Seeing Jade's fans disappointed that her new single hasn't been added to Hot Hits UK, made me interested to take a closer look at this impactful playlist. I wanted to find out to what extent it supports British artists, and the age of the songs included on it (i.e. how fresh is this playlist?).

• Of the 70 songs included, 20 of them are by UK artists (as the lead artist). That's 28.5% of the playlist.

• The newest UK artist song included is Sam Fender - 'Little Bit Closer', which came out 20th February (25 days ago). It's placed 60th out of 70 tracks.

• The oldest UK artist song included is technically Raye - 'Oscar Winning Tears.', from her February 2023 released album. However it became a single in November 2024. Currently in 64th position.

• Otherwise, the oldest song is BL3SS - 'Kisses', released on 22nd March 2024 (360 days ago). It's still as high as 32nd place.

• The average age of all the UK songs included is 26 weeks old (half a year).

• Although there's 20 songs, there's some repeat artists; there's 15 different artists.

So this is the level of support currently being afforded to UK artists, in a playlist geared towards UK listeners. Just one song that has been released within the last 4 weeks:

It should come as no surprise that there is more emphasis on the inclusion of USA artists in this playlist.

• 33 songs are USA artists as the lead artist, 47.1%. If we extend that to North America (so, including Canadian artists), it's 38 songs - 54.3%.

• There's relatively fresher songs included, with 9 of those 38 being released within the last month. The newest being Playboi Carti - 'RATHER LIE' (3 days) and Chappell Roan - 'The Giver' (4 days). These being the only songs added to the playlist this week ('The Giver' in 12th position, 'RATHER LIE' in 19th position).

Should "the UK's biggest playlist" be doing more to support UK based artists? I really think they should be, and it fascinates me why they're not. I don't think it's ever been more difficult for UK artists to do well (or consistently well) in the UK singles chart, in this age of streaming.

There could be a multitude of business related reasons why Spotify doesn't throw full support behind an artist such as Jade. It's a shame though, as well as frustrating and predictable, to realise that a new song is essentially dead on arrival because of Spotify's decision making. Also, the inevitably of knowing that the return of the Sugababes will get bare minimum support from Spotify, unlikely to ever be considered for inclusion on their top playlists, and therefore not chart.

From my perspective, Spotify also doesn't do much to throw support behind new(ish) artists - and if they do, it's often because of TikTok virality that has dictated that songs such as Messy end up getting heavily supported. The girl group FLO seemed to struggle to get to the stage of releasing their debut album, after spending a lot of time chasing a hit single that never came... and it ultimately resulted in a frontloaded album spending 1 week in the Top 100 (peaking at #3). I would connect the phenomenon of frontloaded albums, to artists not being able to break the glass ceiling of what it takes to achieve a long-running album (high streaming support across multiple songs).

Aside from the origin of the artists included, I have to wonder why this playlist is as stale as it is? Inclusions include: Nights Like This, Too Sweet, Kisses, Good Luck Babe, A Bar Song (Tipsy), I Had Some Help, Birds of a Feather, Apple, I Love You I'm Sorry, Somedays, Backbone, Diet Pepsi, Taste... what are they still doing here!! Hits for sure... but surely they've been and gone? No wonder the chart moves at a glacial pace and requires ACR to keep things artificially fresher looking.

Anyway... I'm interested if any of you have thoughts about this playlist specifically!

The current Hot Hits UK playlist. "Release date" is album release dates in some cases.

Excellent post, Jay!

I do think Hot Hits has less of an impact than it used to but is still very instrumental in giving UK artists a leg up and more of a chance to do well on Spotify. I think Tik Tok and the fact Spotify is not geo-locked like Apple Music makes things very hard for UK artists, as the biggest playlist is very USA-centric (todays top hits).

So it baffles me that given it’s one place that can give UK talent a bit of a chance that they consistently undermine UK artists like they have with Jade ever since Angel of my Dreams. You’d think Hot Hits UK would want to give a leg up to artists like this.

Edited March 17Mar 17 by 365

Spotify is a business and for the most part, labels end up having some form of cross country marketing budget for these playlists. If a label pays enough, they’ll get support.

I think the U.K. version of Hot Hits is especially rubbish but I also don’t believe an artist needs it to get a hit.

At the end of the day does the playlist really affect that much? While yes it wouldn't harm an artist at all to receive greater promotion, but being high up on a playlist/on a playlist at all doesn't really make or break a song's chart presence to the extent it once did. If it did we would have Nice To Meet You much higher than it's current position of 59! You can blame Spotify for Jade's chart performance all you want (to clarify I'm not anti-Jade at all) but at the end of the day it's the people who make the chart, and those people don't rely on curated playlists much.

Edited March 17Mar 17 by gasman449

This is a good topic and thread to discuss! For me personally like mentioned that annoys me is the staleness of some of the songs on there, that have been and gone in the charts ages ago but they still linger around on the playlist. I’d like to see it update more often and show a bit more freshness with new music etc that comes out, rather than the staleness that seems to stay on the playlist for an eternity. Getting added to the playlist is a good starter to potentially becoming a hit (not always but it gives it a better chance).

Just now, LiamSime said:

This is a good topic and thread to discuss! For me personally like mentioned that annoys me is the staleness of some of the songs on there, that have been and gone in the charts ages ago but they still linger around on the playlist. I’d like to see it update more often and show a bit more freshness with new music etc that comes out, rather than the staleness that seems to stay on the playlist for an eternity. Getting added to the playlist is a good starter to potentially becoming a hit (not always but it gives it a better chance).

This is where I stand. Yes we can be obtuse and say there’s many other ways to get hits, the fact the playlist doesn’t always help etc. all of these things are correct but the main detail is that it is such a simple way to give songs a chance.

4 minutes ago, gasman449 said:

At the end of the day does the playlist really affect that much? While yes it wouldn't harm an artist at all to receive greater promotion being high up on a playlist/on a playlist at all doesn't really make or break a song's chart presence to the extent it once did. If it did we would have Nice To Meet would be much higher than it's current position of 59! You can blame Spotify for Jade's chart performance all you want (to clarify I'm not anti-Jade at all) but at the end of the day it's the people who make the chart, and those people don't rely on curated playlists much.

I feel like it would to an extent, as the most followed playlist targeted at the UK - it has almost 3.1m saves. Although as Joe says, Today's Top Hits likely has a larger effect (35.2m), and is very much North American artist heavy.

Although I assume we don't have the concrete evidence either way, I'd be surprised if "people don't rely on curated playlists much" rings true.

Also unless I'm misunderstanding you, Nice to Meet You is at #10 in the singles chart? Making it the highest placed British artist song in the chart currently! (Edit: Realised that #59 = in the Spotify chart!)

Just now, -Jay- said:

Also unless I'm misunderstanding you, Nice to Meet You is at #10 in the singles chart? Making it the highest placed British artist song in the chart currently!

Ah sorry I should've clarified I meant the song was at 59 on Spotify yesterday. The official position would be down to other platforms/loads of songs above it on ACR I'm sure.

From what I've seen, people are most likely to use curated playlists on Amazon music (when they say "Alexa play music" that's what it would default to) whereas on Spotify more people tend to seek things out on their own/make their own playlists rather than be told what to listen to and that is reflected in what is popular on the platform. I personally believe the impact of Spotify playlists on the charts has seriously gotten smaller, I'm not saying they aren't used widely as they clearly are, they are just not the massive hitmakers people are making them out to be and less prevalent compared to the past/other streaming platforms. It's the same reason I don't think New Music Friday really does anything either and that gets overhyped.

Thanks for making this thread anyway, the topic of curated playlists has always stuck out as one that isn't hugely discussed👍

Edited March 17Mar 17 by gasman449

I think in the past HH made hits, it's were all started

nowadays Tiktok makes hits and once songs have charted, HH belatedly adds them and keeps them in their playlist for months

and then those songs stay in the charts forever

so actually the real contribution of HH is to make the charts more stale and have songs like Too Sweet still charting

much less people use it nowadays I believe

so if they wanna break a song and make it a hit like they did last week

when they insta-added Handlebars as track #5 on release date...

what happened? it peaked officially at #41

so clearly to me, not the same effect as it used to have 5 years ago

so less people use but still some do and that makes the same songs get streams for months and it's songs past their peak

Yeah Hot Hits UK is like the Capital FM playlist, way too slow turnover of tracks. I can't believe that people don't get bored of some of the least fresh songs on the playlist.

I am curious about how debut hits become viral on Tiktok too, I guess its the big influencers on there that start the trends. And for dance music the popular DJs but alas not enough for dance music has been undercharting for a while in the UK :( .

Part of the reason why they might have quite old songs on there is for the average customer. If I wanted to listen to a playlist of “current hits”, I would probably be looking for a playlist where I recognise some of the songs to establish trust in the playlist. I would say most people would listen to Hot Hits UK primarily for familiarity and discovery as a secondary priority.

Personally I would look at New Music Friday or my personal Release Radar playlist to discover music through Spotify.

I just think streaming in general makes it hard for new music to break through because the average person will prefer to listen to songs they know or have heard a lot over something new. In an ideal world the charts would only count the first stream per user or something and then we might see more songs break through.

I imagine that situations like Jade's make British record labels tear their hair out. Pre-streaming, there is not a chance that a British artist could have a breakthrough hit like this and then essentially have to start from square one again for their follow-up singles. Localised success has become extremely fragile compared to years past.

I agree that HHUK's lack of interest in supporting the local music industry is a problem in a world where radio stations can't do that job anymore, but it also feels like it would only be a bandaid on the issue even if that changed. Playlisting is mostly global, and social media (also global) is more important than ever before to what songs take off. The only real way to opt out of that globalised promotional space is via language barrier. The result of this is the US and UK charts moving in sync in a way that they never did pre-streaming, while often being rather out of sync with non-Anglophone markets. If you tightly integrate the promotional space of two music markets, the larger one will inevitably drive the trends, and that will generally lead to the smaller market's industry decaying as their artists struggle to access the promotion they need.

Do we know if the share of British artists in the top 40/100 has actually dropped at all versus say, 10/15/20 years ago? If it has, I fear that may just be how things are going forward.

Just my couple of cents... firstly, I subscribe plenty of playlists but hardly ever listen to them. Subscribes don't automatically turn into streams.

Secondly, like Umi said, the language is EVERYTHING in the streaming age. UK acts are competing with the US and Australian acts like never before because social media makes everything global and sadly the UK acts share language with the US which has way more effective industry behind the artists. For every Jade there is Gracie Abrams and the millions invested in her. Many of these acts like Abrams, Sabrina Carpenter, Noah Kahan, Teddy Swims, Alex Warren etc. are even more popular in the UK than in the US.

Edited March 18Mar 18 by Sour Candy

Hot Hits UK ofc doesn't have as much impact as it used to, however it helps a new hit stabilise and have some sort of chance to gaining momentum and thus propelling it higher up the daily charts and giving it a chance to increase it's exposure. I'm not sure we're saying it should be "exclusively" for UK acts either. I do think there needs to be more support shown for UK centric artists though, without them needing to go viral on Tik Tok or whatever. As I said, even a placing on HH could potentially get a new song to stabilise (even if it is at the lower end of the top 200 on their charts) for some time for them to be able to gain momentum.

I don't think it's a coincidence that Chappell jumped from #7 to #3 in today's Spotify chart counting for the day that she was added to HH...

13 hours ago, Sour Candy said:

Just my couple of cents... firstly, I subscribe plenty of playlists but hardly ever listen to them. Subscribes don't automatically turn into streams.

Secondly, like Umi said, the language is EVERYTHING in the streaming age. UK acts are competing with the US and Australian acts like never before because social media makes everything global and sadly the UK acts share language with the US which has way more effective industry behind the artists. For every Jade there is Gracie Abrams and the millions invested in her. Many of these acts like Abrams, Sabrina Carpenter, Noah Kahan, Teddy Swims, Alex Warren etc. are even more popular in the UK than in the US.

Neoptism is a huge problem in the music industry though. Most acts these days either come from wads of cash behind them due to who they are or where the come from or are music industry plants. Of course you get the odd exceptions to the rules like Noah Khan or Chappel Roan who go viral on TikTok. But another problem we are experiencing (and this is a global problem) is we are creating less superstars. We're in a generation where people are so quick to move on to the next thing or hold on to one viral song, that by the time an artist wants to move on, they can't. Or in quite a lot of cases, people are interested in the song but not the artists.

Meanwhile dance music doesnt really do well on the chart these days either sadly apart from that Chrystal and NOTION song which has been in the chart for ages.

5 hours ago, Rooney said:

Neoptism is a huge problem in the music industry though. Most acts these days either come from wads of cash behind them due to who they are or where the come from or are music industry plants. Of course you get the odd exceptions to the rules like Noah Khan or Chappel Roan who go viral on TikTok. But another problem we are experiencing (and this is a global problem) is we are creating less superstars. We're in a generation where people are so quick to move on to the next thing or hold on to one viral song, that by the time an artist wants to move on, they can't. Or in quite a lot of cases, people are interested in the song but not the artists.

Don't think they're the best examples there. Yes, the success wasn't instant, but both of their albums were major label releases (granted, the first one didn't go so well with Chappell) with a lot of money behind them before and after the bolts from the blue. In Noah's case, I watched 7 years ago as one of his songs spent a very generous 6 months in the ARIA top 50 because his label (same one he's with now) very intently gave it a big Hot Hits push, and then the song evaporated the moment it was done. There's a fairly reliable pattern in general where unsigned artists blow up. Either they don't get signed and quickly sputter out, or they do get signed, and the label milks the one hit for what it's worth before quietly dropping them (you can find a lot of articles about Arizona Zervas getting signed to Columbia after the success of "ROXANNE" in Nov 2019, and even his Wikipedia article still has them listed, but they actually dropped him some time between Dec 2022 and Feb 2023. His album came out independently in 2023 so you can probably connect the behind-the-scenes dots). The major labels always have the money, and the major labels always win. Macklemore is just about the only notable exception I can think of, but he still had Warner promoting and distributing his album.

Do agree above though that Hot Hits shouldn't be exclusively UK artists (a quota would be nice if there isn't already one). It's actually to their benefit that way. Nestling in local and/or unproven hits amongst the established crowd pleasers is how new hits ferment. People don't generally like hearing successive unfamiliar songs/artists, but strategically sandwiching them helps bridge that issue, as well as giving them credibility by association. Radio stations have been doing it for decades.

2 hours ago, Dircadirca said:

Don't think they're the best examples there. Yes, the success wasn't instant, but both of their albums were major label releases (granted, the first one didn't go so well with Chappell) with a lot of money behind them before and after the bolts from the blue. In Noah's case, I watched 7 years ago as one of his songs spent a very generous 6 months in the ARIA top 50 because his label (same one he's with now) very intently gave it a big Hot Hits push, and then the song evaporated the moment it was done. There's a fairly reliable pattern in general where unsigned artists blow up. Either they don't get signed and quickly sputter out, or they do get signed, and the label milks the one hit for what it's worth before quietly dropping them (you can find a lot of articles about Arizona Zervas getting signed to Columbia after the success of "ROXANNE" in Nov 2019, and even his Wikipedia article still has them listed, but they actually dropped him some time between Dec 2022 and Feb 2023. His album came out independently in 2023 so you can probably connect the behind-the-scenes dots). The major labels always have the money, and the major labels always win. Macklemore is just about the only notable exception I can think of, but he still had Warner promoting and distributing his album.

Do agree above though that Hot Hits shouldn't be exclusively UK artists (a quota would be nice if there isn't already one). It's actually to their benefit that way. Nestling in local and/or unproven hits amongst the established crowd pleasers is how new hits ferment. People don't generally like hearing successive unfamiliar songs/artists, but strategically sandwiching them helps bridge that issue, as well as giving them credibility by association. Radio stations have been doing it for decades.

The U.K. music industry is in a bit of a hole at the moment I’d say. Who are our big bets? Maybe Miles Smith. There seems to be a real lack of talent out there who labels are willing to put money behind. America often do big pop music way better than us, they always have done. Some of the acts the industry and labels have pushed recently have been crap. It would be great if U.K. music is more heavily supported, but we also have to make sure the music is good too.

Often our niche has been grime and bands, but grime seems to have completely gone off trend for now and bands just don’t seem to have any traction in the charts these days.

I put a lot of this down to the labels not wanting to invest money due to a declining market. If you go back 10-15 years, the industry was way more predictable. If you had big spend behind artists, more often than not they were guaranteed success. But in todays climate that is a lot more difficult.

I totally agree I've been saying this for a while. UK artists are being completely ignored unless they go viral on Tiktok. Another example of the top of my head is Tom Grennan he was having some big solo hits and then Spotify stopped giving him HHUK support and he has struggled to get a chart hit since.

There's no excuse, I understand they need the big global hits on these main playlists but I just don't understand why they keep songs on there from over a year ago and have multiple tracks from the same artist on there, they could easily replace some of these with new UK tracks that have some hype / strength behind them.

I don't think anyone's saying not being on HHUk is the sole reason for not having success but it definitely helps. I can think of numerous songs that have recently been moved up the playlist and the song jumps up with it. Handlebars for example if that hadn't been on the playlist would it have even charted anywhere near 44?

How do they expect UK artists who don't have the global power to survive?

I really don't think labels can pay to be put on the playlists because I'm sure Jade's team would jump at the chance especially after The Brits. I'm sure deals do go on to push artists higher on the playlists or dictate what song they want to push from album but aside from that I don't think it's as easy as making a payment and Spotify just add the artist / song.

Edited March 19Mar 19 by Mr. C. Joel