Why was 2022 so underwhelming for the charts?

[lazer]

This year was bland and boring compared to 2020 and 2021 which they had more going on than this year. The year started out as very underwhelming and a whole bunch of nothing. I was hopeful in spring that things were shaking up but after that, it became a barren wasteland.

Plus, there were so many 2021 leftovers in the 2022 year-end Hot 100. I don't know if it's the pandemic fatigue that's causing this. Do you guys think 2023 will follow suit or will it have more going on?

[gikem]

I don't think it was any one issue that caused 2022 to be a letdown compared to the previous 2 years, but rather a perfect storm of factors:

- The music industry (mostly the pop sector) is relying WAY too much on TikTok traction to find the newest hits. Yes, it's currently a winning formula, but it's not guaranteed to last. This shift has caused the "middle class" of pop music (i.e. the artists who have a built-in fanbase but don't get consistent traction for their singles) to completely fall through in favor of A-listers and/or long-established acts making their comebacks. It also doesn't help that TikTok's tendency for overpromotion and its reliance on shorter song lengths and consolidated song structures is burning people out on new songs faster than ever.

- On top of the above, pop radio has had a terrible year. Radio consolidation has obviously been ruining the format for decades, but IMO it has never been more obvious than in 2022. Less songs have been played more often on Pop than in any other year I can remember, while more songs with rising traction from streaming and sales get little to no radio support and vice versa. Recurrent songs are filling in the spaces where new music used to be, making the format more for the safe "classics" rather than as an avenue for discovering new music.

- Country had a huge year in which the genre had a consistent streaming presence on platforms besides Amazon for the first time ever. However, country radio has failed to change the way they operate in any meaningful way, so country songs are sticking around for longer and longer every year as country radio is both slow to get on board with streaming-only country hits, and refuses to drop those songs with radio until they hit #1 on the format, typically holding on to them for over a year. Plus, the vast majority of country artists in the mainstream don't give a damn about the Hot 100 or even the Hot Country Songs chart (mostly just country radio and Amazon streaming, where they get the majority of their play from), so they are insulated from that environment in a way the other major US genres aren't. Just look at how She Likes It and Flower Shops managed to make the 2022 YE despite both peaking below #60 as a prime example of both of these points.

- Hip-hop and R&B had a weirdly off year for the most part. It seems that both are primed to recover in 2023 thanks to a recent string of big releases, but in 2022 there was not much traction for either genre outside of the biggest names and/or the songs that crossed over into the pop sphere. This is in stark contrast to previous years where "pure" hip-hop and R&B always had a number of mid-level hits every year. A lot of those types of hits seem to be getting overtaken by the surging Latin market.

- And finally, catalog streaming is at its highest point yet. It seems that in the age of musical choice, the general public and the industry have collectively agreed to place more emphasis on the music we know and love (or that are recommended based on our listening habits) rather than just the newest stuff on the surface. Not only has this resulted in "old" hits breaking onto the Hot 100 and in some cases becoming huge, but also the cutoff for the Year-End becoming weaker and weaker as the biggest "new" songs are nowhere near as big as they once were. I'd argue this is a big reason why there are 4 Christmas songs and 13 non-Christmas repeats on the Year-End, and I fear this trend will continue for years to come.

Will any of this change in 2023? I don't know. What I will say is that I've spent most of the year looking at a number of charts outside of the Hot 100 to find hit songs that I'm interested in, and it's really opened my eyes to what other countries and other genres are emphasizing at the moment. I've found it to be a far more fulfilling experience than watching the US charts alternate between stale weeks with very little happening and slews of album bombs that decimate the charts, and I hope I'm not alone on this.

[jasper0102]

I’ll be honest, for a year to start off chart watching, this wasn’t a bad one. Sure the spring was boring as hell, though I was mostly able to ignore than given I haven’t put my full attention to the Hot 100 by that point. But I actually liked the frankly ridiculous amounts of album bombs that slammed into the charts, especially during May. Mostly because I just like looking at the stats throughout the week and guessing where album bombs should impact.

And there were more interesting stuff that happened on the charts beyond those album bombs, like a slew of artists getting their first hits (even if a majority of them would likely end up as one hit wonders), the comebacks for a lot of bigger artists, and the revival of old songs getting their due on the charts, even if that plays into gikem criticisms of catalog streaming, and some of those songs weren’t good.

There were problems still, most especially with radio either getting rid of songs as slow as a snail or just not getting rid of them at all. I think that’s the main underlying problem with a lot of the criticisms people have about this year. Radio’s utter lack of movement throughout the year is probably the main reason why 15% or so of the year-end list were 2021 leftovers, even the number-one (and even if i like Heat Waves, Smooth or Circles deserved the leftover year-end number-one title far more than it). Country also had this problem, epitomized in the 3 country songs that didn’t make the top 50 but made the year-end in the bottom 10, or close to it (Circles Around This Town, Flower Shops, She Likes It).

Overall, when looking at the year-end, this feels like one of those chart years that is better on face value compared to when you actually lived through it, even if I didn’t think this year was that bad.

[HamedM1 💔]

I think a lack of major new releases until the very end of the year (Renaissance, Midnights, Rihanna's return etc), a lot of leftovers of 2021, and the charts move even slower than ever before between longevity of big hit songs and then other songs have crash and burn runs tumbling off the chart to the point where songs peaking at #62 can even make year end charts now.

[Devil Marlena Nylund]

I think this is the new normal.

The charts are, by design, meant to measure an entire population. In the early days, the entire population more or less listened to the same music because there weren't many ways to hear music so they took what was offered to them. Over time, as more ways to hear and discover new music were introduced, this audience began to break into subgroups of people choosing different types of music. You still had the big hits and popular songs, but there was more music beneath the scenes being made and chosen by smaller groups of listeners.
With streaming and various outlets for music, I would guess a large proportion of the music-listening population make up many of these subgroups of people, while the less active/in-tune/deliberate listeners are the ones who listen to radio or pre-made playlists that have the hits (or they just listen to older music because it's what they know and like already). So, the "most popular songs" happen to be the ones that show up on these playlists or what radio plays. And radio's selection of songs to play (as long as they continue trying to stick with current music) will be based off of what songs are already somewhat known by listeners, hence why TikTok songs are creeping in there, because they have the familiarity behind them.
I think with each passing year, the idea of hit songs that we saw from the 50s (or before) up to the 2000s or early 2010s will be less common and limited mainly to those songs that manage to reach multiple demographics and audience segments, but as a result, the songs that do manage to reach hit status will by default linger for a lot longer than it would have before. There'll be more "Adore You"s and "Blinding Lights" and "As It Was" on the way. Otherwise, I think "hit" will be determined on a more sub-level and that will be the new goal for artists. A hit with the gays. A hit with TikTok teens. A hit with rock music fans. A hit with K-pop fans. etc.

[Relaxing Cup]

Lack of talent, no legends.

[JukeboxJacob]

Dec 8, 2022 21:10:36 GMT -5 Relaxing Cup said:

Lack of talent, no legends.

ok boomer

OP: the decentralization of music (and every other type of media, really) is here. Something us chart watchers & pop culture lovers have anticipated in fear for a few years now. I'm basically paraphrasing Devil Marlena Nylund here - rather than most people listening to the same songs like all of pop culture history up to this point, now we got everyone listening to different stuff thanks to the evolution and increase of music consumption methods

It's easy to be disheartened by this new era, but it's actually more interesting in a couple ways
1. More genre diversity + types of music consumption reflected on the charts. More niche/fanbase related music can shine
2. We're still getting big hits - REALLY big hits. In this new world where listeners have more choice than ever before, songs that do manage to be hits across multiple platforms + across a longer timespan of discovery are even more impressive, & give us these monster chart runs we've been seeing this decade so far

This change was inevitable, the pandemic just ushered it in quicker

[irice22]

Dec 8, 2022 21:10:36 GMT -5 Relaxing Cup said:

Lack of talent, no legends.

lol, no legends in the year of Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny.