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

[UnusualBoy]

The song does have autoplay but it's not the solely reason of its success since it's doing great in all platforms.

[Dante]

tell katy perry to use this method then

[LadyFlopga]

Is autoplay a thing on Apple Music or why is it #1 there again?

 

[Blackout2006]

On 9/3/2024 at 1:49 AM, wish said:

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

 

and by #that one fandom always. An actual SMASH may be in our hands

[Blackout2006]

1 hour ago, UnusualBoy said:

The song does have autoplay but it's not the solely reason of its success since it's doing great in all platforms.

This is kind of what everyone is saying. Even if a song has autoplay, it won't smash if it does not click with the GP. Autoplay is a promotional tool utilized by record labels to do their job which is literally promoting the artist's music. 

Edited September 4 by Blackout2006

[Mr. Loco]

1 hour ago, Dante said:

tell katy perry to use this method then

She doesn't have the means and her label doesn't care that much about her music

[ImpressMeMuch]

5 minutes ago, Mr. Loco said:

She doesn't have the means

https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisadellatto/2023/09/19/katy-perry-is-now-worth-340-million-and-one-of-the-richest-self-made-women-in-america/#:~:text=P op superstar Katy Perry,self-made women in America. 

 

lmfao 

[Femininomenon]

I believe it 

[$ebert]

11 minutes ago, ImpressMeMuch said:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisadellatto/2023/09/19/katy-perry-is-now-worth-340-million-and-one-of-the-richest-self-made-women-in-america/#:~:text=P op superstar Katy Perry,self-made women in America. 

 

lmfao 

I think they meant talent, not money. 
 

anyways, No. DWAS is really good. 

Edited September 4 by $ebert

[Relampago.]

It sounds like the exact type of song that would smash right now + two huge stars collaborating on it

 

Like.. don't act shocked

 

[VioletsandRoses]

Nah. It's high on YouTube, AM and ITunes. Especially YouTube since English MVs have been tanking there for a while. 

[Jay07]

3 hours ago, Mr. Loco said:

She doesn't have the means and her label doesn't care that much about her music

She is the biggest artist on Capitol and clearly the label was banking huge on her comeback. If Sabrina's label can (allegedly) spare the coin for someone who used to be c list before Espresso, surely Katy's label can do the same for a superstar.

 

This is all coping. If autoplay is used, it's just a tool, a song can't catch on if people don't like it.

[Pop Art]

What a bunch of crap.

 

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.

 

This doesn't inherently scream autoplay, especially since that's been a thing (publicly) since at least late 2021 and yet we're just seeing this new pattern emerge this year. It could be shifting listening patterns (which we've seen in ebbs and flows over the years), which could be due to so many different things (more and different demographics using streaming than before, new markets growing that consume music a bit differently, etcetera). To relegate this trend to just "autoplay" isn't exactly a sound argument.

 

Quote

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.

Or, you know...this is both artist's first major release in literally years?  This is what happens when an artist puts out new music after such a long break, and especially when said music blows up the way this song has. Unless both their monthly listeners continue to grow in leaps and bounds a month after the song's release (unless the song continues to grow past that point), this isn't really suspicious.

 

Quote

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.

Day 1: 4,585,607 (NEW)

Day 2: 4,335,439 (-250,168)

Day 3: 4,430,279 (+94,840)

Day 4: 5,940,680 (+1,510,401)

Day 5: 6,789,220 (+848,540)

Day 6: 7,132,814 (+343,594)

Day 7: 8,800,962 (+1,668,148)

Day 8: 9,404,915 (+603,953)

Day 9: 8,378,368 (-1,026,547)

Day 10: 8,176,933 (-201,435)

Day 11: 9,407,436 (+1,230,503)

Day 12: 10,222,124 (+814,688)

Day 13: 9,573,098 (-649,026)

Day 14: 9,518,765 (-54,333)

Day 15: 9,840,738 (+321,973)

Day 16: 9,578,976 (-261,762)

Day 17: 9,317,604 (-261,372)

Day 18: 10,164,673 (+847,069) *Day Tweet Was Posted*

Day 19: 11,103,835 (+939,162) [NEW PEAK]

 

Not only has it indeed continued to slowly but surely increase in streams (which you would think would be a sign of an organic rise, but I digress), but like...it's been the #1 song globally since Day 10, how much more does it have to do for you to be satisfied that it's not all autoplay? Does it need to somehow reach #0? 

 

Quote

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.

It...literally did start off better "in America first and then spread to the rest of the globe" though?

 

Die With a Smile US Percentage of WW Streams

Week 1: 31.8%

Week 2: 27%

 

Plus, when we compare it to other major Gaga releases in the streaming era, it doesn't stand out as an outlier and in fact even further supports the tweet's theory since it did better in the US the first two weeks comparatively while starting to make its mark internationally. (These numbers also disprove the tweet's US to global ratios, but again, I digress.)

 

US Percentage of WW Streams: Week 1

Shallow: 35.6%

Die With a Smile: 31.8%

The Cure: 31.3%

Stupid Love: 30.7%

Rain On Me: 27.5%

 

US Percentage of WW Streams: Week 2

Shallow: 37.3%

The Cure: 32.1%

Die With a Smile: 27%

Stupid Love: 25%

Rain On Me: 22.4%

 

It's also worth noting that these types of ballads (and even some midtempo songs) from artists from the West have tended to have a significant market in SEA over the past few years, so relegating the song's success there to just "autoplay!!1!" is laughable at best and bordering problematic at worst. (Implying users there are too poor to afford the paid version of Spotify? )

 

Quote

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.

You said it yourself: this point is subjective. It's clear the OP doesn't like Gaga, so it's obvious their algorithms won't push things involving her as much as they would to others who are more fond of her, where the song is indeed making a mark on social media.

 

_____

 

In conclusion, is the song using autoplay? Possibly, but if it is, it's simply padding whatever success it's organically having and to relegate that success to autoplay and autoplay alone is just...asinine. There's a reason it's doing incredibly well across literally all music consumption platforms, something that primarily autoplayed "hits" (think of Sabrina's Nonsense and some of Dua's recent singles) struggle to accomplish.

[Lunick]

I clicked on the thread to see if it was started by Kukai

[Just a Gay on ATRL]

11.1 million streams in 1 day for the faux-hit. More like foe hit because the song is a foe against flopping!

 

[Fanta]

if all it takes is auto play to get a hit why didn't katy just do that for woman's world… not even just katy but literally everyone. 

[Starkboy]

??
 

I genuinely believe stans world is just full of dummies at this point.

[ThePopStop]

It's a great song for a movie soundtrack but that's about it. It's a very safe, standard sound from both artists. But it's not sad enough to draw you back to it (like Shallow or I'll Never Love Again) and it's not catchy enough to get stuck in your head.

 

I listened to it twice and that's all I need. Hearing it more won't bother me, but it won't really satisfy me either. 

[Mr. Loco]

On 9/4/2024 at 5:12 PM, Jay07 said:

She is the biggest artist on Capitol and clearly the label was banking huge on her comeback. If Sabrina's label can (allegedly) spare the coin for someone who used to be c list before Espresso, surely Katy's label can do the same for a superstar.

 

This is all coping. If autoplay is used, it's just a tool, a song can't catch on if people don't like it.

Sabrina's song had good reception, unlike Katy's which was universally panned by everyone. It's less risky for her laber to invest their money on an unknown artist than her.

Edited September 6 by Mr. Loco

[Bethenny Frankel]

what even are these former Kats doing? and yes I say former because there's nothing but air to stan there. leave gaga alone with her global smash go back to the fantasy cotton candy land your fave used to exist in.

[Polgg48]

it's bruno mars song all along with him being generous after all, beyonce, taylor, ariana, sabrina, post malone would have been #1 by now

 

[Soda Pop Queen]

Quote

carried out by a Swiftie on why it's an auto-played hit 

 

[jijie101]

47 minutes ago, Polgg48 said:

it's bruno mars song all along with him being generous after all, beyonce, taylor, ariana, sabrina, post malone would have been #1 by now

 

The song has 11M daily streams after 3 weeks, none of those names you mentioned has achieved this in their entire careers, collab or solo,  stop trolling.

Edited September 6 by jijie101

[Pillz]

I haven't heard it yet lol

[truthteller]

oooh kukai you have some tough competitions