pacifist

4y

That company is ran by weirdos, can't wait till their 15 minutes is over like vine and musicly

Shabazz999

4y

TikTok is Musical.ly rebranded

Zezima

4y

Tiktok is vine rebooted. Made by same dude.

Shabazz999

4y

We need a journalism section, Complex and Akademiks already steal from this site as is, why not compete with them

pacifist

4y

That company is ran by weirdos, can't wait till their 15 minutes is over like vine and musicly

Zezima

4y

Tiktok is vine rebooted. Made by same dude.

safe

4y

· edited

That was a lot longer than I expected so I’m gonna be a little briefer here. As I mentioned at the start a lot of this stuff is questionable in terms of legality so there’s not a lot of talk about it from labels.

Music videos count for both the Billboard 200 and Hot 100, but they’re mainly used as a Hot 100 tool. I see video usage in two boats – to push for a strong debut or to bump a song back up. A video will add a fair amount to a song’s points (maybe around 10-15%) so releasing a song with a video first week can help be the edge in it debuting #1 – Rain on Me is a recent example. Music Videos are also used to push a charting song further – Rockstar will likely have a video soon either to push it to #1 or to try and keep it at #1. The timing of video release is strategic to benefit the song as much as possible.

Remixes are mainly used for Hot 100 position. They are almost always used to push a song further – they don’t release with a debut because it cannibalizes streams from the original too much. Because remixes count towards points regardless of whether it earns credit, they can help to keep a song charting high or to push it into the next echelon – The Weeknd released an In Your Eyes remix with Doja Cat to try and push the song towards the top 20 and aim to keep it there.

Lil Nas X achieved the longest running #1 song ever largely thanks to the release of multiple remixes

Originally deluxe version involved a few additional songs being added. This helped boost streams and sales.
The new deluxe version was popularized by Uzi. It involves releasing a deluxe version of the album with an entire new B side of songs either later in the week or weeks later. By doing this they gain a significant number of new streams and/or purchases in order to hear the new songs thus boosting their sales. This only helps with album sales.

As streams are counted on an individual song basis another common tactic is to have lengthy tracklists. More tracks in an album means more streams needed for one playthrough and thus more streams and more sales. Short songs are also common – for a stream to count it needs to be 30 seconds or longer. By releasing short songs, they get played more times (in 4 minutes I can listen a 4-minute song once or a 1-minute song 4 times). This gives more streams and more sales. Short songs are a tactic on both charts.

Artists sell merchandise or tour tickets on their website and that merchandise is bundled with a copy of the album. When a consumer buys a piece of merch it counts as an album sale. The vast majority of artists do this to varying extents – Travis is a particularly bad offender. Billboard updated their chart rules last year to alleviate the issue. To qualify now bundles must be available without the album as well and at least $3.50 cheaper than with the album. The albums also must now be redeemed by the purchaser – if the purchaser does nothing with the attached album they do not count as a sale.

Some of the bundles available for Astroworld by Travis Scott. New bundles released daily

Super simple – sell the album or song for less. Lower price = higher sales. Usually happens when it’s a close race for #1 see Kenny Chesney v Drake.

safe

4y

also sorry this one was so long and I went quick through the label tactics - if you know any more things lmk or if you want clarification on anything

sabbaroni

4y

i’d clarify that the “new deluxe version” isn’t just the addition of a few new songs, it’s releasing an entire B-sides album under the guise of a deluxe to keep all the sales under one album

bc traditionally, deluxe albums had always come shortly after the standard, until streaming erased to need for a standard version

Retired Artist

4y

Great thread, OP

Don't forget to go listen to 8 Years A

safe

4y

I listened the other day your constant shilling got to me lmao

I liked it great production especially - overall was a little too mellow for me at times but I think thats more to do w taste

cole breezy

4y

Inb4 @RosettaStone @Realfam2007 and all the pop stans

Ezio

4y

Amazing as always friend.

Just one thing : I think you should add something about why being #1 is so important (contract clauses, negociations, leverage...)

safe

4y

This is gonna be split into two parts. First is an objective look at how the charts work. What counts towards sales and chart position of albums and singles and what doesn’t. The second part is going to be a look at how labels work the rules to ‘manipulate’ the charts in their favor. While the second part is also evidence-based, it is worth noting that explicit proof of label tactics is hard to come by – it’s often legally a grey area and as a result you won’t see labels admitting to it.

In terms of singles, this thread is only going to focus on the Billboard Hot 100. This is far and away the industry standard chart for singles – if you hear about an artist getting a #1 song, they will always be referring to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The Hot 100 is released weekly on Tuesday US time. The modern Hot 100 is made up of three metrics for a song’s success – Streams, Sales and Airplay. The Hot 100 tracks streams from streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music as well as services like YouTube. It tracks sales from platforms such as iTunes and from sales via other sources such as the artist’s website. Airplay refers to radio impressions – the number of people hearing the song via radio. The chart tracks streams and sales from Thursday midnight each week. This is why you see songs release on Thursdays at midnight – it allows them to get a full week of streams and sales giving it a higher chart position. Airplay is measured from Monday to Sunday. For the most part the difference in weeks has no difference however recently Toosie Slide charted on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 because of the three days of airplay it received for the Billboard week prior to its release week.

The formula for the Hot 100 is not public knowledge and changes at least once per year. Currently streams are split into three categories – paid, programmed and ad supported. Paid are weighted at 1, ad supported at 2/3 and programmed at ½. This reduces the impact of streams on platforms like YouTube. Streaming has the largest relative impact on the charts at the moment followed by Airplay and then sales. Specifically, to calculate generally on a weekly basis a commonly used formula for projections is
Sales/5 + Paid streams/1250 + Free streams/1875 + Programmed Streams/2500 + Airplay/6000

For a #1 song this will usually be in the high 30,000s to low 40,000s. There are several places that do chart projections during the week – two to watch for are @​talkofthecharts and @​simonfalk on Twitter.

50/20 – if a song has charted on the Hot 100 for 20 weeks or more and charts below #50 for any week after the 20th, it will be removed from the chart.

25/52 – if a song has charted on the hot 100 for 52 weeks or more and charts below #25 for any week after the 52nd, it will be removed from the chart.

For both 50/20 and 25/52 the song can re-enter the chart if it has a significant gain in points for an identifiable reason. This is reviewed on a case-by-case basis by Billboard so there’s not really any objectivity to re-entering. Things that can typically cause re-entry are artist deaths, Christmas or major events relating to an artist or a song.

Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas re-enters in the weeks leading up to Christmas every year

Remixes – any remixes of a song count towards the song’s chart position. However, the version with the largest proportion is the version that gets credited. For example: The Hills was #1 and a version with Eminem released. This remix helped keep The Hills at #1 but because the remix did not make up a larger proportion of points than the original song, the remix is not credited on the chart. Similarly Say So remix with Nicki Minaj was released. This remix did make up a larger proportion of points so as a result for the Hot 100 following the remixes release Say So was changed to Say So (remix) and Nicki Minaj was credited.

Sales – only four copies of a song sold per credit card are counted towards a chart position.