysterious grey area's that current technology cant really solve. We'll never know if those who bought physical copies of albums actually listened to the album on vinyl or if they did it for collection. 

Sstreaming is a more immediate and measurable thing though, and even radio can have records of listeners tuning in. I'm comfortable not really caring about album sales impact singles performances because as I said, there's no tangible method of knowing how many times a physical was played once bought. 

I mean, on the album chart, streaming and sales are given a comparison (that is often disputed of course, but it’s still there). On the songs chart, streaming is accounted for, which includes full albums because how could it not. But album sales aren’t included. My argument would be, apply a general estimation across an entire album similar to how they do with the album chart. We already know some measures are estimated anyway with how radio is included. To me, it’s such a fault that people who stream are included into what’s counted for the Hot 100 but people who buy aren’t. I know historically it wasn’t needed but now it makes it lopsided enough that it throws off when accomplishments like this week are made.

[felipe]

Sept 15, 2021 10:39:48 GMT -5 Rose "Payola" Nylund said:

Sept 15, 2021 9:38:37 GMT -5 dremolus - solarpunk said:

I think it's just one of those mysterious grey area's that current technology cant really solve. We'll never know if those who bought physical copies of albums actually listened to the album on vinyl or if they did it for collection. 

Sstreaming is a more immediate and measurable thing though, and even radio can have records of listeners tuning in. I'm comfortable not really caring about album sales impact singles performances because as I said, there's no tangible method of knowing how many times a physical was played once bought. 

I mean, on the album chart, streaming and sales are given a comparison (that is often disputed of course, but it’s still there). On the songs chart, streaming is accounted for, which includes full albums because how could it not. But album sales aren’t included. My argument would be, apply a general estimation across an entire album similar to how they do with the album chart. We already know some measures are estimated anyway with how radio is included. To me, it’s such a fault that people who stream are included into what’s counted for the Hot 100 but people who buy aren’t. I know historically it wasn’t needed but now it makes it lopsided enough that it throws off when accomplishments like this week are made.

Exactly. They were able to come up with a formula to include streaming of individual songs on the albums chart, so they might as well be able to come up with a formula to estimate the impact of album sales on the songs chart. Instead of simply ignoring it as they are doing now.

[trillsimba]

drake really is the wilt chamberlain of this era

[85la]

Sept 15, 2021 6:38:20 GMT -5 Rose "Payola" Nylund said:

Sept 14, 2021 23:09:42 GMT -5 85la said:

"not allowing songs that people are actually listening to from charting" - this is not what I said, I said limit their impact somehow, not preventing all of them from charting entirely, whether it be through capping chart points at a certain level, maximum # of songs per artist per certain region of the chart (i.e. the top ten), etc.

"there are too many of them" - quite simply yes. to limit any one artist from completely dominating the chart.

"Drake songs were listened to the most this past week" - ok, but as I keep mentioning, the Hot 100 chart is already not a straight-line ranking of the most-consumed songs by raw points each week because recurrent rules continually remove certain songs, so subjective criteria are already thrown in as to limit what the chart reflects is "popular" or "the most listened to." This is something you guys have still not addressed: why are the recurrent rules ok, but limiting album bombs isn't? They would both work to prevent certain songs and certain artists from dominating too much or for too long - it's the same concept.

I’ve already said I think Billboard should get rid of recurrent rules, though I understand why they’re there. I don’t think they’re serving their purpose anymore because music consumption has changed and the length of a song’s popularity sometimes can be really drawn out as we’ve seen from streaming trends. Despite that, recurrent rules are meant to keep the chart fresh in an “okay, this song has made its point. Let’s move on” sort of way. Having a rule for album bombs is simply because you don’t think an artist should dominate in a single week because…?

I think the main reason is that it pushes many songs prematurely into recurrency. If the album bomb songs charting is going to continue, I would definitely advocate for a stipulation that songs pushed into recurrency that would have enough points to re-chart after the first-week album bomb songs drop be granted to do so.

On a completely unrelated side note, I finally saw several episodes of the Golden Girls in a special theater showing, after having barely ever seen it before, so I finally understand the connection with your name and location now!!

[nathanalbright]

It's always nice to appreciate an inside joke, isn't it?

[thegreatdivine]

Rose "Payola" Nylund felipe I don't understand the points you're both trying to make with suggesting Billboard should find a way to account for the impact of album sales on the Hot 100. That is literally impossible.

Back when digital sales were still strong and most people actually bought the music they listened to, it counted. Hell, it still does. People just aren't buying individual songs off albums enough for them to chart on the Hot 100. I already said in an older post that Taylor Swift had album bombs with Fearless/Speak Now following the release of each of those albums because her fans bought enough copies of each song on US iTunes, enabling them to chart. Some songs off Drake's 2013 album, Nothing Was the Same, also charted for the same reason. Soon after then, streaming got introduced to Billboard's charts and year after year, sales kept dying as more and more people started to choose to subscribe to streaming services and have access to millions of songs as opposed to spending $10-12 dollars to own just one album.

The fundamental difference between the streaming era and the pure sales era is that essentially, you don't own any of the songs you stream. Yes, with a premium streaming subscription, you can download content for offline useage but once your subscription is expired, you seize to have access to that content until you subscribe again. With pure sales, you buy an album and you own it. Once that transaction goes through, there's simply no way to account for how many times you could have played any of the songs on the album. With streaming, however, you don't buy albums. You stream indivial songs on the albums and that's how the consumption activity on each song is easily accounted for and ergo, can be represented on the Hot 100. The only copy of CLB I own is the digital copy I bought off iTunes. That's the one I get to own forever. If I want to stream the album, I need a subscription for the best experience and for Drake to get 1 sale unit from me, he needs to get me to stream his music at least 1,350 times.

Streaming offers a system to account for individual streams of songs. You stream the songs off an album but with pure sales, you can either buy the album as a whole (which is what most people do) or you can buy the songs off the album (which people rarely do, ergo, enough points aren't generated for the sale units of each song to chart on the Hot 100). The streaming forumla was just to set an industry standard Billboard felt was fair to equate to the unit of a sale.

[Naos]

Sept 16, 2021 3:11:55 GMT -5 thegreatdivine said:

Rose "Payola" Nylund felipe I don't understand the points you're both trying to make with suggesting Billboard should find a way to account for the impact of album sales on the Hot 100. That is literally impossible.

Back when digital sales were still strong and most people actually bought the music they listened to, it counted. Hell, it still does.

The point is, success on the albums chart with streaming directly translates to popular songs, but success on the albums chart with sales does not. So an artist who only did 60,000 units with streaming and charts songs would be considered as having more popular songs than an artist who sold 1.3 million pure copies.

An extreme example, yes, but it shows the point. An album can sell tons of copies and have no popular songs apparently. According to the Hot 100, no one is listening to them, and the songs aren't popular.

[thegreatdivine]

Sept 16, 2021 3:52:03 GMT -5 Naos said:

Sept 16, 2021 3:11:55 GMT -5 thegreatdivine said:

Rose "Payola" Nylund felipe I don't understand the points you're both trying to make with suggesting Billboard should find a way to account for the impact of album sales on the Hot 100. That is literally impossible.

Back when digital sales were still strong and most people actually bought the music they listened to, it counted. Hell, it still does.

The point is, success on the albums chart with streaming directly translates to popular songs, but success on the albums chart with sales does not. So an artist who only did 60,000 units with streaming and charts songs would be considered as having more popular songs than an artist who sold 1.3 million pure copies.

An extreme example, yes, but it shows the point. An album can sell tons of copies and have no popular songs apparently. According to the Hot 100, no one is listening to them, and the songs aren't popular.

Yes, because in the scenario you've just described, people purchased the album, not the individual songs off said album, so the Hot 100 can't account for the consumption activity on each of those songs. When you buy an album, how can anyone tell how many times you listened to specific songs off the album, if you listened to any song off the album at all? That's literally impossible. You buy an album and that sale counts as 1 album unit. With streaming, 1,250 paid-tier audio streams/3,750 free/ad-supported-tier audio streams equals 1 album unit. That's it.

[Rose "Payola" Nylund]

Sept 16, 2021 4:33:23 GMT -5 thegreatdivine said:

Sept 16, 2021 3:52:03 GMT -5 Naos said:

The point is, success on the albums chart with streaming directly translates to popular songs, but success on the albums chart with sales does not. So an artist who only did 60,000 units with streaming and charts songs would be considered as having more popular songs than an artist who sold 1.3 million pure copies.

An extreme example, yes, but it shows the point. An album can sell tons of copies and have no popular songs apparently. According to the Hot 100, no one is listening to them, and the songs aren't popular.

Yes, because in the scenario you've just described, people purchased the album, not the individual songs off said album, so the Hot 100 can't account for the consumption activity on each of those songs. When you buy an album, how can anyone tell how many times you listened to specific songs off the album, if you listened to any song off the album at all? That's literally impossible. You buy an album and that sale counts as 1 album unit. With streaming, 1,250 paid-tier audio streams/3,750 free/ad-supported-tier audio streams equals 1 album unit. That's it.

I think it would just be an even distribution across the album, where all tracks on it are given an even number of ‘points’ based on the sales of the album that week. So if an album sells 100k copies, that number is somehow applied to each track toward the Hot 100. Or maybe, instead, that number is distributed across the album’s tracks to match how the streaming numbers are distributed. So then not every song on the album gets the same amount of points added to them from physical album sales, but points are added from sales based on how the numbers from streaming look (which might mean the first track on an album benefits most, as it usually does with streaming).

Either way, I’m not sure how the best way to count it would look. There are ways it could be done and it would be up to Billboard to determine it. They were, after all, able to come up with a number for streaming that they deemed equivalent to a single sale so we know they can do it. Would it be accurate? Not fully, obviously. It would be an estimation under the assumption that people who buy the albums are also listening to them. Despite this, I still fully believe including it somehow would make it more accurate and representative of the album’s tracks for that week than not including them. And I guess that’s my point. We know it wouldn’t be accurate but I strongly believe it would be more accurate than simply not including them, as they do now.

[edward]

I think this would be an interesting topic in maybe 2015.These days people rarely buy physical albums to listen to the music, most people who buy the physical copies still stream music online, take Taylor or even BTS as examples and you'll see that album sales can't really reflect the popularity of album tracks.

[Rose "Payola" Nylund]

Sept 16, 2021 7:23:55 GMT -5 edward said:

I think this would be an interesting topic in maybe 2015.These days people rarely buy physical albums to listen to the music, most people who buy the physical copies still stream music online, take Taylor or even BTS as examples and you'll see that album sales can't really reflect the popularity of album tracks.

Yeah, this is also probably a fair point worth looking into. Though I suspect while this definitely applies, it might also be that there is a specific demographic(s) of people who purchase physical media and don’t stream (yet), who may lean older and probably include rock, country, folkier genres. To me, those people’s music consumption isn’t being included in the same way as people who only stream, so that information isn’t being included, resulting in a possible skewing of the charts. (And again, this is just my own theory. I’m not saying it’s certain, but I do see it as a void in the methodology based on this.)

[thegreatdivine]

Sept 16, 2021 7:04:21 GMT -5 Rose "Payola" Nylund said:

Sept 16, 2021 4:33:23 GMT -5 thegreatdivine said:

Yes, because in the scenario you've just described, people purchased the album, not the individual songs off said album, so the Hot 100 can't account for the consumption activity on each of those songs. When you buy an album, how can anyone tell how many times you listened to specific songs off the album, if you listened to any song off the album at all? That's literally impossible. You buy an album and that sale counts as 1 album unit. With streaming, 1,250 paid-tier audio streams/3,750 free/ad-supported-tier audio streams equals 1 album unit. That's it.

I think it would just be an even distribution across the album, where all tracks on it are given an even number of ‘points’ based on the sales of the album that week. So if an album sells 100k copies, that number is somehow applied to each track toward the Hot 100. Or maybe, instead, that number is distributed across the album’s tracks to match how the streaming numbers are distributed. So then not every song on the album gets the same amount of points added to them from physical album sales, but points are added from sales based on how the numbers from streaming look (which might mean the first track on an album benefits most, as it usually does with streaming).

Either way, I’m not sure how the best way to count it would look. There are ways it could be done and it would be up to Billboard to determine it. They were, after all, able to come up with a number for streaming that they deemed equivalent to a single sale so we know they can do it. Would it be accurate? Not fully, obviously. It would be an estimation under the assumption that people who buy the albums are also listening to them. Despite this, I still fully believe including it somehow would make it more accurate and representative of the album’s tracks for that week than not including them. And I guess that’s my point. We know it wouldn’t be accurate but I strongly believe it would be more accurate than simply not including them, as they do now.

I see where you're coming from. The only problem with what you're suggesting is that Billboard simply won't come up with a way to evenly distribute points across every song on an album based on the pure sales units of an album in it's first week. That is what would be inaccurate because like I said, there simply isn't any way to know what songs are being listened to after an album is bought. There's never been a way to track that kind of activity and there never will be.

There's already a solution for what you're suggesting. If the fans of artist A can buy enough digital singles of each song from a new album (something that can actually be tracked), Billboard will account for every sold unit for each song on the Hot 100. That never stopped happening. What stopped is people buying albums/songs off albums nearly as much as they used to but I already gave you examples of artists who charted multiple songs off their albums on the Hot 100 before Billboard's charts started to account for streaming and that is still possible today. This is from a Billboard article about Drake's 9 simultaneous top 10 hits this week, courtesy of CLB.

Rank, Title, Artist Billing (if other than Drake), (Streams, Airplay Audience, Sales)
No. 1, "Way 2 Sexy," feat. Future & Young Thug (67.3 million streams, 7.7 million in airplay audience, 7,000 sold)
The song's streaming sum marks the second-best in a single week in 2021, trailing only the opening frame of Olivia Rodrigo's "Drivers License" (76.1 million, Jan. 23); "Sexy" is also being promoted as a radio single to pop, rhythmic and R&B/hip-hop formats.
No. 2, "Girls Want Girls," feat. Lil Baby (57.4 million streams, 1.5 million in airplay audience, 3,000 sold)
No. 3, "Fair Trade," feat. Travis Scott (53.8 million streams, 2.4 million in airplay audience, 5,800 sold)
No. 4, "Champagne Poetry" (48.3 million streams, 297,000 in airplay audience, 1,900 sold)
No. 5, "Knife Talk," feat. 21 Savage & Project Pat (45.9 million streams, 141,000 in airplay audience, 3,300 sold)
No. 7, "In the Bible," feat. Lil Durk & Giveon (41.4 million streams, 489,000 in airplay audience, 800 sold)
No. 8, "Papi's Home" (39.9 million streams, 663,000 in airplay audience, 1,800 sold)
No. 9, "TSU" (39.8 million streams, 1.2 million in airplay audience, 1,500 sold)
No. 10, "Love All," feat. JAY-Z (39.1 million streams, 2.5 million in airplay audience, 3,200 sold)

Notice that every song he debuted in the top 10 got some airplay and sold some digital copies? Billboard still tracks all of that but the songs also pulling massive streams is why they charted so high (or even at all). No artist today is charting songs on the Hot 100 strictly off of digital sales from each song on an album anymore. Fans simply won't buy enough for that to happen so it might seem like it isn't tracked but it is.

Meanwhile, suggesting Billboard should magically find a way to account for album sales on the Hot 100, simply because that happens in the streaming era, is frankly silly and I've already explained why that happens and can be accounted for more readily in the streaming era than any other era of music before it.

In the streaming era, you stream songs off albums and you can't buy those songs/albums. The combination of all the streams from each individual song is what gets calculated using a formula to come up with an equivalent for sold album units but because the streaming data for each song is accessible and can be so easily tracked, each song also charts on the Hot 100 based on the amount of streams they pulled for a specific week. That's really all there is to it.

[HolidayGuy]

Of course it's not an apples-to-apples comparison with pre-digital-/-streaming-era hits to hits from the mid-2000s-on. Billboard's all-time acts list helps in that regard somewhat, accounting for changing methodologies, chart turnover, different eras, etc.

When reporting on stats and such, though, Billboard should have a note that it can copy-and-paste into each article, like the Billboard 200 explanation that appears in every weekly article. Because you'll have a number of readers who will look at the records being set today and think past feats were blah. They may not understand/know that only tracks available to purchase as singles were eligible.

As always, among acts to emerge in the digital/streaming era, Drake is the chart king and dominating like no other. When looking at number of Hot 100 entries and various chart feats, though -- including most top 10s from an album, simultaneous top 10s -- that's who his stats should be compared to, first and foremost. His overall success means he should be discussed among the most successful acts since the '50s, though with plenty of context.

[weaver]

Well next week should be interesting...I imagine a few of the CLB tracks will hold on, but most should drop like a rock. Much like the plummeting Kanye songs this week...

I'm not saying this to enter into the "only singles should chart" discussion. The chart is just very different now than it used to be, and people consume music very differently. If streaming was a thing in the 80s and 90s the charts surely would have been different. I can't be the only one that had certain albums and songs that they played to death.