Xiivi

Yeah Happier will have a hard time hitting #1 now. It will need some real longevity (see GLY waiting forever and just outlasting IMF) to have a shot.

Yeah it's looking like it's going to need to "sneak in" a week somewhere or just end up blocked by newer releases.

I want Happier to go #1 but Without Me is coming kind of fast. Hopefully Happier can sneak in a week at #1 before Without Me (or even something else) takes over.

Even though it's "weak" in terms of points; GLY is holding up well enough to block plenty of other songs to #2 peaks it looks like. Just goes to show, if a #1 has a low amount of chart points, it doesn't necessarily mean that the #1 was weak; just that the general environment at the time was fairly low consumption in the general market.

Thank you for the number crunching work you do. The work you do on your predictions is appreciated. I don’t expect high accuracy, but to get a good guage on where things are going. If the numbers have become too unpredictable due to lack of publicly available data, then I don’t blame you for finding a better use of your time.

Streaming KING! Happy to see the record finally broken & with a great song.

Drake dethroning Baauer. Talent wins.

Requests: Linkin Park Flo Rida Black Eyed Peas George Michael Jason Aldean Tim McGraw Timbaland Drake Lil Wayne

Oh well, two months at #1 ain’t bad. Another 8 week #1 for Drake it is!

I honestly came into this thread expecting the Wendy's Twitter account to have made some kind of chart ranking and put their own album at #1 with Drake's at #2.

I was just about to say the same thing. I remember everyone thinking the girl with Flo Rida in the video was Kesha and then being shocked once Tik Tok rolled around.

Good decision. Sorry, if your genre isn’t popular on streaming right now, then it isn’t popular overall and the Hot 100 will reflect that. Now if we can nuke airplay while we’re at it....

This is a massive chart event honestly. Props to Drake further cementing himself as a musical legend. 20+ years from now people will look back and wonder how he managed to be so dominant much like how people now look back on The Beatles, MJ, etc...

Good song, good video. Trump's America was not ready.

Great total. Easily one of the biggest album weeks of the year. Congrats to Drake.

Glad to be a part of the monumental event! *Streams the album again*

I've liked a few of the 5SOS tracks so I don't mind them snatching the #1 even though I like Beyonce more. Xtina got really good numbers considering her prior numbers overall break from releasing music.

Chart creation operated for decades on the "idea" of what a chart should look like. It's logistically appealing to assuming that songs start low, move up at a certain pace, reach a plateau, and then move down at a certain pace. People don't like the reality that the collective listening of an entire country is prone to swings/viral trends/etc... The truth is, when something makes it big, it comes in with a bang a lot of the time. It might also stay very popular for a long time; or it could end up fading really quickly. People also don't like the idea that a song that was the most popular in a single given week; might not even be one of the top one hundred most popular songs from the entire year. The reality is that that is indeed how things work in the real world. For every song that gets the bulk of its popularity in a single week there is another that spreads its popularity evenly over five months. A song that is super popular is likely to be super popular for a long time. There are always exceptions to the rule; but the rule is that for the most part the biggest of the big hits will linger at the top forever and that plenty of big splashes will be one-week-wonders. Everyone is listening to Drake's album the week it comes out. Everyone is listening to Kanye's album the week it comes out. Etc... So yeah; during that one single week the collective of America is listening to a bunch of random album tracks at the same time and those make big splashes. After that, people will be busy with the next new album the following week; and while a majority will revisit the album, they won't be doing so in the same week so the songs won't ever be that popular again with the US as a whole in a single week.

I'm wondering if there was a formula change this week. Congrats to all the acts that broke through into the Top 10 regardless. Lots of new songs and healthy movement.

Not an easy accomplishment; congrats.

Are you seriously asking "Where's the longevity?" in regards to two songs that spent 52 weeks on the chart each...? It's okay if you don't like Imagine Dragons; I don't care about either of the two songs in question myself. But trying to say that having two songs peak in the Top 5 with a full year on the chart each and their next single creeping up on the Top 10 somehow isn't "hit after hit" just makes you look petty.

Yeah I agree. People have this notion in their heads that music is a slow-burner type of thing as the norm when it comes to popularity. While that does happen; I would say those types of slow creeping songs are exceptions and not the rule. The norm tends to be more that songs start off with a big splash and then either stabilize or falter out quickly. As we get more data into people's listening habits, they're much more likely to get addicted to a song that's new in their playlists and it quickly becomes their favourite current song and takes a while to burn out. It's less likely for someone to have a song they only kinda like and then sorta like and then like and then really like. Even for a song that you maybe don't like at first; once it does click you usually end up getting addicted to it quickly. If you only just like listening to a song every now and then, it'll most likely stay that way for most songs you listen to. Your favourite songs move past that stage quickly.

Animals Sugar In Your Pocket

That’s more if Billboard being inconsistent than anything. Well, that and they often will default to whatever a particular label requests. Separate note: this article was really a nice read on the history of ‘features’. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2015/07/the_history_of_featured_rappers_and_other_featured_artists_in_pop_songs.html

Yeah, I’m pretty sure Billboard specifically mentioned that ‘w.’/‘&’ count as leading acts and that ‘ft.’/some-obscure-accreditation-I-forget count as non-leading acts. Song - Artist A Artist A gets 100% Song - Artist A & Artist B Artist A & Artist B get 50% each Song - Artist A ft. Artist B Artist A gets 70%, Artist B gets 30% Song - Artist A w. Artist B ft. Artist C, Artist D Artist A & Artist B get 35% each (Half of the 70% that goes to the leads); Artist C & Artist D get 15% each (Half of the 30% that goes to the non-leads). I can’t say for certain but I think ‘v.’ counts as a leading act. Also because Billboard’s website is awful at handling when the switch happens between a remix of a song, some weeks are displayed incorrectly. For example when a song is remixed they might be lazy and display ALL weeks as ‘X ft Y (Remix)’ even though in the previous weeks it was just X and that’s the only person who gets points for that week. I’d say print trumps digital when it comes to trying to evaluate accreditation on particular weeks for songs that had remixes released later in runs; but there are some situations where it’ll be wrong when something retroactively removed credit. (See Flo Rida’s Tik Tok as the obvious example with Ke$ha’s credit getting removed by request.)