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Post by phieaglesfan712 on Apr 20, 2022 16:02:26 GMT -5
As you know, The Boy Is Mine spent all 13 weeks of the summer of 1998 at #1. However, there was another song, in Iris, that was just as big, but was unable to chart due to being an airplay only song. Had airplay songs been eligible to chart in the summer of 1998, would Iris have taken some of those weeks at #1 away from TBIM?
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312999
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Post by 312999 on Apr 20, 2022 18:00:06 GMT -5
Yes and some of I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing and I think that one week of One Week too.
Torn would have also taken some of Too Closes spots at 1.
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Kelly's 10th Fan
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Post by Kelly's 10th Fan on Apr 21, 2022 6:53:43 GMT -5
Tbh I think this is a question better suited for Torn, whose airplay peak probably lined up with the first few weeks that TBIM was working its way up on radio. There is also a slight chance You're Still The One might have briefly interrupted TBIM's run in late June or early July - it was ahead of TBIM in airplay a few weeks and maybe adding in the country airplay could have helped. The addition of r&b might have canceled that edge out, though.
I used to assume that Iris would have taken a sizable # of weeks at # 1 on the Hot 100 if it could have charted, but now that I'm looking through Billboard's archived mags to see how things played out on the sales and airplay charts between August and November, I don't think it would have gotten many nearly as many (or even any) weeks at #1 as I initially thought.
Iris didn't take #1 on airplay until 8/1/98, so June and July are off the table by default. The Boy Is Mine continued its sales domination the first three chart weeks of August, then fell from #1 to #7 on the 8/22/98 sales chart and to #14 on the 8/29/98 sales chart. It remained in the Hot 100 Airplay top 5 the entire time. Hot 100 Airplay at the time excluded r&b, but included pop, HAC, AC, and modern rock - in other words, Iris' airplay standing was already reflecting the majority of its AI at the time, while The Boy Is Mine would have immediately gained notably more points from a shift to an all-inclusive airplay chart. TBIM was still top 3 on Hot R&B Airplay for all but the last week August, when it slipped to #7. Counting airplay songs would have ironically just made TBIM a stronger #1 for the most part.
September was I Don't Want To Miss a Thing's time to shine. IDWTMAT went 1-1-2-8 in its first four weeks on the sales chart and was #2 in airplay that entire month. It nabbed its one week at #1 on airplay on 10/3/98; ironically enough that is the week it fell to #2 on the Hot 100 and The First Night took over despite not even being top 20 on airplay. So we know Iris' #2 position in airplay wouldn't have been enough to pull past TFN's sales on the Hot 100 that week, but this is probably also a sign that not only was its hold on radio not enough to take a September week away from IDWTMAT, its following weeks at the top of airplay wouldn't have been strong enough to pull off a #1 either - certainly not with most of the following #1s being r&b songs getting airplay that wasn't counted before.
It wasn't uncommon in 1998 for a Hot 100 #1 to have a big sales week and a weak-ish showing outside of the airplay top 10 or even top 20. OTOH, being outside of the top 3 on the sales chart much made it all but impossible to top the Hot 100 even if you were doing well on airplay. Those weak airplay weeks are the weeks that a song like Iris might have been able to slide to the top IF said song was at the height of its airplay, but unfortunately for Iris those weeks occurred when it was clearly waning. Iris' best hope would have been the last two weeks of August. This was probably close to Iris' radio peak, and one would just have to hope the airplay lead would have been enough to take advantage of TBIM's slip in sales. Most likely, their label would have gotten fed up with seeing them oscillate in the top 5 and thrown out a limited commercial pressing near the end of October to secure the #1 and move on.
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jenglisbe
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Post by jenglisbe on Apr 23, 2022 7:00:23 GMT -5
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Post by Kelly's 10th Fan on Apr 23, 2022 10:13:26 GMT -5
yeah, I'm looking through some of the old Hot 100 Spotlights now and saw one issue that mentioned the formula at the time was 75% sales/25% radio (and briefly, it was 70/30). I knew the formula tilted more toward sales then, but didn't realize the difference was that steep. No airplay-only song would have a shot with that.
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jenglisbe
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Post by jenglisbe on Apr 23, 2022 10:16:18 GMT -5
yeah, I'm looking through some of the old Hot 100 Spotlights now and saw one issue that mentioned the formula at the time was 75% sales/25% radio (and briefly, it was 70/30). I knew the formula tilted more toward sales then, but didn't realize the difference was that steep. No airplay-only song would have a shot with that. Wow, which issue was that? That seems wild. I saw an issue that said airplay was divided by 10 and sales by 9 (or vice versa) but forget which specific issue to know what songs it applied to.
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Kelly's 10th Fan
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Post by Kelly's 10th Fan on Apr 23, 2022 14:27:26 GMT -5
yeah, I'm looking through some of the old Hot 100 Spotlights now and saw one issue that mentioned the formula at the time was 75% sales/25% radio (and briefly, it was 70/30). I knew the formula tilted more toward sales then, but didn't realize the difference was that steep. No airplay-only song would have a shot with that. Wow, which issue was that? That seems wild. I saw an issue that said airplay was divided by 10 and sales by 9 (or vice versa) but forget which specific issue to know what songs it applied to. Oh never mind I'm an absolute idiot lol. It was the other way around (75% radio/25% sales), I was skimming too fast and got it backwards. This was in the 5/1/99 Spotlight. Silvio was saying that the rule change was intended to deliver a 75% radio/25% sales ratio, but a few different things were causing the formula to skew to 70/30, so they changed the sales divisor from 9 to 12 as of that chart date to get it back to their desired 75/25. This roughly worked out to 1 sale = 830 listeners. My own brain fart aside, I guess one could still argue that the formula heavily favored sales; it was the divisor rather than the percentage that made retail so hard to beat. Even the 12 sales divisor seems a bit low imo, and I say this as someone who has normally favored weighting sales more than radio. For that particular time period when you still had a number of radio hits unavailable at retail, they could have upped that to 14 or 15 and likely still been fine.
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