base talk Taylor Swift's rival in commercial success is only The Beatles, agree?

[FailSafe]

15 million units in just a year in the US. Literally no one, not even the best-selling SOLOISTS of all time were doing it even at their peak. Miss Taylor is unparalleled. Agree???

 

[LosingHimWasBlue]

Yes. Of course.

but it’s ATRL.. OTH would be disagree 

[LittleStarmen]

can you tell me where these numbers come from? in just curios what is a unit?

[blackoutbaby]

[Eternium]

Nobody else had Discovery Mode boosting their numbers. 
 

Madonna, Celine, Barbra, Mariah, MJ, etc. did better without Spotify payola.

[JaXXXon]

She's doing exceptionally well in the US and overall Anglosphere where she's almost incorporating the entire top 10 with the songs from her latest album in the UK, New Zealand, Australia.

 

Outside of it, however, she's not as fortunate as she's N/A in Japan, France, Italy (where her highest charting song from said album is #93 this week), Greece, Turkey, Spain, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Finland, Denmark, The Czech Republic, Poland and outside of the Top 30 in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium and Portugal so calling her popularity close to the Beatles all in all is not accurate. 

 

She's the biggest popstar right now but taking off your US-centric glasses off, you'd notice that she's not THAT massive everywhere. The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Madonna were MASSIVE in every part of the globe. 

Edited November 4, 2023 by JaXXXon

[SuperCiC1]

Swifties spend way too much time on commercial success, agree?

[Cruel Summer]

2 minutes ago, LittleStarmen said:

can you tell me where these numbers come from? in just curios what is a unit?

Album equivalent units, as calculated by data firm Luminate and reported by Billboard, are calculated by converting single sales and streams to a number that represents the same number of pure album sales that would be required to generate as much revenue on average as those single sales or streams. For example, it takes about ten digital single sales, on average, to generate as much revenue as an album sale, so ten single sales is one unit. That’s a little bit of a simplification, but for streams it’s much more complex, because paid subscribers streams weigh more heavily than ad-supported streams (such a free or trial tiers on streaming services). This does not account for the price of each individual product sold - that is, a strong vinyl seller like Taylor isn’t getting four units added for a $40 copy of 1989 (Taylor’s Version), just one. It does not include passive experiences like radio, either. So, to summarize for this thread, Taylor has generated consumption this year equivalent to 14.7 million pure album sales - a good portion of which is actually pure sales. Hope this helps!

[byzantium]

In the US it is quite clear that the Beatles are her only rival.  I think Garth Brooks and the Beatles are the only ones ahead of her in units, and she has a lot of momentum.  Globally, she is among the biggest artists but still a ways from the Beatles and Michael Jackson.  With her current momentum she will likely surpass Madonna within the next 10 years though and it would not be unfathomable to think that she could rival the Beatles in 40 years. 

[Eternium]

9 minutes ago, LittleStarmen said:

can you tell me where these numbers come from? in just curios what is a unit?

Spotify in 2020 legalized payola. They now autoplay songs after people play other songs and if an artist chooses to take fewer royalties, they can get their songs autoplayed. After Spotify introduced this feature in 2020, certain artists received a massive jump in success on streaming. While payola on radio has been common in the past, it never counted for album charts before. Now, artists like Drake, BTS and Taylor Swift are using it to manipulate charts.

 

That’s why Taylor Swift went from being a Spotify flop to doing better on Spotify since 2020 despite Midnights, Evermore and that Phoebe Bridgers album being declines with the GP while actual hits like Reputation and 1989 couldn’t score Spotify hits to save their lives.

[jomarr]

Well she released three albums in less than a year. Not that it’s a bad thing but we have to consider the circumstances.

[LittleStarmen]

1 minute ago, Cruel Summer said:

Album equivalent units, as calculated by data firm Luminate and reported by Billboard, are calculated by converting single sales and streams to a number that represents the same number of pure album sales that would be required to generate as much revenue on average as those single sales or streams. For example, it takes about ten digital single sales, on average, to generate as much revenue as an album sale, so ten single sales is one unit. That’s a little bit of a simplification, but for streams it’s much more complex, because paid subscribers streams weigh more heavily than ad-supported streams (such a free or trial tiers on streaming services). This does not account for the price of each individual product sold - that is, a strong vinyl seller like Taylor isn’t getting four units added for a $40 copy of 1989 (Taylor’s Version), just one. It does not include passive experiences like radio, either. So, to summarize for this thread, Taylor has generated consumption this year equivalent to 14.7 million pure album sales - a good portion of which is actually pure sales. Hope this helps!

Since streaming is the main way of music consumption should we also count how many times someone played a CD back in the 90s too? Or how many times Sally rewinded her Cindy Lauper tape in 1985

 

She is the most consumed artist RIGHT NOW.

These numbers compare the artists performing right now. Its just stupid to compare to the others era. Its like saying those big Netflix films like Red Notice are the most viewed movies of all time becuas their numbers would say millions of peole "watched"

 

[taylorrrr]

2 minutes ago, Eternium said:

Spotify in 2020 legalized payola. They now autoplay songs after people play other songs and if an artist chooses to take fewer royalties, they can get their songs autoplayed. After Spotify introduced this feature in 2020, certain artists received a massive jump in success on streaming. While payola on radio has been common in the past, it never counted for album charts before. Now, artists like Drake, BTS and Taylor Swift are using it to manipulate charts.

 

That’s why Taylor Swift went from being a Spotify flop to doing better on Spotify since 2020 despite Midnights, Evermore and that Phoebe Bridgers album being declines with the GP while actual hits like Reputation and 1989 couldn’t score Spotify hits to save their lives.

Good, where's the evidence? Or have you not touched grass for the past 10 years that you became delusional and came up with that in your brain? 

[JaXXXon]

3 minutes ago, Eternium said:

Spotify in 2020 legalized payola. They now autoplay songs after people play other songs and if an artist chooses to take fewer royalties, they can get their songs autoplayed. After Spotify introduced this feature in 2020, certain artists received a massive jump in success on streaming. While payola on radio has been common in the past, it never counted for album charts before. Now, artists like Drake, BTS and Taylor Swift are using it to manipulate charts.

 

That’s why Taylor Swift went from being a Spotify flop to doing better on Spotify since 2020 despite Midnights, Evermore and that Phoebe Bridgers album being declines with the GP while actual hits like Reputation and 1989 couldn’t score Spotify hits to save their lives.

I remember back in 2022 a while after Taylor had released Folklore and Evermore she had 44 million monthly listeners and Gaga - who had just released Hold My Hand - had 41 million monthly listeners 

[differentkindahigh]

Success not quality,.....but yes!

[Cruel Summer]

5 minutes ago, LittleStarmen said:

Since streaming is the main way of music consumption should we also count how many times someone played a CD back in the 90s too? Or how many times Sally rewinded her Cindy Lauper tape in 1985

 

She is the most consumed artist RIGHT NOW.

These numbers compare the artists performing right now. Its just stupid to compare to the others era. Its like saying those big Netflix films like Red Notice are the most viewed movies of all time becuas their numbers would say millions of peole "watched"

 

Playing a CD in 1990 did not generate revenue the way streaming a song does, and the concept of an album equivalent unit predates the streaming era by about two decades; it’s just become the most popular way to track consumption as streaming has grown. What are we supposed to do to have any connected narrative across the different eras of music? We can’t just sit around and watch pure sales rot away and pretend there aren’t new ways that consumers are expressing demand.

 

I’m not tracking with your Netflix comparison because you put “watched” in quotes, but if those people really did watch and have a paid subscription, I’m not really sure what the problem is?

[JaXXXon]

9 minutes ago, LittleStarmen said:

Since streaming is the main way of music consumption should we also count how many times someone played a CD back in the 90s too? Or how many times Sally rewinded her Cindy Lauper tape in 1985

 

Yeah and that's the issue. If they had counted how many times MJ's Thriller was listened to at home it would've been #1 for five years 

It's problematic to fully compare the streaming era (where almost every consumption is counted towards revenue and RIGHTFULLY SO) to an era where A) we didn't know how many times Aunt Debbie had listened to an album after she purchased it and B) there were MILLIONS of people who consumed music through piracy and currently most countries consume music legally so it gives a greater picture for current artists. 

 

Whatever record Taylor breaks nowadays while impressive can and should mostly be compared to records in the streaming era. 

Edited November 4, 2023 by JaXXXon

[JaXXXon]

2 minutes ago, Cruel Summer said:

Playing a CD in 1990 did not generate revenue the way streaming a song does

Which is the entire point why artists from today and their sales and success can't be compared accurately to the past. Streaming killed piracy which was a huge way of consumption in the hey day of MJ well up until the early 2010s when YouTube exploded. 

[LittleStarmen]

1 minute ago, Cruel Summer said:

Playing a CD in 1990 did not generate revenue the way streaming a song does, and the concept of an album equivalent unit predates the streaming era by about two decades; it’s just become the most popular way to track consumption as streaming has grown. What are we supposed to do to have any connected narrative across the different eras of music? We can’t just sit around and watch pure sales rot away and pretend there aren’t new ways that consumers are expressing demand.

 

I’m not tracking with your Netflix comparison because you put “watched” in quotes, but if those people really did watch and have a paid subscription, I’m not really sure what the problem is?

So a person using spotify for FREE listening to  Bad Blood generetes revenue? And we wanna pretend that equals some kind of sale? This is just too arbitrary. 

 

There is just no comparison between these eras. They wont rot away because the sucess of these past music are still here

 

regarding netfliz they paid their 15 usd subscription and may have clicked on the film and watched a few minutes resulting in a view/sale but thats still nor comparable to someone going to theatre and laying 15 bucks to watch on movie

 

[The Music Industry]

17 minutes ago, Eternium said:

Nobody else had Discovery Mode boosting their numbers. 
 

Madonna, Celine, Barbra, Mariah, MJ, etc. did better without Spotify payola.

[wastedpotential]

13 minutes ago, Eternium said:

Spotify in 2020 legalized payola. They now autoplay songs after people play other songs and if an artist chooses to take fewer royalties, they can get their songs autoplayed. After Spotify introduced this feature in 2020, certain artists received a massive jump in success on streaming. While payola on radio has been common in the past, it never counted for album charts before. Now, artists like Drake, BTS and Taylor Swift are using it to manipulate charts.

 

That’s why Taylor Swift went from being a Spotify flop to doing better on Spotify since 2020 despite Midnights, Evermore and that Phoebe Bridgers album being declines with the GP while actual hits like Reputation and 1989 couldn’t score Spotify hits to save their lives.

Oh girl are you still on this crusade 

 

Taylor outsold Britney fair and square, and kicking and screaming and crying about autoplay and discovery mode won't change that fact 

 

Look at Taylor related activity on TikTok or Google or Twitter, or look at the demand for her tickets, or her vinyl, or her celebrity status. She's simply gotten exponentially bigger than where she was in 2017 and her streams adequately reflect that. If her "payola" is limited to Spotify, then why is she breaking Apple Music and Amazon Music records? Do they also have discovery mode? Is she also using payola to get ahead there too? Can you please just give it up and move on with your life and accept the truth? I'd hate for one of your crackpot, passed-through-the-asylum-walls theories to actually influence someone who didn't know any better. 

[MingYouToo]

I think its fair to surmise that Taylor isn't as big outside the U.S. in key markets especially Europe the same way she is in Asia and America. 

 

But she still has time to come for the Madonna/Rihanna records especially now that Europe is basically starting to treat her like a freshly minted act. Its like she's still on her sophomore era with how lauded 1989 TV is there + Midnights.

[FailSafe]

Users here saying "payola" when the most payola'd payola happened in the 80s, the decade that generated the most quick lil #1 singles and albums that fell off the charts after a week or two 

 

If anything, music chart points and sales back then were more FRAUDULENT because the GP didn't have access to what music to listen to by their own free will.

 

 

Not to mention during the 90s, radio- the most fraudulent component- had the highest impact on which to decide which song would be #1 on the BB charts

 

 

But I guess HAGtrl are not ready for those conversations yet

 

Edited November 4, 2023 by FailSafe

[Cruel Summer]

Just now, JaXXXon said:

Which is the entire point why artists from today and their sales and success can't be compared accurately to the past. Streaming killed piracy which was a huge way of consumption in the hey day of MJ well up until the early 2010s when YouTube exploded. 

But that’s the thing - piracy is specifically not consumption. It is not the expression of consumer intent that a paying streaming service customer choosing to play a song is. We don’t compare then to now to say unequivocally that the circumstances are identical, we just do it to get a broad sense of things and consumer intent is just about the only way to do that. Yes, that means it’s imperfect and there are gaps and it gets messy, but it’s what we have. If there was a reliable way to magically have truly complete data about how listening patterns have transformed over the last 70+ years, I would be in heaven, but as it stands the most solid datasets at the industry’s disposal are consumer-driven metrics sand radio history.

 

What would we do if we just said that we could compare anyone across years? We’d lose the ability to quantify older artist’s impact on the modern market, we’d lose sight of genre trends across time, we’d lose answers about how music interests change on smaller time scales, we’d lose the ability to tell who the all-time greats even are with hard data and we’d have to rely solely on qualitative information. We’d lose the ability to have discussions that are, to some, meaningful and interesting because we’ve artificially gated off different eras of time that in reality are connected.

[wastedpotential]

13 minutes ago, JaXXXon said:

I remember back in 2022 a while after Taylor had released Folklore and Evermore she had 44 million monthly listeners and Gaga - who had just released Hold My Hand - had 41 million monthly listeners 

Girl are you confusing Taylor's daily listeners statistics for her monthly listeners statistics? Between the release of Red (Taylor's Version) and Midnights, Taylor's monthly listener stats were between 55M and 60M/month, while she was getting between 40 and 50M streams/day. I can't speak to Gaga's monthly listeners number, but I know for a fact that Taylor was at least doubling - and more likely than not tripling - her daily streams stats.