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Billboard no longer counting digital sales from artists’ webstores


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Posted
5 hours ago, FOCK said:

Imagine thinking this change is based on any type of chart “integrity” :toofunny3: I could sell y’all a box of hair. 
 

This change, as well as every recent major change Billboard has enacted, is purely a push by streaming giants, radio and labels to have more control & sway over chart manipulation, payola & playlisting/radio deals. They cannot compete with the clear support of consumers. In this manner, they’re dictating to you what you should like and support, scraping even more profits from an artist & “guaranteeing” them numbers in exchange for deals that leave them worse off. 
 

Was their mass buying? Yes, durr. But that is a greater indication of support/demand than being force fed paid placements on radio (a dying platform) & playlists. You’re exchanging a metric where manipulation gets mostly filtered out, for one where you can’t even see the manipulation at all. 

How is radio "a dying platform" when the most listened song on the radio this past week had 102.82 MILLION audience in the US and the most listened song on Spotify in the past week had 10.5 million streams? (also in the US). Even if radio is miscalculated by a bunch, it's not miscalculated to be 10 times bigger.

 

Y'all need to understand that just because YOU don't personally consume radio, A LOT of people do. There's radio on in stores, and malls, and Uber rides, and public transport, not to mention people who commute with the radio on. A song that does well on the radio will be massive and will be known by the GP. Ryan Tedder literally said that he got more money for a viral song on radio than a viral song on streaming.

 

Radio benefits artists and benefits labels. It benefits consumers because it's free. It's not gonna be taken out of The Hot 100 in the foreseeable future and it's time y'all realize why.

 

You think streaming giants, radios, and labels are the ones doing chart manipulation on radio. But not with streaming? Not with digital sales? What kind of argument is this? Labels can much more easily manipulate digital sales than streaming and radio. Slap a new picture as the cover or put the sound of waves in the background of a song, change the title, boom, you have a new version and can sell it, and make a single that would've done alright look like a smash hit. In a week or two. There's literally no way to do this with streaming or radio. Ask Sabrina Carpenter and Niall Horan, who had autoplay turned on and their singles still went nowhere, or ask the literally hundreds of artists who reach top 10 on radio/pop radio yearly and never see the top 20 of the Hot 100.

 

Of course, mass buying only benefits artists with huge fanbases. No one else, successful or not, can benefit from it. Ed Sheeran could release a million versions of his songs, but he doesn't have the fanbase to buy them. Paramore could release a million versions of their songs, but despite having a loyal fanbase, it's not big enough to make a difference. Streaming and radio can give a hit to anyone, small or big. Mass buying can only give a hit to a very small number of artists.

 

Mass buying is not an "indicator of support" it's an indicator of having fans. Fans could hate the song and still mass buy it, because it's not about enjoying the art. It's not about consuming the song. It's just about reaching a target number. It's mechanic and inorganic and the opposite of what charts should be.

 

There should be other measures taken, but to act like this is a bad measure is basically just being bitter because someone you support won't be able to fart into a microphone and get a #1 anymore.

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Posted
8 hours ago, #Beautiful said:

people were making fundraisers on twitter in order to fraudulently mass buy songs on release week. no one was actually consuming the song from the files. so no, it hasnt been a valid way to consider music consumption since like... 2015 when streaming kicked in

But, people could still make fundraisers to fraudulently mass but songs on other platforms. Removing artists websites sales won’t solve this problem at all. Buying from one website is no different from buying on another. It still makes no sense. 

Posted

Damn, poor barbz  :dancehall:

Posted
1 minute ago, SleepNoMore said:

But, people could still make fundraisers to fraudulently mass but songs on other platforms. Removing artists websites sales won’t solve this problem at all. Buying from one website is no different from buying on another. It still makes no sense. 

You can only buy on iTunes, Amazon, and other type of stores once, ever. You need an account to do so, particularly with iTunes, which is the most popular, it's not exactly easy to have more than one, since most people log in from their phones, plus the store is already connected to their card and address it's an absolute hassle to switch. You can buy fifteen times a week from an artist's store without even creating an account, and just use different credit cards/addresses easily because you have to enter the info every time you do a purchase.

 

90% of digital sales for mass bought singles came from artist's stores

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Posted

they should just stop counting sales, it’s mostly stans using it to manipulate the charts cause it’s the easiest of the three components 

Posted

Good, now we only need to ban radio too, and we'll finally have organic charts :clap3: 

Posted

Nicki's team is getting that well deserved rest :gaycat5:

Posted (edited)

Profit is profit. I don't get the point, it's not like "fake" pure sales are going to shape the chart's positions radically.

But I have been out of stanning game for a very long so I would not know.

Edited by Aristotle
Posted

They should have done that like 1-2 years ago... at least we won't see those one week top10 peak from BTS and Nicki anymore :clap3:

Posted
1 hour ago, slw84 said:

Mess at people talking about multiple accounts...

It's easier for them to filter fake streams and also fake sales with multiple accounts, especially from Itunes.

The store numbers take longer to filter through since shipments add one more process.

 

At least it'll still count towards RIAA.

 

As it was easy to create multiple apple accounts hahahah good luck for them tho :rip:

Posted
5 hours ago, slw84 said:

Should have never been allowed to begin with

 

Popularity should not be measured by tipping the scale (stans mass buying).

 

Mariah Carey's loverboy peaked at #2 because stans bought 69 cent singles when in fact singles were around 2 dollars at that time.

 

IT went from 55-2 and was still a flop single but the peak doesn't indicate it.

Actually Loverboy was discounted to $0.49 when singles generally cost $3.49-4.49. But Sony discounted Bootylicious to block Carey who had just left the label (& had recently divorced Tony Mottola, its Chairman & CEO at the time). Booty had far fewer singles but Carey didn't move up after it sold out.

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Posted
37 minutes ago, More Than A Melody said:

You can only buy on iTunes, Amazon, and other type of stores once, ever. You need an account to do so, particularly with iTunes, which is the most popular, it's not exactly easy to have more than one, since most people log in from their phones, plus the store is already connected to their card and address it's an absolute hassle to switch. You can buy fifteen times a week from an artist's store without even creating an account, and just use different credit cards/addresses easily because you have to enter the info every time you do a purchase.

 

90% of digital sales for mass bought singles came from artist's stores

Ok thanks, this makes more sense. 

Posted

No more Willow’s or Carnigan’s at #1 anymore.

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Posted

now, give back the 10 weeks at #1 that BTS stole from g4u. :dies: 

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Posted
1 hour ago, SleepNoMore said:

But, people could still make fundraisers to fraudulently mass but songs on other platforms. Removing artists websites sales won’t solve this problem at all. Buying from one website is no different from buying on another. It still makes no sense. 

i mean theyre really not the same thing but if theres gonna be a shift in the systems abuse surely enough billboard will smoothly adjust the rules for that just like they did here

Posted
1 hour ago, brianc33710 said:

Actually Loverboy was discounted to $0.49 when singles generally cost $3.49-4.49. But Sony discounted Bootylicious to block Carey who had just left the label (& had recently divorced Tony Mottola, its Chairman & CEO at the time). Booty had far fewer singles but Carey didn't move up after it sold out.

True. Bootylicious was already top 10 and jumped from 8 to 1.

but the point remains Loverboy was not popular outside of her stans (myself included) to reflect a #2 or #1 most popular song in the country

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Posted
1 hour ago, corotinho said:

As it was easy to create multiple apple accounts hahahah good luck for them tho :rip:

True but it's also easy to track the fake accounts just like they do for streaming. Website sales take longer since they have to be submitted and it has to be shipped out to count that week.

Posted

Some pop girls are nerfed from getting easy #1s. :gaycat5:

Posted
11 hours ago, bliaz said:

Radio next, please :giraffe:

What? Lol

 

 

This doesn't make sense. Some people consume music that way. Purchasing a song no longer counts? This is so crazy to me. 

What's next? iTunes downloads won't count?

Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, Letemtalk said:

Good. Now they can stop counting physical sales as well, because almost no one has a record player, and no new computer or new car has a CD player.

Disagree. That is a music industry problem. If the industry innovated with a new physical format reflecting current technology like a USB flash drive with bluetooth capabilities perhaps, I think people would listen to music on that.

 

Still, people do listen to music on CD and vinyl now. Vinyl sales numbers have been on a steady rise for years.

 

I think labels have been overwhelmed by all the technology changes in the latest years, but they need to get their sh*t together and act assertively.

 

For example, an idea, teaming up with audio manufacturers and making a little OS that can make vinyl and CD players connect to your Spotify account so your plays count to your wrapped, could be really cool and potentially drive up music consumption. 

 

Labels and Spotify could make an agreement that for ad-supported accounts, you wouldn't get ads if the streams come from a CD/vinyl or this hypothetical bluetooth flash drive. Apple Music (and other platforms) could even jump in for this option since this would increase traffic for the music and could motivate people to get premium accounts. It's a win-win situation.

 

They really should brighten up and start moving.

Edited by Mastamaind
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Posted

No more fifty million versions from Taylor gaming the system.

 

Hip hop will surely go back to #1

Posted

Considering this only affects the bigger popstars, I think this is fair and evens the playing field. After all, this method of purchasing has, in recent years, been deliberately exploited by big-name popstars to game the system, a system smaller artists cannot take advantage of as they do not have the same power or fanbase size.

 

BBH100 is supposed to be a representation of the country's most popular songs of the week. When you have a big popstar gaming the system like this, they go #1 and it defeats the purpose of the chart.

Posted

No more “limited edition alternative digital cover available for 4 hours before the hour strikes midnight on Thursday”. :laugh:

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Posted
11 hours ago, Zoomer said:

But they can still release 99 versions on iTunes. Billboard needs to make a rule where only 5 versions (max) of the same song could count towards the chart. 

5 versions is still a lot. Should be like 3 max (original + 2 remixes, including remixes with a feature). Anyway, create a iTunes account takes more work than create a new email/gmail, so maybe it will work a lil bit

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