Do you think Billboard should address double-counting?

Why should songs that are already counted toward a single/track-equivalent sale also contribute toward an album-equivalent sale?

I think if a song is released as a single, its points should count toward the Hot 100, while the album tracks should count toward the Billboard 200.

Alternatively, Billboard could require labels to create a separate EP for each single. Streams from the single's EP would count toward the Hot 100, while streams from the full album would count toward the Billboard 200.

This could help prevent album bombs on launch day.

P.S. If numbers stans are so inclined to make album tracks chart, just purchase them individually on iTunes! Only streaming would be tweaked. You can still game the system with mass buying (which you're already doing anyway) so you can still collect meaningless Top 10s like candy. But at least it's a real sale!

Edited 5 hours ago5 hr by Carbohydrates

Do you want the non-Taylor pop girls to have even worse charting and sales?!

No. You’re essentially advocating for a singles only chart and that would only lead to a greater disconnect between what’s charting and what’s actually popular. Album tracks are popular and charts should reflect that

they should address radio and those recurrent rules

They should follow the Uk rules, the top streamed songs don't count towards album charts

I think reverting the albums chart to sales only would do a better job achieving what codes to you as fair under this argument centered around "double counting." The individual songs are being streamed. It would make more logical sense to count those streams for the songs themselves and the actual sales for the albums. I don't think anyone wants that aside from maybe Swifties lol.

Alternatively, Billboard could adopt similar rules to the UK and limit the number of songs that can chart. I don't think that's a bad idea, but if Billboard ever curated to that level I'd hope they'd separate the holiday songs chart, too.

Edited 8 hours ago8 hr by DevilsRollTheDice

no, they do that here and it means some 90s rock band no one can remember gets to #1 every week from physical sales and then drops off the chart the week afterwards, it sounds good but it doesn't work well

Edited 8 hours ago8 hr by makeawish

15 minutes ago, DonnaSpring said:

They should follow the Uk rules, the top streamed songs don't count towards album charts

but then again, aren't charts suppose to reflect what's actually popular at the moment?

it's like making a song go recurrent despite it still being among the top consumed songs.

I feel like it will just make make albums feel smaller than they are.

2 minutes ago, Sailor Moon said:

but then again, aren't charts suppose to reflect what's actually popular at the moment?

it's like making a song go recurrent despite it still being among the top consumed songs.

I feel like it will just make make albums feel smaller than they are.

But a song having popular singles when no one is listening or buying the album is not reflective in the album chart. For exmaple no one was buying or streaming Bebe rexahs album that she tagged im good (blue) onto

2 minutes ago, DonnaSpring said:

But a song having popular singles when no one is listening or buying the album is not reflective in the album chart. For exmaple no one was buying or streaming Bebe rexahs album that she tagged im good (blue) onto

Right, but this isn't much different from the 90's when you'd have to buy an album to listen to the one or two hit songs you knew on the album if they didn't print a single for them. There's a lot of historical album inflation on the charts that were worse than what we have now in that sense.

3 minutes ago, DonnaSpring said:

But a song having popular singles when no one is listening or buying the album is not reflective in the album chart. For exmaple no one was buying or streaming Bebe rexahs album that she tagged im good (blue) onto

The problem is that both versions of this happen. Some albums benefit heavily from tacking on an emergency hit and appear bigger than they are. Other albums like Olivia's have many genuinely popular nonsingles and people are consuming the entire album on streaming.

It's kinda impossible to "fix." You could toss out the most popular singles from counting for the albums chart but I don't think that is necessarily fair either.

6 minutes ago, Flames2Embers said:

Right, but this isn't much different from the 90's when you'd have to buy an album to listen to the one or two hit songs you knew on the album if they didn't print a single for them. There's a lot of historical album inflation on the charts that were worse than what we have now in that sense.

This is a great point.

Edited 7 hours ago7 hr by DevilsRollTheDice

There are so many issues with Billboard and its charts and it is definitely one of them. The way album "sales" are boosted is ridiculous

Alternatively, Billboard could require labels to create a separate EP for each single. Streams from the single's EP would count toward the Hot 100, while streams from the full album would count toward the Billboard 200.

This would be stupid, because it would make more album eras be DOA. Average Joe or Sally will just put the album on when it's out, and every post-album single would suffer because why would I want to touch a seperate EP as a casual listener? And I doubt casual listeners would care much about B-sides.

You could argue they put the 'single' or 'ep' version on playlists but wouldn't that also mean that a random song that catches on in the US market, needs to get a random digital/streaming EP release to chart, despite the 'album' version doing numbers. It would create such a weird trajectory.

I think if a song is released as a single, its points should count toward the Hot 100, while the album tracks should count toward the Billboard 200.

Wouldn't that just push labels to add 5 extra fillers to an album. Which in the end will benefit artists with big fanbases and will leave smaller artists in the dust because what if you have a breakthrough era and release 6 singles of a 10 track album? Wouldn't that mean that you potentially could have 6 top 10 hit songs but your album is nowhere to be found, because those 4 songs left need to carry an album run?

Or do you suggest that if a single run is over and the song leaves the chart it can count to the album again? Because that would mean you force acts/labels to push one big main single and have other singles that are manipulated to chart 1 or 2 weeks, with a high peak, so the album can stay afloat.

• I honestly don't think there is a fair or honest way to make the charts work. There will always be a loophole to manipulate them

Edited 7 hours ago7 hr by J-esper

No, why? Anything that contributes to the consumption of an album should be recorded or counted for it's performance. Not sure why it wouldn't

Disregarding A-listers with fantastic streams and sales, the average breakthrough artists would be lucky to have 1 or 2 songs charting in the H100, and if you separate singles from album charts, these artists would have even worse album stats, which is probably the most important criteria for record companies to assess if the artists are worth investing in.

If everyone is playing by the same rules and the chart ranks do not change, why does it matter if people game the system? Do you really want to see 30k sales topping the album chart so bad? Remember the BB200 is focused on number of units, while H100 only really focus on the rankings.

This thread proving why Billboard doesn't have a magic wand to fix the things people perceive to be wrong with the charts.

The way y'all can already get everything you want just by looking at the companion charts. Care about streaming? Look at those charts. Care about sales? There's a chart for that.

I feel the subtext in many of these threads/posts is Billboard needs to find a way to slow Taylor Swift specifically down. Unfortunately for OTHs she is the primary beneficiary of nearly any rule change. Her consumption across every metric is disproportionately huge. Trying to get her would hurt the other MPGs much worse with any change.

Edited 7 hours ago7 hr by DevilsRollTheDice

Just a thought, What if the the total streams of the least streamed track of an album should be considered as the album's final/definitive streams?

An album is a body of work and should be consumed as a whole.

If you really want to avoid double counting while still taking into consideration streams for the albums (which I think is definitely mandatory in this day and age, a pure sales-only chart wouldn't mean anything), then you'd have to:

• take the streams of the least streamed track on an album -> multiply those streams by the number of tracks -> count that as SEA units for the album

• remove the streams from the least streamed track on an album from the other tracks -> the remaining streams count towards the units for the songs

Of course, that's far from perfect too so I don't think that would work. An album as a whole can be immensely popular and still have 1 song that people in general don't like. That's forcing the trait but imagine a 10 track album has 9 songs with 1B streams and 1 song with 100M. I don't think it makes sense to only count 100M*10=1B streams total for the album.

I just simply don't think there's a way to avoid the double counting without putting an extremely convoluted rule in place.

They absolutely should bc it makes no sense for 1 song to carry an entire album and be its own separate entity as a single at the same time.

An album should only be streamed as many times as its lowest-streamed song. Ofc exceptions could be made for interludes, skits, etc but that should be the logic in general.

If an album contains 10 songs, 1 of them getting 5 million streams per week, 8 of them 1 million and 1 of them 500k then I'm sorry but the album in its entirety has only been streamed 500k times and that's what should be counted for the album chart. Excess streams for each of the tracks should be counted as points for each of them toward the singles chart.

2 hours ago, Flames2Embers said:

Right, but this isn't much different from the 90's when you'd have to buy an album to listen to the one or two hit songs you knew on the album if they didn't print a single for them. There's a lot of historical album inflation on the charts that were worse than what we have now in that sense.

But they still bought the album when they could have just bought the single

If people did this then the single chart position would be harmed so it was a win / loose situation

Not you are double counting helping single and album by just confusing the single

The elephant in the room is that the LP is a dead format outside of enthusiasts and stans (and sometimes as gifts for a small selection of artists during select holidays).

No amount of tweaking the chart rules will change that reality.

If the stans are so inclined to make album tracks chart, just purchase them individually on iTunes! Only streaming should be tweaked. You can still game the system with mass buying (which you're already doing anyway).

I don't have an issue with this on the respective charts. However I have an issue with then how they use both charts to determine "Artists of the year". It generally does not reflect the biggest artists but rather who had big singles due to the aforementioned double counting.

21 minutes ago, DonnaSpring said:

But they still bought the album when they could have just bought the single

If people did this then the single chart position would be harmed so it was a win / loose situation

Not you are double counting helping single and album by just confusing the single

I understand there's a bigger conversation you're getting at, with this comment, but I'm specifically talking about my comment back to your original thought about how singles now-a-days are inflating the album's perceived consumption.

My point was about the practice of not releasing the physicals of a song until months after radio play peaked to get the album sale for those who wanted to hear the single. This was very commonplace in the 90's and early 2000's before digital sales launched. Many songs you think are bonfide smashes have whack hot 100 chart runs because the inverse was happening. My point being that the billboard 200's charting has almost always been flawed, it's just taken different forms over the years. It was extremely commonplace back then to have 2 killer songs and 10 filler tracks that were not of comparable quality. For bands or artists who didn't have physicals immediately, the fans bought the album for the one song, and it would boost the albums placement, that's akin to the one song is immensely popular, thus the album moves some units phenomenon we have today.