charts discussion US Airplay Discussion

[Blade]

2 minutes ago, nick4bty said:

This seems like a whole lot of nothing. lol. Like, okay, most songs by established artists peak their first week and then decline. 5M streams is still 5M streams, aka, big numbers. I don't really get it. 

 

Also, why do Pop listeners hate Taylor Swift so damn much lol. Girl can't catch a break.

Hate is a strong word considering her success on Pop. Yes, for how massive she is, you'd think she would get as much Pop radio love as Ed, Post, Doja, or Bruno but Pop listeners still like her music. She's just released a few Pop radio singles mostly during Lover/Folklore/Evermore/Red TV that didn't resonate with Pop listeners. Anti-Hero changed that and Lavender Haze showing that 2019-2021 was mostly a fluke for her

[Ger]

9 minutes ago, nick4bty said:

If The Weeknd payola'd radio he would've pushed Die For You to #1. Don't blame him just because the audiences want to his hear music lol. There's nothing fraudulent about his chart runs. Blurred Lines is one of the biggest songs of all time for good reason. And he's had his share of flops too, like Sacrifice, In Your Eyes, etc, that don't resonate with the Pop audience. 

Blinding Lights  But agree with all you say, I mean, not so long ago he released Dawn FM which was panned by the GP, "Sacrifice" and "Take My Breath" received awful callouts scores. The fact that everything changed because a 2016 song by him got a resurgence is wild.

[pride4jc1222]

Ouch at that retention rate for Glimpse of Us, but it's easy to see why the song broke the record for the largest negative bullet on Pop. Joji didn't do himself any favors, though, by going inactive in the months that followed the release of GoU. By the time he released the album, it was way too late.

[nick4bty]

17 minutes ago, Ger-55 said:

Blinding Lights  But agree with all you say, I mean, not so long ago he released Dawn FM which was panned by the GP, "Sacrifice" and "Take My Breath" received awful callouts scores. The fact that everything changed because a 2016 song by him got a resurgence is wild.

ddd  yeah, Die For You really saved his ass. Who knows, he could've been headed for an Ed Sheeran career slump. Now his next era is pretty much guaranteed to have great sampling and solid radio support. 

 

Take My Breath and Sacrifice didn't deserve to flop btw

 

20 minutes ago, Blade said:

Hate is a strong word considering her success on Pop. Yes, for how massive she is, you'd think she would get as much Pop radio love as Ed, Post, Doja, or Bruno but Pop listeners still like her music. She's just released a few Pop radio singles mostly during Lover/Folklore/Evermore/Red TV that didn't resonate with Pop listeners. Anti-Hero changed that and Lavender Haze showing that 2019-2021 was mostly a fluke for her

Eh, Pop listeners pretty much seem to hate all Pop girls and have for years, Taylor is just victim to this. And I truly don't get it. Her songs are tailor () made for radio, she gives radio everything they could possibly want out of a pop song, and they still don't vibe with it. I wouldn't say she really changed anything from Reputation/Lover/Folklore/Evermore, where the only bona fide radio hit she could get out of those four albums combined was Delicate. Anti-Hero was more of a LWYMMD situation, an out-of-the-gate smash that benefited from a dry radio environment, but that 35% love rate is pretty terrible for such a big song. Just more of the same with these damn callout scores. Lavender Haze is clearly feeling the effects with pretty much no love from any of the top of the markets. 

[Ger]

1 hour ago, nick4bty said:

Her songs are tailor () made for radio, she gives radio everything they could possibly want out of a pop song, and they still don't vibe with it.

Well, according to Swift herself, she was the first to "not expect" "Anti-Hero" to be a hit, mostly because of the non-simple lyrics. She thought it wouldn't work for radio, and maybe she made some points considering it wasn't as passionately enjoyed as other smashes like "Unholy", "I'm Good (Blue)" and "Die for You", all which have shown exceptional longevity.

 

 

[maplelattes]

What happened with the pop radio audience today?

[JevyDuty]

22 minutes ago, maplelattes said:

What happened with the pop radio audience today?

Same with HAC

[oscar13]

8 hours ago, Ger-55 said:

Retention Rate: The Magic New Metric for Measuring Hit Potential in Streaming Data
 

 

WHY RECORD-BREAKING STREAMING DOESN’T TRANSLATE TO BIG HITS FOR RADIO

While “Anti-Hero” is hardly a flop, it also hasn’t been the instant home run that “Bad Blood” or “Shake It Off” were. On average, about 35% of CHR and Hot AC listeners said they loved “Anti-Hero” at its peak.

 

That’s strong enough for a secondary current, but the biggest hits typically see 50% of listeners exhibit strong passion for them using Integr8 New Music Research’s methodology. Harry Styles’ “As It Was” and “About Damn Time” from Lizzo both achieved this metric among our typical clients.

 

 

As we’ve noted in several previous posts, streaming data amplifies active fandom, which means a song’s peak week on streaming will often be on or shortly after its debut week. As weeks go by, however, streaming data increasingly reflects the passive fandom of people who discovered the song after its release.

 

With those behavior patterns in mind, let’s fast-forward to “Anti-Hero’s” 10th week from its peak. (Why 10 weeks? Typical top 10 hits for CHR radio reach their peak passion level among listeners around 10 weeks after debuting.)

 

Spotify users in the U.S. played “Anti-Hero” about 5.7 million times ten weeks after its record-breaking debut week. That’s still sufficient to be among Spotify’s Top 10 songs in subsequent weeks. However, that’s less than one-fifth as many plays as its debut.

 

In contrast, Lizzo’s “About Damn Time” only garnered around 8.5 million streams when it peaked in its fourth week. Fast forward 10 weeks, and Lizzo’s summer anthem was still pulling almost 6 million streams.

 

If you can’t simply examine how a song performs at its peak and you can’t examine how a song performs once the initial interest in the song dies down, is there any streaming metric that does track with listeners’ passion for a song, as measured in your callout research?

 

Comparing plays for a song’s peak week on Spotify with its play count 10 weeks after its peak reveals a telling story.

 

 

INTRODUCTING RETENTION RATE

Retention Rate is the ratio of how many times streaming music consumers streamed a song in its 10th week after peaking, compared to how many streamed the song during its peak week.

 

Comparing the Spotify streaming retention rate for the songs for which we initially examined passion in callout research, we finally begin to see some semblance of a correlating pattern:

 

This is just nonsense. Retention rate has so many factors that'd differ for different releases, and hence, wouldn't be sensible to compare. F.e. as Nick pointed out, established artists like Taylor peak with massive streams/exposure in their first weeks, then decline as their fans and casual listeners are sizable so that there are not many people left to discover the song afterward, or some of these songs' respective albums got released around their 7-8th week, boosting the streams and lowering the retention rate. The most important thing about this is that most songs/hits nowadays are planted on TikTok with an extensive promo behind the scenes for weeks. Trends usually reach their maximum potential later on, and then the streaming impact can be effectively seen if their teams do a great job with playlisting. Stating that a rate, which is insufficient in comparing the interest, resembles another rate accordingly makes the latter inapplicable.

[pride4jc1222]

Looks like we might be getting our first recalibration since 4/24/2021.

[JorgeM]

1 hour ago, oscar13 said:

This is just nonsense. Retention rate has so many factors that'd differ for different releases, and hence, wouldn't be sensible to compare. F.e. as Nick pointed out, established artists like Taylor peak with massive streams/exposure in their first weeks, then decline as their fans and casual listeners are sizable so that there are not many people left to discover the song afterward, or some of these songs' respective albums got released around their 7-8th week, boosting the streams and lowering the retention rate. The most important thing about this is that most songs/hits nowadays are planted on TikTok with an extensive promo behind the scenes for weeks. Trends usually reach their maximum potential later on, and then the streaming impact can be effectively seen if their teams do a great job with playlisting. Stating that a rate, which is insufficient in comparing the interest, resembles another rate accordingly makes the latter inapplicable.

Yes, it is is an absolutely non sense which doesn’t consider tons of relevant factors. Like ok Lizzo retention is better because she comes from nothing but AH has already destroyed ADT in all streaming platforms in less than 6 months 

[Sscorpionn]

1 hour ago, pride4jc1222 said:

Looks like we might be getting our first recalibration since 4/24/2021.

What’s that? and how does it affect songs? 

[Green]

1    1         MILEY CYRUS    Flowers    18093    
2    2        SZA    Kill Bill    18091

 

so close

[pride4jc1222]

2 minutes ago, Sscorpionn said:

What’s that? and how does it affect songs? 

There were panel changes on Pop, Hot AC, and AC that lowered the audience numbers for songs on these formats. The lowered audience numbers will be reflected on kWorb radio this morning. (Good thing Creepin got to 110M AI and Kill Bill passed SYT before this happened.)

 

Whether this has an effect on the Hot 100 remains to be seen.

[Sscorpionn]

1 minute ago, pride4jc1222 said:

There were panel changes on Pop, Hot AC, and AC that lowered the audience numbers for songs on these formats. The lowered audience numbers will be reflected on kWorb radio this morning. (Good thing Creepin got to 110M AI and Kill Bill passed SYT before this happened.)

 

Whether this has an effect on the Hot 100 remains to be seen.

Mess. Not them deciding to do this when kill bill is on the verge of going #1. 

 

hopefully it doesn’t impact it that much 

[Ger]

8 minutes ago, pride4jc1222 said:

Whether this has an effect on the Hot 100 remains to be seen.

Most likely, it will have.

[Ger]

POP

1. Flowers: 18093 (-97) | 54.903 (-6.521) 

2. Kill Bill: 18091 (+52) | 53.149 (-5.866)

3. Creepin': 17018 (-77) | 52.677 (-5.876) 

4. Die for You: 15227 (-38) | 43.488 (-5.388) 

5. Calm Down: 12373 (+179) | 37.332 (-3.976) 

6. Lavender Haze: 11753 (+10) | 30.794 (-3.663) 

7. Escapism.: 11268 (+11) | 30.907 (-3.507) 

8. Sure Thing: 10318 (+224) | 29.801 (-3.423) 

9. Players: 9096 (+91) | 25.692 (-2.682) 

10. Bloody Mary: 8539 (+39) | 23.650 (-2.770)

 

11. Unholy: 8216 (-124) | 21.178 (-2.236) 

12. Boy's a liar, Pt. 2: 7840 (+170) | 23.547 (-3.310) 

13. Special: 7119 (+73) | 17.874 (-1.997) 

14. Love Again: 6985 (+13) | 14.372 (-0.886) 

15. Eyes Closed: 6412 (+218) | 18.325 (-1.612) 

16. Nonsense: 6261 (+71) | 16.355 (-2.331) 

17. Lottery: 5614 (-43) | 10.869 (-1.055) 

18. River: 5060 (+18) | 11.737 (-0.975) 

19. Thank God: 4843 (-21) | 9.604 (-0.655) 

20. Heaven: 4772 (+59) | 11.209 (-1.001) 

 

21. Last Night: 4742 (+135) | 12.668 (-1.219) 

22. Mother: 2522 (+117) | 3.909 (-0.036)

23. Heart Wants What It Wants: 2428 (+51) | 4.088 (-0.321) 

24. Cinderella Snapped: 2357 (+57) | 4.171 (-0.382) 

25. Die 4 Me: 2141 (+19) | 3.263 (-0.398) 

26 (+1) Can't Tame Her: 1898 (+11) | 2.827 (-0.218) 

27 (-1) Nobody Gets Me: 1822 (-201) | 5.009 (-1.225) 

28. 10:35: 1679 (-171) | 2.468 (-0.440) 

29. LEFT RIGHT: 1576 (+30) | 2.099 (-0.314) 

30. Too Well: 1464 (-30) | 2.034 (-0.140) 

 

31 (+3) Favorite Song: 1324 (+166) | 2.913 (-0.163) 

32 (+1) ceilings: 1214 (+38) | 2.566 (-0.191) 

36. All of the Girls You Loved Before : 812 (+71) | 3.262 (-0.122) 

37. TRUSTFALL: 683 (+65) | 0.848 (-0.025) 

39 (+1) Red Ruby Da Sleeze: 534 (+21) | 1.272 (-0.180) 

40 (-1) this is what heartbreak feels like: 505 (-20) | 0.376 (-0.039) 

42. Love From the Other Side: 388 (-5) | 0.817 (-0.107) 

43 (+2) That's Now How This Works: 252 (+75) | 0.648 (+0.127) 

45 (-1) Pretty Girls Walk: 205 (+5) | 0.290 (-0.059) 

[Sscorpionn]

Kill Bill 

 

So it’s chance of going #1 is pretty much over now. What kind of curse is this? 

[Ger]

OVERALL

 

** = Incorrect update (song was dropped from or added to a format)

 

1. Miley Cyrus - "Flowers" 107.51 (-9.87) 

2. Metro Boomin, The Weeknd & 21 Savage - "Creepin'" 100.34 (-9.74) 

3. SZA - "Kill Bill" 98.65 (-7.66) 

4. The Weeknd - "Die for You" 71.05 (-7.36) 

5. Coi Leray - "Players" 63.93 (-4.51) 

6. Rema & Selena Gomez - "Calm Down" 54.71 (-4.33) 

7. David Guetta & Bebe Rexha - "I'm Good (Blue)" 52.53 (-4.72) 

8. Taylor Swift - "Anti-Hero" 51.81 (-3.73) 

9. Chris Brown - "Under the Influence" 51.54 (-3.59) 

10. Taylor Swift - "Lavender Haze" 50.03 (-4.97) 

 

11 (+3) Bailey Zimmerman - "Rock and a Hard Place" 48.86 (+0.08) 

12 (-1) Harry Styles - "As It Was" 47.06 (-4.17) **

13 (-1) RAYE - "Escapism. (feat. 070 Shake)" 45.95 (-3.89) **

14. Lady Gaga - "Bloody Mary" 42.46 (-4.26) 

15. Kane Brown & Katelyn Brown - "Thank God" 41.61 (-1.42) 

16. Lainey Wilson - "Heart Like a Truck" 40.39 (-2.52) 

17. PinkPantheress & Ice Spice - "Boy's a liar Pt. 2" 38.43 (-3.18) 

18 (+3) Dierks Bentley - "Gold" 37.10 (+0.08) 

19 (+3) Parker McCollum - "Handle on You" 37.08 (+0.47) 

20 (-2) Lizzo - "Special (feat. SZA)" 36.74 (-2.17) 

 

HARDY & Lainey Wilson - "wait in the truck" 35.54 (+0.27) 

Morgan Wallen - "Thought You Should Know" 35.49 (-0.75) 

Sam Smith & Kim Petras - "Unholy" 34.47 (-3.20) 

Miguel - "Sure Thing" 34.19 (-3.61) 

Morgan Wallen - "Last Night" 31.62 (-1.08) 

Ed Sheeran - "Eyes Closed" 31.17 (-2.93) 

Tyler Hubbard - "Dancin' in the Country" 27.58 (-0.03) 

The Kid LAROI - "Love Again" 24.24 (-1.23) 

Morgan Wallen - "One Thing at a Time" 22.10 (+0.31) 

Morgan Wallen - "You Proof" 21.07 (-0.31) 

Latto - "Lottery (feat. LU KALA)" 19.80 (-1.17) 

Miley Cyrus - "River"  18.75 (-1.60) 

Niall Horan - "Heaven" 18.72 (-1.68) 

Sabrina Carpenter - "Nonsense" 17.15 (-2.54) 

Nicki Minaj - "Red Ruby Da Sleeze" 14.82 (-0.47) 

KAROL G & Shakira - "TQG" 10.51 (-0.30) 

Toosii - "Favorite Song" 10.05 (+0.04) 

Zach Bryan - "Something in the Orange" 7.74 (-0.22) 

SZA - "Snooze" 0.62 (-0.00) 

[hausofbryan]

Tomorrow morning, we will lock in Gaga’s Pop Songs Top 10.

[pride4jc1222]

11 (+3) Bailey Zimmerman - "Rock and a Hard Place" 48.86 (+0.08) 

 

New peak in position/audience for this. With nothing anywhere close to surrounding it, this should finally get the elusive Mediabase #1. Should have been 3rd week like Billboard, but Mediabase still uses the stupid Sunday-Saturday tracking period.

 

21. Last Night: 4742 (+135) | 12.668 (-1.219) 

22. Mother: 2522 (+117) | 3.909 (-0.036)

 

Might be the largest ratio gap from one position to the next. Last Night pretty much has double the spins and over 3x the audience of Mother. If this gap happened at the top, imagine a song having 35k spins and 180M audience right now.

[Ger]

Format changes after re-calibration

Based on comparing yesterday's and today's total audience reported on Top 50 chart of each format.

 

Pop -9.86%

Hot AC -8.03%

Christian -7.51%

AC -3.69%

Alternative -3.57%

Spanish Contemporary -2.64%

Urban -0.87%

Rhythmic -0.63%

Tropical Latin -0.24%

Urban/R&B +0.13%

Country +0.20%

Dance +1.50%

Active Rock +11.24%

Triple A +29.99%

[PopFan1996]

1 hour ago, Sscorpionn said:

So it’s chance of going #1 is pretty much over now. What kind of curse is this? 

There are still chances. Apparently digital sales and website sales climbed up by 10k copies. So might snatch that #1 still (hopefully)

[Sscorpionn]

11 minutes ago, PopFan1996 said:

There are still chances. Apparently digital sales and website sales climbed up by 10k copies. So might snatch that #1 still (hopefully)

She would need to do like 15k website sales minimum which is a a lot for her so idk 

[Raphy23]

14 hours ago, Holiest Dreams said:

Does anyone in here who follows radio more than me remember — did Bejeweled test well on radio back during Midnights’ release? I wonder if that would have a shot, considering it already has a video. But instinct tells me it wouldn’t be embraced by radio.

It did test well. But it didn't seem like Taylor's team's focus for radio. I heard it for about 3 weeks after the album release, and then it was dropped, at the same time LH started being picked up more. 

[Raphy23]

13 hours ago, Ger-55 said:

Retention Rate: The Magic New Metric for Measuring Hit Potential in Streaming Data
 

 

WHY RECORD-BREAKING STREAMING DOESN’T TRANSLATE TO BIG HITS FOR RADIO

While “Anti-Hero” is hardly a flop, it also hasn’t been the instant home run that “Bad Blood” or “Shake It Off” were. On average, about 35% of CHR and Hot AC listeners said they loved “Anti-Hero” at its peak.

 

That’s strong enough for a secondary current, but the biggest hits typically see 50% of listeners exhibit strong passion for them using Integr8 New Music Research’s methodology. Harry Styles’ “As It Was” and “About Damn Time” from Lizzo both achieved this metric among our typical clients.

 

 

As we’ve noted in several previous posts, streaming data amplifies active fandom, which means a song’s peak week on streaming will often be on or shortly after its debut week. As weeks go by, however, streaming data increasingly reflects the passive fandom of people who discovered the song after its release.

 

With those behavior patterns in mind, let’s fast-forward to “Anti-Hero’s” 10th week from its peak. (Why 10 weeks? Typical top 10 hits for CHR radio reach their peak passion level among listeners around 10 weeks after debuting.)

 

Spotify users in the U.S. played “Anti-Hero” about 5.7 million times ten weeks after its record-breaking debut week. That’s still sufficient to be among Spotify’s Top 10 songs in subsequent weeks. However, that’s less than one-fifth as many plays as its debut.

 

In contrast, Lizzo’s “About Damn Time” only garnered around 8.5 million streams when it peaked in its fourth week. Fast forward 10 weeks, and Lizzo’s summer anthem was still pulling almost 6 million streams.

 

If you can’t simply examine how a song performs at its peak and you can’t examine how a song performs once the initial interest in the song dies down, is there any streaming metric that does track with listeners’ passion for a song, as measured in your callout research?

 

Comparing plays for a song’s peak week on Spotify with its play count 10 weeks after its peak reveals a telling story.

 

 

INTRODUCTING RETENTION RATE

Retention Rate is the ratio of how many times streaming music consumers streamed a song in its 10th week after peaking, compared to how many streamed the song during its peak week.

 

Comparing the Spotify streaming retention rate for the songs for which we initially examined passion in callout research, we finally begin to see some semblance of a correlating pattern:

 

This is interesting, but at the same time this is not fair to use for Taylor, especially looking at this graph below. Taylor's fan base is so MASSIVE, of course it's first week will be incredibly massive, compared to Lizzo's much smaller fanbase.

so Retention Rate will always be horrible for new Taylor songs. also, how can this be used for 3rd singles from albums that come post release, like Ghost, Watermelon Sugar, some of Dua's singles, etc.

Edited April 6, 2023 by Raphy23