Isn’t this just making the charts up? There’s no way we’d know what they’d look like.

 

I’d argue that Westlife would have potentially been more prominent. They certainly wouldn’t peak in week one and all the crazy fans would stream them for weeks on end. Pretty much the same way they do with their modern equivalent, Ed Sheeran.

What is wrong with "making it up" it's just an idea of what people think would have happened of course it's made up because we can never know.

 

Flip the scenario if streaming had never existed and it was still sales Kylie would be celebrating 4 weeks at No.1 not trying desperately to reach the Top 10.

Spotify doesn't support AOR music and doesn't support boybands, so definitely Westlife wouldn't have been supported

It's like Hello My Love a few years back peaked at #13 only, back in the day it would have been an easy #1

Spotify have definitely given 5SOS and The Vamps support, notably with Youngblood and All Night (fairly sure at least a couple more 5SOS songs got added to HHUK too), and 1D did well on streaming with their final couple of eras (most of Made in the A.M. made the top 100 singles chart). There aren't really any boybands about at the moment, that's all it is, so I don't think you can simply say they don't support boybands and therefore wouldn't have supported Westlife at their prime. It's like saying Spotify doesn't support mixed pop groups and therefore wouldn't have backed Steps at their peak... but who is there to compare it to now?

Flip the scenario if streaming had never existed and it was still sales Kylie would be celebrating 4 weeks at No.1 not trying desperately to reach the Top 10.

You’re assuming there that nobody who streams would purchase a track if streaming didn’t exist, which is a very flawed logic given many more people did purchase songs when streaming didn’t exist. If anything it could possibly have a detrimental effect because other songs would potentially benefit more from having sales instead of just fractions of a sale per person.

Some form of AI consumption is bound to replace streaming in next 10 years - can’t wait to see how that shakes up the charts.