That's the thing though, Thrift Shop is MILES ahead on airplay and sold over 400,000+ downloads this week, the only format Harlem Shake beat it on was YouTube views. They've got their ratio's all out imo.

Agree with everything you've said, I could deal with YouTube counting towards the chart were the weighting not insane. I mean it's not even like 'Thrift Shop' does poorly on YouTube, I can't imagine how much YouTube must count towards the chart for 'Harlem Shake' to have come out on top.

Quite disappointed with Ed Sheeran's massive drop, Olly's rather meager climb and 1D's low debut. Are Billboard sales Tue-Mon? That probably then would explain why Ed climbed last week (Grammy effect), and 1D had what? 2 days' sales to debut at 45?

 

Also why is Ed Sheeran's "Give me love" bubbling under when he's promoting "Lego house"? Sounds like another Kylie 2003 era ("Slow" versus "Red blooded woman")!

Oh, I just realised this might give Adele a reason to get off her arse and film music videos again!

I think they count all video streams as long as the music is original. That'd explain the huge jump by Drake I believe. There is no official video by record company on Youtube AFAIK.

 

Of course covers are not included. So me singing Thrift Shop wouldn't help.

Edited February 21, 201312 yr by SKOB

So this means... I could just go onto a US proxy, mass-click on a song and it might chart? I sure hope not.

I think they count all video streams as long as the music is original. That'd explain the huge jump by Drake I believe. There is no official video by record company on Youtube AFAIK.

If this is in reply to me then I know that, obviously. That doesn't mean releasing a music video (and one worth watching at that) isn't still a huge advantage on the chart, especially with the new formulation. Lyric videos don't draw in the viewers quite like official videos.

Edited February 21, 201312 yr by Umi

is 'authorized audio' the original track?

I think authorized audio is the one which the user payed for. So homemade videos, which utilize the original song won't count (actually it would soooo stupid anyway).

The Billboard article says that 'Harlem Shake' has three and a half times the chart points that 'Thrift Shop' has. This is with a 150k sales disadvantage and almost nonexistent airplay compared to very high airplay for 'Thrift Shop' (plus 'Thrift Shop' has been setting new records for 'on-demand streaming' every week for at least a month). YouTube streaming seems to be weighted even more ridiculously heavily than it looks. :mellow:

 

'Harlem Shake' in for a long haul at #1.

Edited February 21, 201312 yr by Bré

Utterly ludicrous. It looks as if the US will have about 10 #1's a year from now on, all the big Youtube sensations. Might squeeze in a fanbase #1 from Bieber, 1D or Taylor if we're lucky!

Great to see Krewella already in the Hot 100 despite not quite making it to the iTunes top 100 yet (but will do very soon I'm sure!) :wub:

I think we've all established that Billboard is full of shit when it comes to their methods of calculating the chart. Anything that outweighs sales in a chart is just WRONG.

 

Although that said, they should've implanted this rule back in 2012 summer! This would've given Gangnam Style a #1 on Billboard for literally 7-8 weeks+!

Utterly ludicrous. It looks as if the US will have about 10 #1's a year from now on, all the big Youtube sensations. Might squeeze in a fanbase #1 from Bieber, 1D or Taylor if we're lucky!

We'd be lucky to see ten if the formula stays as it is. Are the Harlem Shake videos even getting that many YouTube views? I know it's a huge craze etc etc but to get as many points as it currently is it should be needing to get hundreds of millions of views per week. I don't like this one bit, the Hot 100 is usually fun to follow for me but I don't think I can ever respect it again if it's basically the YouTube Top 100.

The reason Harlem Shake has so many streams is because there's like a million videos of it, and people in a 10 minute break can watch like 20 of them.

 

Gangnam Style would not have had such extreme streaming points like this, because it was mainly just the one video of it being watched.

 

Billboard have probably been preparing to include Youtube in the Hot 100 for a while now (I think this was hinted at when they began published the Streaming chart, when they already had the On-Demand chart which was almost exactly the same, I had a suspicion there'd be more to it). I don't think they anticipated a situation like this though, where there'd be a huge number of viral videos of the same song. Usually it's just one main video and a few parodies of it. Even Gangnam Style probably never got anywhere close to 100 million Youtube streams in a week.

 

And I think this will actually increase the turnover of #1s there. The way it was looking before, it seemed there'd be 10 or less #1s this year (Thrift Shop would've been #1 until April for sure). But now there'll be songs that have big climbs to #1 on the video release week and then big drops after. People in the US might finally get to experience a "non-#1"! :lol:

 

But I can see some songs hanging around in the #30-#50 region for an eternity before they go recurrent.

Edited February 22, 201312 yr by Eric_Blob

If it got 35 million views in one week in the US, then yes. And I think Friday by Rebecca Black should've got #1, since it was definitely one of the most popular songs at the time.

 

I wonder what major record labels think about this lol. I think they lose quite a lot of power over the charts, but there's still ways they can get more control of Youtube like they've done with radio, and I'm sure they'll try.

It was popular, but if people wanted it, they would have downloaded it from iTunes. The video was mainly (like 95% of the time) being passed around like "OMG. This is SO shit, but the video is hilarious!1211!1!" or "WHAT THE HELL?!". Every OFFICIAL chart that is published, should be PURELY sales. Nothing else. If they want a "combined chart", do that on the side like the "Download Chart" or make an "Airplay Chart"/"Streaming Chart" or something. Or at the VERY least sales should count for 80% of the chart with the other 20% being shared out and ONLY INCLUDE Official Artist Channels, that are over 2 minutes long or something.

 

It's ridiculous counting every single view of the 30 second clips of 'Harlem Shake'. It's not very fair really.

The Hot 100 is a popularity chart, and a sales only chart isn't very good at measuring popularity to be honest. Billboard's methodology isn't perfect, but it's certainly better than sales only imo. They have the digital songs chart if anybody wants to see a sales only chart.

 

The UK's chart doesn't measure the popularity of songs very well, but that's okay, since it's not meant to. It's just to measure sales, nothing more than that. That Avicii song was not the most popular song in the UK last week. I heard it more last September than I did last week lol.

 

The main improvements Billboard needs to make imo is to make radio count for less in the Hot 100 (or just completely exclude top 40 radio, only keep the genre-specific stations (e.g. country, alternative, rhythmic, adult contemporary etc.)) and weigh the streaming, so that if you listen to 30 seconds of a song it counts for less than listening to the full song.

 

Very few people legally download. If you only include sales in what you want to be a popularity chart, you're excluding most music listeners. It might be okay if the people who legally download were spread equally over all demographics, but we all know that's not the case (compare the digital chart to the On-Demand chart for proof of this).

Edited February 22, 201312 yr by Eric_Blob

The Hot 100 is a popularity chart, and a sales only chart isn't very good at measuring popularity to be honest. Billboard's methodology isn't perfect, but it's certainly better than sales only imo. They have the digital songs chart if anybody wants to see a sales only chart.

 

+1

 

People in the US might finally get to experience a "non-#1"! :lol:

 

Speaking of Hot 100, there have been loads of those, not very recently though.

 

For example Do I Make You Proud by an Idol winner whose name escapes me (toolazytogoogle)

Edited February 22, 201312 yr by SKOB

The only good thing about this weeks chart is that it's managed to speed up the chart (a lot). Without the YouTube streaming being added, Rihanna 'Stay' and even 'Harlem Shake' would've definitely not made the top 10 this week. Possibly taking several weeks to get there instead.

 

I guess these different methods will never please everyone. The US charts have been so painfully static almost every week particularly the last half of 2012. Seeing Baauer crash in a #1 is a welcome change even if people don't agree with why it's achieved it. That said, even I think it's too far fetched to be adding streams of these 30 second viral videos as a "sale" towards the chart. An iTunes preview lasts longer, and I'm sure they don't count iTunes previews towards the chart (just a comparison I'm making here :P ).

 

It's a weird one, I'm not really sure what to make of it. Let's see if next weeks top 10 are all non movers.

I am LOVING the fact that Billboard have lost their marbles and decided to discredit their chart even more than it already was.

 

Absolute joke of a chart frankly (and has been for some time), hopefully soon to be completely binned for good as it has no point to it whatsoever and is completely irrelevant to most people (except chart geeks). Especially between 2003 and 2006 when it was heavily BIASED to airplay over anything else, which rendered a lot of the chart positions of popular pop/rock hits of the time completely meaningless.

Edited February 22, 201312 yr by Doctor Blind

I am LOVING the fact that Billboard have lost their marbles and decided to discredit their chart even more than it already was.

 

Absolute joke of a chart frankly (and has been for some time), hopefully soon to be completely binned for good as it has no point to it whatsoever and is completely irrelevant to most people (except chart geeks). Especially between 2003 and 2006 when it was heavily BIASED to airplay over anything else, which rendered a lot of the chart positions of popular pop/rock hits of the time completely meaningless.

 

Case in point Britney Spears's "Toxic" which was a #1 hit in a lot of countries but only got to #9 on the Hot 100