It means that for that week it sold/streamed the most.

The charts are more volatile today because the way we consume music is different. That why there are periods where there’s a carousel of songs at number one and then periods where there’s one song on the charts weeks like the box or gods plan

In Da Club would've been the number 1 song for a whole year.

Controversial

Imagine MJ debuting the moonwalk in the tik tok era

Y’all realize that streaming sales are lower than every period pre 2007 right? Like if Drake was around in 2000 he would’ve sold 1m first week on 4-5 albums and I can pull up the data to prove it if you want

Streaming is better than piracy for sales but it’s not as big for sales as buying an album outright was when that was the only option

A huge chunk of that is equivalent units meaning people are streaming the song over and over. Even if it was pure sales, that’s not the end all be all.

People own CDs, people have the song downloaded, etc and have been listening to ignition remix as part of their daily f***ing soundtrack for longer then some of you motherfuckers have been alive. Some of you motherfuckers were conceived to ignition remix. There is no comparison to a song that’s not even a year and a half old. The song very well may go on to be the biggest but it is NOT RIGHT NOW.

If all music and billboard charts ended right now and we only had memories of music for the rest of our lives, the majority of the world would remember ignition more than they would remember blinding lights, as the years went on. Wanna know why? Because ignition remix has been embedded in culture for CLOSE TO 20 YEARS you need time you stupid mothafuka stop arguing with weeknds d*** in ur mouth I gave u the answer and gave credit to weeknd stop looking at Billboard in 2021 as the end all, be all

In Drake's case, no the feat he accomplished is amazing.

In the case of an artist going #1 through digital manipulation though, yeah that definitely makes the charts look less significant.

Don’t know too much about how streaming works but your a trustworthy user so I’ll take your word.

What you said in the first paragraph is the whole point lol. Back in the day, people could buy an album and never listen to it again but it would count as a sale.

Now people have to continually go back to a record en masse for it to mean something: ie they have to actually enjoy listening to it and go back to it repeatedly instead of just buying a copy cuz it’s the thing that’s getting shoved down their throats by labels and stores the most

you realize that for someone to contribute an equivalent unit they have to stream the song 150 times on a paid platform right

Idk about you but I’m a huge Weeknd fan and I’ve played that song a grand total of 26 times

Which means I’ve contributed just over 1/6 of a track unit

If you don’t look into how some records are being broken, sure

The whole f***in post is facts but people are agreeing with safe because he’s a known user

It feels like records are “easier” to break now

Exactly

Track equivalent units are a way more legitimate definition of what people are listening to and continuing to listen to than pure sales were

That has nothing to do with it man come on lol

He’s disagreeing with you lol read what he wrote

In a way, yes.

Streaming is dominated by people under 40 and radio and TV music videos are functionally dead which means that the age of the megastar is almost over.

Average people have no clue who that Olivia chick is, even though she's had the number 1 song of the country since forever.

Same with the dudes who made that Mood song.

Hits in the past felt way more organic bc they were partly driven by record sales and were exposed to a wide variety of media. When Lil Jon dropped Get Low, even your grandma heard the song and Lil Jon's name(and his "YEAH!" phrase).

That's not the case anymore. I'll say the records broken still technically hold merit but, in the Internet/streaming age, it feels far less universal and significant.

OR they could buy an album and listen to it every f***ing day but it only counts as one sale. It works both ways

Ur literally insane alice

Who cares about records just listen to the music lol

No it’s cuz he’s right and in fact most people on KTT would not agree with what safe and I are saying cuz they don’t understand how music works now or how it worked then lol, including yourself apparently

and they’d need to listen to that albums songs 1500 times to even contribute a full sale

At 3:30 minutes a track that means they’ve gotta listen to a 10 track album for 90 straight hours to even contribute a single sale

I promise you this is not the amount a normal person listens to an album

ya i think so too
if streaming keeps opening up accessibility to people's listening to music, then it makes sense that records will get broken more frequently than before

Also it’s dumb as f*** to say “well x album only sold so much cuz of y song being streamed a bunch”

Like yall don’t think there wasn’t people out there buying CDs and only running back one or two tracks lol? This is why greatest hits albums were such a big thing for so long