base talk Is "Die with a Smile" a faux-hit?

[Lagerfeld]

I just saw a research analysis carried out by a Swiftie on why it's an auto-played hit and inorganic. Are you inclined to agree? 

 

It can be read here:

 

Quote

1. Low debut then song doubles in streams over the course of the week.
Before 2024 it was practically unheard of that a hit song by a big artist shows this growth pattern. All previous hit songs by major artists during the streaming era, from Drake to Ariana to Taylor to Shawn Mendes to Harry Styles to Justin Bieber to Bruno and Gaga themselves debuted with large streams and then stayed stable in the same range or slowly decreased over time: look at God's Plan, In My Feelings, Señorita, 7 Rings, Anti-Hero, Peaches, Stay, As It Was, Rain on Me, Leave the Door Open, etc. Only small breakthrough artists debut low then rise to 7m+ daily streams over time: Driver's License, Beautiful Things, etc. That pattern reversed in 2024, where practically every song by a big artist now debuts low then magically doubles in streams by the end of the week: Die with a Smile, Birds of a Feather, Please Please Please, We Can't Be Friends, and the like.

2. +1m monthly listeners gain per day.
Both Gaga and Bruno are still gaining a steady +1m listeners a day in terms of monthly listeners, despite the song being weeks old. That makes very little sense, given that the majority of the song's streams at this point should be coming from people who have already heard the song during the weeks previous and thus would not inflate the monthly listeners count, and the increase in monthly listeners should slowly taper off as the days progress. Instead, we see a constant +1m new listeners daily growth day after day. Why? Because Discovery Mode is exposing the song to 1 million new accounts a day.

3. No increase in streams after the initial blow up.
Tying into point #2, if the song somehow was gaining 1m new listeners a day based on pure organic success, then the song should be ballooning in streams day after day. Instead, we see the song has stalled at the 9.5m streaming range, which means it's losing just as many listeners a day as it's gaining (it still gains 1 million listeners a day yet streams are stagnant). Once again, that is Discovery Mode cycling through a new set of 1 million listeners a day. If the song was an organic hit, then listeners would save the song due to liking it and continue listening to it in addition to the +1m listeners it's gaining daily, and its streaming numbers would continue to increase.

4. Large global streaming distribution.
Despite both Bruno and Gaga being American artists, the song only gets 1.9m daily streams in the US (20% of its global total). No, that isn't because it's a "global smash hit" – if it was, it'd be a smash hit in America first and then spread to the rest of the globe like ACTUAL smash western hits – instead, its even streaming distribution across all markets is simply because Discovery Mode is largely indiscriminate in which accounts it targets; Discovery Mode will cause a song to play in Argentina just the same as it would in the Philippines or the United States. Gaga and Bruno's typical US to global ratios are 36% and 52% respectively, a far cry from this song (20%) – which, by the way, is performing like a regular-sized US hit (nothing crazy), even with autoplay juicing up its stats there too. The absolute killer for DWAS is the laughable Asian Spotify streaming totals: they are gigantic. Far from being impressive, this is incriminatory since autoplayed hits do unusually well in Asian countries. Why? The majority of people in Asia use free Spotify, which limits how much you can skip a track, and thus autoplay there is especially effective at inflating streaming numbers. On top of that is their large population. Western hits that organically break through in Asia are still not heard by the entirety of their population, since many Asians just don't listen to Western music at all; however, if you have a mechanism (Discovery Mode) that can target all Asian accounts, you've opened up a big streaming cache that even an organic hit has little access to. This is what happened with We Can't Be Friends, and this is what is happening with DWAS, which has Indonesia and the Philippines as its 2nd and 3rd biggest markets in the world. That is anything but organic.

5. No noticeable virality.
Kick and scream all you want, but the song is NOT making noise or viral on TikTok or Reels at the level one would expect from a hit song doing +9m streams a day. This point is partially subjective, so it's relegated to the end.

What do we think?

 

 

 

Edited September 2 by Lagerfeld

[sunbathinganimal]

 

[bielneira]

[RideOrDie]

oh we going full conspiracy theories to cope when the song reached #1 on like all platforms

 

[Gelato]

how can we encourage swifties to put their talents to more productive uses 

[Smarticle]

is that chat GPT

 

[John Slayne]

the copium 

[Cry]

If it were that easy, why doesn't it work for her peer?

 

[MonsterTown]

the answer is NO.

apple music has autoplay? dezzer has autoplay? amazon musich as autoplay? shazam has autoplay? , viral tiktok sound increasing everyday has autoplay too? their music video has autoplay? i think its organic.

[Digitalism]

The song is a hit even if it has some autoplay. It's not as heavy as GLB, Espresso and PPP tho.

I do find it funny that fan bases can't admit that a song has autoplay when it is super easy to prove.

[Mr. Stratus]

It's #1 on AM global and Shazam global as well

 

/thread

 

Edited September 2 by Mr. Stratus

[Katygato]

This is real, LIFETIMES is being sabotaged in this song's favor.

[Hair]

[Almighty Gaga]

[itshyolee]

You and that swiftie need to go fill out a job application.

 

Y'all can go work for M.I.A.

[RideOrDie]

2 minutes ago, Katygato said:

This is real, LIFETIMES is being sabotaged in this song's favor.

omg kitkats are going full cuckoo it's a kii 

 

[Bloodflowers.]

Seeing actual global smash has some people shook 

 

[shimind]

that person can COPE.

Edited September 2 by shimind

[wish]

You know it's a real SMASH when the autoplay allegations start spreading

 

[Sazare]

Yes but practically everything is a fake hit these days so it's not a big deal

[TalkThatRihanna]

We're not following your Twitter account sis

 

 

The 24 likes

 

[Abracadabra]

No  Glad that answers your question x

[Sugden]

Do they have autoplay on apple music too?

[Sannie]

Not reading all of that but sorry that happened to you.

 

[Doctor Dick]

Not a Swiftie writing that. I almost never listen to Swift yet when I entered Spotify I kept getting a "recommended for you" and almost Swift's entire discography was sent to me and I never understood it since I don't listen to her and I Can Do It With A Broken Heart was also played after a song was finished.