Haha that's me who wrote that. Haven't thought about it in a while. It's kind of interesting to see a snapshot of those numbers, now it's 59 million on YouTube & 360 million on Spotify.

 

Oh what! :lol: I had no idea, thanks Australian chart archives :P

 

Nice to see Alice Merton reach a new peak, not that it’ll stop people complaining it’s flopping though ;)

George Ezra to re-enter above his previous peak with Shotgun? :o

Seems incredibly likely at this point. It'll probably be another top 10 for him eventually too.

 

Anyway it's good to see Jess Glynne, M-22, Juice WRLD, Arlissa and Loud Luxury getting new peaks today. Summer Hits UK really doing wonders for M-22, Arlissa and Loud Luxury anyway, could perhaps push M-22 into the top 20 officially and maybe the Arlissa song can finally become a hit? I'd also very much welcome Loud Luxury doing something, it sounds like a big summer dance smash. Hopefully Juice WRLD 'Lucid Dreams' goes top 50 soon too as it's one of the better urban/trap songs of the moment.

I always figured Body sounded like a huge smash but I didn't think it had a chance!! Hot Hits add plsss so it can actually take off

Oh I was wondering why Arlissa was suddenly making moves almost 6 months after release. Hope it smashes :wub: :wub:

Because like I said, there is at least an element of choice and a decision making process there. A large chunk of streams being based on placings on a curated playlist isn't quite the same. It's like a chart rules by zombies at the command and direction of Spotify.

 

Absolutely. Whatever tricks the labels pulled to get publicity, it always ended with a punter choosing to make the sale. That's a much bigger decision than the song being played and you not bothering to skip it. Streaming figures are only slightly more meaningful than airplay.

That Joel Adams situation will always puzzle me. They didn't even service the song to UK radio, and there was no follow-up or promotion. But somebody went to a lot of effort to get that song on Hot Hits UK for 4 months solid. Why?

Please Don't Go seemed to serve more as a promotional tool for the independent label he was signed to - after Please Don't Go was a hit, there was a lot of promotion for the label itself via his social media accounts. Some of the posts even included #onehitwonder :lol: it's all very odd as Joel is a good musician and fab songwriter going by the songs he performed live, it's weird they didn't even bother with a second single and just push it onto Hot Hits again.

Good to see 'Shotgun' taking off now, it's another good tune from him, will be impressive if he matches the 2 top 10s he got from his debut album!

wow today someone showed me how the free-spotify for phones works and it's really worst that I ever imagined

I knew there was a random function, so if you're on a playlist like hothits you cannot choose, you have to listen randomly

but I always imagined randomly meant that it was gonna play track 11 then track 66 then track 22 then track 47

but actually it goes 1,3,2,5,4,6,10,8, so basically it plays the songs in order with a slight reshuffle,

so that really favours the first songs on the list cos all these people having free spotify on the phone are hardly ever reach song 66 or song 70

wow today someone showed me how the free-spotify for phones works and it's really worst that I ever imagined

I knew there was a random function, so if you're on a playlist like hothits you cannot choose, you have to listen randomly

but I always imagined randomly meant that it was gonna play track 11 then track 66 then track 22 then track 47

but actually it goes 1,3,2,5,4,6,10,8, so basically it plays the songs in order with a slight reshuffle,

so that really favours the first songs on the list cos all these people having free spotify on the phone are hardly ever reach song 66 or song 70

 

 

Yeah, do you know what I saw this recently too and even though I’ve been against this argument before, I do think streams from green accounts from the phone should not count towards the chart as you can’t search and select individual songs at all, you have no choice but to listen to playlists, just like listening to the radio.

personally I think the OCC should adopt a similar chart rule to the one Billboard are about to have, where 'free' streams count for less than 'premium' streams, as I believe more revenue is generated from a premium stream than a free, ad-supported one.

agree if free-account people on the phone cannot even search and listen to a song they want, they shouldn't count at all

like my friend wanted to listen to Solo in the hothits playlist and had to wait like 1 hour til it randomly came up, so before that we listened to the first20 tracks, slightly reshuffled but no choice at all

 

Looking likely that Years & Years could get a hit with ‘If You’re Over Me’! 💃🏻

Had no idea about that peculiar shuffle feature. Makes it difficult to imagine it's not entirely intentional as a way to bend the charts to their liking.

I honestly don't understand why Spotify bothers with its free mobile version. It's basically non-functional. (Especially bizarre when the free desktop version is, as far as I know, the same as the premium version but just with some ads). The fact that they advertise being able to skip an unlimited number of songs as a SELLING POINT for the premium version is pathetic.

5SOS has been stable for a while, hopefully it Impacts radio app.

Edited May 29, 20187 yr by WhoOdyssey

I honestly don't understand why Spotify bothers with its free mobile version. It's basically non-functional. (Especially bizarre when the free desktop version is, as far as I know, the same as the premium version but just with some ads). The fact that they advertise being able to skip an unlimited number of songs as a SELLING POINT for the premium version is pathetic.

 

It’s crazy how many people use the mobile version on a daily basis too! Like so many people I know just put on hot hits and hope a good song comes on next.

but if Billboard has changed the rules about free-spotify, maybe the OCC will follow?

That Joel Adams situation will always puzzle me. They didn't even service the song to UK radio, and there was no follow-up or promotion. But somebody went to a lot of effort to get that song on Hot Hits UK for 4 months solid. Why?

Someone surely went to a lot of effort to get it onto Today's Top Hits, the huge international playlist, but I wouldn't be surprised if it only ended up on Hot Hits UK because it was doing well internationally, which would explain not specifically servicing/promoting it in the UK. (Or it might just be that his independent label didn't have the connections/resources for radio.)

 

Doesn't explain the lack of follow-up though, of course. Interestingly, he's not the only artist with a 2016 Spotify hit who's yet to have a second song released: Nevada, of the tropical house cover 'The Mack', also has radio silence on his Spotify page (apart from remixes of Charli XCX and Liam Payne last year).

Had no idea about that peculiar shuffle feature. Makes it difficult to imagine it's not entirely intentional as a way to bend the charts to their liking.

At the same time though, it sounds to me like a feature that would be popular; if I were a Hot Hits listener, I'd probably want to hear the top songs first, not sit through Track 66 and hope 1 or 2 of my favourites come up within the next hour. (I didn't know this either though, thanks for reporting.)

wow today someone showed me how the free-spotify for phones works and it's really worst that I ever imagined

I knew there was a random function, so if you're on a playlist like hothits you cannot choose, you have to listen randomly

but I always imagined randomly meant that it was gonna play track 11 then track 66 then track 22 then track 47

but actually it goes 1,3,2,5,4,6,10,8, so basically it plays the songs in order with a slight reshuffle,

so that really favours the first songs on the list cos all these people having free spotify on the phone are hardly ever reach song 66 or song 70

Wow I didn't even know about that, I don't understand why anyone would even bother with that! Surely the OCC would have known about things like this and would have thought at some point maybe taking it into account as someone having no control over what they listen to and not being able to skip anything surely can't be counted as part of a 'sale'? (they should have asked questions like this before they started counting streaming as it's so much more complicated than a simple sale because someone bought it) I know some people are sick of streaming sceptics but they've really got to fix a lot in order to keep the chart about what the most popular songs are because if streaming keeps dominating even more then more songs will get higher because mobile users couldn't skip them despite not liking them and I don't see how anyone can really defend that.