Billboard Hot 100: 12/11/2021

[Deleted]

Dec 7, 2021 15:59:05 GMT -5 lazer said:

I mean, Billboard defo needs to get rid of obvious stan mass-buying that is part of their sales formula.

How can they filter stan mass-buying from "organic" buying though? Do you mean allowing one purchase per credit card or whatever?

That seems like a highly complicated system to set up when really only a few acts benefit from stan sales.

You all need to remember that chart following is very niche and charts are irrelevant to 95% of the population. Those stans that are mass buying and yes, mass streaming are the majority of that niche. From a business point of view it would be crazy to alienate them 

[Choco]

Dec 7, 2021 17:10:13 GMT -5 @stateofgrace said:

Dec 7, 2021 15:59:05 GMT -5 lazer said:

I mean, Billboard defo needs to get rid of obvious stan mass-buying that is part of their sales formula.

How can they filter stan mass-buying from "organic" buying though? Do you mean allowing one purchase per credit card or whatever?

That seems like a highly complicated system to set up when really only a few acts benefit from stan sales.

You all need to remember that chart following is very niche and charts are irrelevant to 95% of the population. Those stans that are mass buying and yes, mass streaming are the majority of that niche. From a business point of view it would be crazy to alienate them 

They already know when your credit card makes more than 4 purchases. I'd guess dropping that number to 1 on the system is as easy as erasing a 4 and typing a 1 into the code.

[Caviar]

Doesn't Soundscan count multiple physical albums in one transaction? They need to drop that to 1 too.

[85la]

Dec 7, 2021 17:44:59 GMT -5 Choco said:

Dec 7, 2021 17:10:13 GMT -5 @stateofgrace said:

How can they filter stan mass-buying from "organic" buying though? Do you mean allowing one purchase per credit card or whatever?

That seems like a highly complicated system to set up when really only a few acts benefit from stan sales.

You all need to remember that chart following is very niche and charts are irrelevant to 95% of the population. Those stans that are mass buying and yes, mass streaming are the majority of that niche. From a business point of view it would be crazy to alienate them 

They already know when your credit card makes more than 4 purchases. I'd guess dropping that number to 1 on the system is as easy as erasing a 4 and typing a 1 into the code.

This, it cannot be too complicated. And though it's just a few artists (as of now), it's happening with many songs, and it is only becoming more and more common. Close chart following is niche, but music is definitely not niche, and when the mass media reports certain milestones, like #1's (especially 10 weeks), and breaking into the top 40 or top 10 for the first time, etc., the mass music-consuming public definitely takes notice and it gives them an indication of what is, or at least what Billboard is "purporting" to be popular. If Billboard were to change the rule, it might alienate some of the stans and be bad business for them in the short term, which is probably why they aren't doing it, however if they allow it to continue it could actually lead to an even worse business decision in the long term, if the charts just become a list full of mass-bought hits, it will be far-removed from what the public is actually listening to and Billboard will lose all their credibility.

[Choco]

Dec 7, 2021 18:49:37 GMT -5 Caviar said:

Doesn't Soundscan count multiple physical albums in one transaction? They need to drop that to 1 too.

It happens but sales are so low right now, even with SPS bumps, that I don't think they want to remove any more sales from the formula or we would be tracking albums selling 10k and fighting for #1.

[Amnesiac]

Dec 7, 2021 17:10:13 GMT -5 @stateofgrace said:

Dec 7, 2021 15:59:05 GMT -5 lazer said:

I mean, Billboard defo needs to get rid of obvious stan mass-buying that is part of their sales formula.

How can they filter stan mass-buying from "organic" buying though? Do you mean allowing one purchase per credit card or whatever?

That seems like a highly complicated system to set up when really only a few acts benefit from stan sales.

You all need to remember that chart following is very niche and charts are irrelevant to 95% of the population. Those stans that are mass buying and yes, mass streaming are the majority of that niche. From a business point of view it would be crazy to alienate them 

I referred to chart watching as a hobby a couple days ago in one of these threads because that's exactly what it is. We're lucky our hobby has new hobbyists on the regular, too and we have a hobby that speculators can't ruin like Pokemon cards or Atari games or vinyl records.

This is probably a repeat of something I said in one of the weeks that BTS was #1 but: One of the ways people get into chart watching, from the very start of music charts being a thing, is from being fans of an artist and wanting to know how they're doing on the chart. Then they start following the whole thing. Someone whose into BTS now, and enough so to mass buy their song into a preferred chart placement, might eventually become interested in this hobby as a whole too one day. Mass buying to get a preferred chart peak is nothing new for devoted fanbases. Do you not think Beatles fans, or Backstreet Boys fans, or Fall Out Boy fans didn't do this stuff like this in their respective primes? It's certainly more organic than some of the stunts pulled by the record industry in the pre-Soundscan era to get a #1, and not just pulling physical singles at the last possible moment to gin up album sales or releasing them for a limited time to get a #1.

[Deleted]

Dec 7, 2021 18:49:52 GMT -5 85la said:

Dec 7, 2021 17:44:59 GMT -5 Choco said:

They already know when your credit card makes more than 4 purchases. I'd guess dropping that number to 1 on the system is as easy as erasing a 4 and typing a 1 into the code.

This, it cannot be too complicated. And though it's just a few artists (as of now), it's happening with many songs, and it is only becoming more and more common. Close chart following is niche, but music is definitely not niche, and when the mass media reports certain milestones, like #1's (especially 10 weeks), and breaking into the top 40 or top 10 for the first time, etc., the mass music-consuming public definitely takes notice and it gives them an indication of what is, or at least what Billboard is "purporting" to be popular. If Billboard were to change the rule, it might alienate some of the stans and be bad business for them in the short term, which is probably why they aren't doing it, however if they allow it to continue it could actually lead to an even worse business decision in the long term, if the charts just become a list full of mass-bought hits, it will be far-removed from what the public is actually listening to and Billboard will lose all their credibility.

Right and I agree but the acts going #1 because of mass buying are for the most part extremely popular. The only one that perhaps doesn't fit this category is 69/Nicki with Trollz? Even though he was low-key the moment then as well before he lost all momentum. 

I would get the argument against BTS if they didn't take up the entire Top 10, probably Top 20 of Billboard's social media posts with the highest engagement and if they weren't streaming/touring juggernauts. However, they are. So I doubt they alienate anyone. Boybands have been around for ages and these tactics aren't anything new. Any casual music fan will know this

With that said. I would be all for the credit card purchase limit being reduce to one. Just as long as those standards are applied to streaming as well. Only 10 streams weekly per account. Go big or go home!

[JukeboxJacob]

Dec 7, 2021 18:55:38 GMT -5 Amnesiac said:

Dec 7, 2021 17:10:13 GMT -5 @stateofgrace said:

what they said 

I referred to chart watching as a hobby a couple days ago in one of these threads because that's exactly what it is. We're lucky our hobby has new hobbyists on the regular, too and we have a hobby that speculators can't ruin like Pokemon cards or Atari games or vinyl records.

This is probably a repeat of something I said in one of the weeks that BTS was #1 but: One of the ways people get into chart watching, from the very start of music charts being a thing, is from being fans of an artist and wanting to know how they're doing on the chart. Then they start following the whole thing. Someone whose into BTS now, and enough so to mass buy their song into a preferred chart placement, might eventually become interested in this hobby as a whole too one day. Mass buying to get a preferred chart peak is nothing new for devoted fanbases. Do you not think Beatles fans, or Backstreet Boys fans, or Fall Out Boy fans didn't do this stuff like this in their respective primes? It's certainly more organic than some of the stunts pulled by the record industry in the pre-Soundscan era to get a #1, and not just pulling physical singles at the last possible moment to gin up album sales or releasing them for a limited time to get a #1.

Great points, I can understand the argument for BTS mass-buying being an organic event when you put it that way. But at the end of the day, it's still bad because it makes songs appear more popular than they really are, on a chart that's supposed to represent song popularity as accurately as possible. AND on top of that sales are also weighed more than they should be.

[lazer]

We had two particular stans during the summer that made it really harder to defend their tactics. They wrote a bunch of essays about it 💀💀

[Naos]

Dec 7, 2021 18:49:52 GMT -5 85la said:

it will be far-removed from what the public is actually listening to and Billboard will lose all their credibility.

The argument can be made it's already removed from what the public hears. Different demographics consume music in different ways. The different platforms are often very heavily separate. People who buy music may not stream, and people who stream very likely don't listen to the radio because it's a similar experience and function, and I'd say people who stream likely don't buy either because why would they when their preferred method is free or at a subscription cost?

There are a lot of streaming heavy hits on the charts some people have likely never heard because it's mainly the fans week after week. It's not just sales this can apply to.

[Choco]

It's not that a fan buying a copy shouldn't count. But a fan buying 27 copies including an instrumental that they're never gonna play, and using funds from crowdfunding specifically to boost a chart position is hardly a regular thing.

Even more so if your song is being kept alive by 100k copies sold to as little as 7k fans. I believe it was Kimberly who once did the math on a Hot 100 thread and came up with a number close to 7k for all the versions that Butter had at that point.

That's different from a Drake fan spinning Knife Talk 5 times a day. And streams just need way more people to make some sort of impact on the chart and are audited and filtered way more. It's why most BTS fans will talk about "counter" and unfiltered records.

[strongerq]

Dec 7, 2021 23:31:36 GMT -5 Choco said:

That's different from a Drake fan spinning Knife Talk 5 times a day. And streams just need way more people to make some sort of impact on the chart and are audited and filtered way more. It's why most BTS fans will talk about "counter" and unfiltered records.

this is a bit off topic but whatever

Well the last part won't happen anymore. There is a good & a bad news.

The bad news is ARMY have cracked the Spotify code.

Good news is most don't believe in it. (most of the bigger ARMY in big countries are still skeptical, even though it is legit).

Dynamite had a filtering rate of 38.5%. Only 61.5% (7,778,950) were counted from 12,638,540.

That is because as you know they created playlists, where they added Dynamite as the 5th(3rd/4th) song and added random BTS songs in between so the listening would seem "human". And they would play the playlist for 12-24 hours. As they liked to say don't stream like a bot, stream like a human.

They tried similar thing (similar playlists) for 'Life Goes On' and the result was the same. 32.7% for the whole week.

For their next release (Butter) they focused a lot more on Spotify (more people left the playlists on, which as you may guess resulted in more filtering lmao). 47.1% filter rate for Butter on day 1. Half of the streams were not added to the chart. They annihilated the unfiltered record, but debuted at #2 on the Global chart (behind 'good 4 u').

They thought that playlist positions are what makes the filtering high, they kept changing the playlists, but the end results were the same:

day 2 - 43.2%

day 3 - 40.9%

. . .

even day 20 they had 30% filter rate. Which is almost 1/3 of the streams being removed at the end of week 3. They were persistent, i will give them that.

Less people streamed so that is why it dropped from 40%+ to 30%.

I remember around this time on the TOTC Discord discussing about this, it was pretty clear to me that there was a hard cap. Because on all of the playlists no matter weather the frequency of 'Butter was every 10 minutes (or 15/30/45/hour), the result was still high filter rates. The streams stopped counting after X streams no matter what. But what is X ?

PTD had 45.6% filter rate.

So why am i writing all of this summary. Well beacuse Vietnamese ARMY cracked the code. The X i was talking about is 10.

10 streams per account are eligible for the charts daily. The 11th stream (& above) is filtered no matter how you listen to them.

So they started doing projects (creating dozen accounts, and streaming a given song 10 times on an account). They still make playlists in which they add 2 songs in between the focused song. Even though it is not neccessary, you can play it 10 times in a row and still 10 count.

And the 10 stream limit is only per account, not per IP address. So they don't need to bother with VPNs when they put their 2nd acc on...

Also Spotify Web Player. Just open a browser and play there, then open another with 2nd account, 3rd with 3rd account ...

Wanna see some results.

04-Dec

"Moon" re-entered at #1. Read it again lol. A regular album track that has never been in the top 10, on 3rd Dec was out of top 200, on the 4th #1. 

28-Nov

A song from 2018 called "134340" re-entered at #3. It is a regular album track btw.

21-Nov

A song from 2013 called "We On" re-entered at #3.

"On" from 2020 re-entered at #20.

"Boy With Love" climbed 50 spots to #19.

For the BE album anniversary on 20th November they pulled this of:

"Life Goes On" climbed 58 spots to #2.

"Telepathy" re-entered at #6.

"Stay" re-entered at #7.

"Blue & Gray" re-entered at #8.

"Fly To My Room" re-entered at #10.

"Dis-ease" re-entered at #11.

Even the fuсking skit re-entered at #27.

These are all from Vietnam Spotify chart. These projects go bact to October 10th (each Sunday you can see random songs out of nowhere in the top 10). The method works, it works too well that it scares me.

The same method has been used in: Morocco, Romania, Indonesia, Panama, Malaysia, Russia, India, Brazil.

The results have been better in some countries, in others stans are still skeptics that it works. But more & more are believing it (because more & more countries are testing this method). I posted results from the VN ARMY because they found out first and have been doing it for the longest (2 months). But if the next single come out in Feb/March 2022, and the "big" countries have started doing this ѕhit, chart credibility is fuсked.

Don't be surprised if you see 20M+ streams on Global Spotify the next big single they release.

I won't comment about the sales even in 2019 i was arguing that even a 2nd grader would notice that something is wrong:

BB200  -  1 album = 1250 paid streams. 1 album=10 songs

Hot 100  - 1 song = 250 paid streams.   So how many streams is an album again ?

I won't comment on the website sales. Almost evryone shares the opinion nowadays

And ofc if you want proof and all that ARMY always makes threads for stuff like this. If you want to read it:

[mms82]

Oofa. But yeah, this is just further damaging to Billboard. Like telling people "Butter was the song of the summer" and number one all summer when nobody heard of it and everybody was sick of good 4 u because it was so dominant and yet it was blocked from number one, just made people go uh I don't think so and ignore the "record" BTS "set"

[phieaglesfan712]

Dec 8, 2021 15:04:47 GMT -5 mms82 said:

Oofa. But yeah, this is just further damaging to Billboard. Like telling people "Butter was the song of the summer" and number one all summer when nobody heard of it and everybody was sick of good 4 u because it was so dominant and yet it was blocked from number one, just made people go uh I don't think so and ignore the "record" BTS "set"

For me, there were 2 songs of the summer. The song of the first half of summer was G4u. The song of the 2nd half of the summer (after its release) was Stay.

[Deleted]

Dec 8, 2021 15:21:32 GMT -5 phieaglesfan712 said:

Dec 8, 2021 15:04:47 GMT -5 mms82 said:

Oofa. But yeah, this is just further damaging to Billboard. Like telling people "Butter was the song of the summer" and number one all summer when nobody heard of it and everybody was sick of good 4 u because it was so dominant and yet it was blocked from number one, just made people go uh I don't think so and ignore the "record" BTS "set"

For me, there were 2 songs of the summer. The song of the first half of summer was G4u. The song of the 2nd half of the summer (after its release) was Stay.

See, for me, Bad Habits felt like the song of the summer with how much radio played it in July, August, and September. (I'm a solstice-and-equinox puritan - I don't feel like early June is summer, and I feel like early September is)

This is what people mean when they say that the Billboard charts, while objective when it comes to actual popularity, aren't a perfect predictor for how big or inescapable a song feels.

[Angel]

Dec 8, 2021 15:49:31 GMT -5 @sklohiorawr said:

Dec 8, 2021 15:21:32 GMT -5 phieaglesfan712 said:

For me, there were 2 songs of the summer. The song of the first half of summer was G4u. The song of the 2nd half of the summer (after its release) was Stay.

See, for me, Bad Habits felt like the song of the summer with how much radio played it in July, August, and September. (I'm a solstice-and-equinox puritan - I don't feel like early June is summer, and I feel like early September is)

This is what people mean when they say that the Billboard charts, while objective when it comes to actual popularity, aren't a perfect predictor for how big or inescapable a song feels.

I don't really listen to the radio but I definitely feel like Bad Habits was also my song of the summer... and according to my last.fm the play count agrees. 

[85la]

Dec 7, 2021 19:13:11 GMT -5 @stateofgrace said:

Dec 7, 2021 18:49:52 GMT -5 85la said:

This, it cannot be too complicated. And though it's just a few artists (as of now), it's happening with many songs, and it is only becoming more and more common. Close chart following is niche, but music is definitely not niche, and when the mass media reports certain milestones, like #1's (especially 10 weeks), and breaking into the top 40 or top 10 for the first time, etc., the mass music-consuming public definitely takes notice and it gives them an indication of what is, or at least what Billboard is "purporting" to be popular. If Billboard were to change the rule, it might alienate some of the stans and be bad business for them in the short term, which is probably why they aren't doing it, however if they allow it to continue it could actually lead to an even worse business decision in the long term, if the charts just become a list full of mass-bought hits, it will be far-removed from what the public is actually listening to and Billboard will lose all their credibility.

Right and I agree but the acts going #1 because of mass buying are for the most part extremely popular. The only one that perhaps doesn't fit this category is 69/Nicki with Trollz? Even though he was low-key the moment then as well before he lost all momentum. 

I would get the argument against BTS if they didn't take up the entire Top 10, probably Top 20 of Billboard's social media posts with the highest engagement and if they weren't streaming/touring juggernauts. However, they are. So I doubt they alienate anyone. Boybands have been around for ages and these tactics aren't anything new. Any casual music fan will know this

With that said. I would be all for the credit card purchase limit being reduce to one. Just as long as those standards are applied to streaming as well. Only 10 streams weekly per account. Go big or go home!

This is a fair response, however at least in the U.S., BTS isn't a streaming juggernaut, nor are they a radio juggernaut or an album sales/overall SPS juggernaut, which leaves only touring and the high social media activity, so they might have a smaller dedicated fanbase who is willing to pay for their concerts and stan them on social media, however it's the SIZE of the fanship that they really try to manipulate the most and make it seem larger than it really is that I think most people have a problem with.

[strongerq]

Off topic i know, but i will provide an update.

The full report will come out Monday, with proof and all that. Great job Spotify...   20M is lowballing them now.

[iHype.]

At the end of the day, BTS still does relatively weak on audio streaming and it takes much more fans to manipulate those total numbers.

Fixing website mass purchases is a bigger deal. They wouldn’t be able to abuse Spotify for 10 weeks at #1 like they have with website sales.

Dynamite & Butter would’ve debuted #1 regardless even if they didn’t try to fake Spotify and webstore sales since they were such hugely hyped. However neither would’ve kept remaining #1 after first week without website sales even if they did kept trying to drive up Spotify numbers in later weeks. WAP & Good 4 U had colossal streaming and the latter also had a notable airplay lead. PTD, My Universe, and Life Goes On wouldn’t have debuted #1 period if webstore sales weren’t counted. They wouldn’t have been able to abuse Spotify enough on a large scale to make up for those web sales either.

[Choco]

Cultural event WAP and streaming juggernaut good 4 u getting blocked so many weeks will never make sense to me on an impact level. I get the numbers and the actual reason why it happened but it still felt wrong and made me roll my eyes.