Normal week Brenda Lee get above Mariah

9 minutes ago, Julian_ said:

I think there was only 1 set of mids and it did show “River” at #1, but people assumed it would be knocked off by Friday.

Exactly this. Each week prior to that it dropped so far down that no one expected it to remain number 1.

1 hour ago, Julian_ said:

I think there was only 1 set of mids and it did show “River” at #1, but people assumed it would be knocked off by Friday.

Folk were annoyed at the Ellie song out nowhere charting at number 1. Ironic the people are silent on Kylie. The song is awful. As was Ellie’s. Hence Ellie’s song being forgotten. Kylies will be the same.

Chart manipulation at its most obvious.

6 minutes ago, mkirilenkofan said:

Folk were annoyed at the Ellie song out nowhere charting at number 1. Ironic the people are silent on Kylie. The song is awful. As was Ellie’s. Hence Ellie’s song being forgotten. Kylies will be the same.

Chart manipulation at its most obvious.

You say chart manipulation but how is it any different to Spotify / Apple playlisting songs higher than others...??

Move Mariah and Wham! down to the bottom of playlists and I can pretty much guarantee Brenda would be at #1!

Playlists do manipulate the charts it's as simple as that but I think it's unfair to call Kylie's victory completely fake because she did do nearly 20k in Physicals/Downloads...(As mentioned above physicals weren't cheap either).

River was years ago let's be honest, no other Amazon Exclusive has managed it since (Despite Sam Ryder doing 9,000 downloads and pushing hard the entire week)

Edited Monday at 11:312 days by Mr. C. Joel

2 minutes ago, Mr. C. Joel said:

You say chart manipulation but how is it any different to Spotify / Apple playlisting songs higher than others...??

To be fair the reason Amazon's playlisting is so much more contentious was discussed earlier:

5 hours ago, Sour Candy said:

Yes, that is exactly why Amazon is way different to regular playlisting. If a song is #1 on Spotify's Christmas playlist, it still will be played only once unless the user restarts the playlist. Whereas Amazon plays their exclusive track(s) several times among the Christmas classics.

But yes there was much more of an organic campaign for Kylie to get there whereas Ellie's song just coasted to the top without any real fanfare so it is different!

12 hours ago, Dan17F1 said:

Not to open this can of worms again, because I’m obviously glad that Kylie did get to No 1, but it still doesn’t sit right with me that Amazon can just prioritise Kylie (or whetever Christmas song they’re promoting that year) to the top of their ‘stations’ when someone asks to play Christmas Music.

I’m surprised that the OCC haven’t clamped down on ‘stations’ counting as streams yet. I can understand playlists as the song will only appear once but stations feel like Amazon can almost manipulate how many times they want a song to appear (as evidenced by the major increase in Gwen’s song this week)

No different to sporify whacking Wham and all the American sangs on the rop of their biggest playlists. It's basically just radio, people passivley listening to what has been chosen, and that then deciding the charts. It's not a real measure of what Xmas sangs actually ARE the modt popular.

It would be interesting if FONY recieved this "manipulation" how would it perform as even with low playlistings etc etc it continues to buck the trend and do well

12 hours ago, Dan17F1 said:

I’m surprised that the OCC haven’t clamped down on ‘stations’ counting as streams yet. I can understand playlists as the song will only appear once but stations feel like Amazon can almost manipulate how many times they want a song to appear (as evidenced by the major increase in Gwen’s song this week)

Other streaming platforms are just as capable of doing this (and have done this in the past for me). Apple Music have played the same song to me in quick succession when I've put on my 'station' before, and that's one of the reasons I choose not to use that feature anymore.

If other streaming platforms wanted to spam specific songs, they definitely would (and do).

As long as a streaming platform is equipped with the facility to skip (all streaming platforms are, afaik), all streams should count, in my view. My only issue is with the almost limitless cap, but that discussion has also been done to death. Haha. ACR is extremely artificial, there are other methods that would be less artificial, but we're definitely too deep in to fix that now...

Would easily clear Kelly, Ariana and Bobby Helms given it already matches them with garbage playlisting. No real way of knowing if it would get close to Mariah/Brenda. Wham! definitely out of reach imo.

12 hours ago, Dan17F1 said:

Not to open this can of worms again, because I’m obviously glad that Kylie did get to No 1, but it still doesn’t sit right with me that Amazon can just prioritise Kylie (or whetever Christmas song they’re promoting that year) to the top of their ‘stations’ when someone asks to play Christmas Music.

I’m surprised that the OCC haven’t clamped down on ‘stations’ counting as streams yet. I can understand playlists as the song will only appear once but stations feel like Amazon can almost manipulate how many times they want a song to appear (as evidenced by the major increase in Gwen’s song this week)

No different to sporify whacking Wham and all the American sangs on the rop of their biggest playlists. It's basically just radio, people passivley listening to what has been chosen, and that then deciding the charts. It's not a real measure of what Xmas sangs actually ARE the modt popular.

3 minutes ago, Maestro said:

Would easily clear Kelly, Ariana and Bobby Helms given it already matches them with garbage playlisting. No real way of knowing if it would get close to Mariah/Brenda. Wham! definitely out of reach imo.

Some years ago before playlisting, it was the no.1 challenger to Mariah, as Wham wasn't popular back then, and it did come close... And with Mariah falling off in popularity a bit, victim of its own success, maybe now, all things equal, it would slightly overtake

27 minutes ago, Maestro said:

No real way of knowing if it would get close to Brenda.

I have a feeling it could overtake Brenda's (on overall streaming rather than just Spotify), I think its streaming popularity is massively inflated by Spotify playlisting

Edited Monday at 12:272 days by gasman449

15 minutes ago, December Dong said:

Some years ago before playlisting, it was the no.1 challenger to Mariah, as Wham wasn't popular back then, and it did come close... And with Mariah falling off in popularity a bit, victim of its own success, maybe now, all things equal, it would slightly overtake

Before streaming, Brenda was absolutely not the number 1 challenger to Mariah. It was usually Mariah and Pogues tussling for #1 Christmas classic in the download era, with Wham a distant 3rd.

I'd say it would probably be similar if American-influenced playlists didn't exist (FONY does very well considering it's treatment relative to AIWFC, Wham and Brenda), but we're not living in a world where that's the case.

On top of that, there's no realistic way of determining which of these songs is actually more popular currently - we can't base it on the download era, because even then Wizzard was making relative gains each year and Slade was slowly slipping in the rankings each year, so popularity doesn't stay stagnant.

For this reason, I'm (again) very convinced a very low lifetime stream cap (10 or so streams) is the only meaningful solution to the phenomenon of the classics clogging up the Top 100 each December (and songs lingering around forever in general) - people that shove on a playlist each December won't have the same songs clogging up the chart for eternity, they already proved they loved the song 10 years ago lol - but that's never going to happen now we're so deep in the current streaming calculation model!

Edited Monday at 12:302 days by Juranamo

4 minutes ago, Juranamo said:

Before streaming, Brenda was absolutely not the number 1 challenger to Mariah. It was usually Mariah and Pogues tussling for #1 Christmas classic in the download era, with Wham a distant 3rd.

I'd say it would probably be similar if American-influenced playlists didn't exist (FONY does very well considering it's treatment relative to AIWFC, Wham and Brenda), but we're not living in a world where that's the case.

On top of that, there's no realistic way of determining which of these songs is actually more popular currently - we can't base it on the download era, because even then Wizzard was making relative gains each year and Slade was slowly slipping in the rankings each year, so popularity doesn't stay stagnant.

For this reason, I'm (again) very convinced a very low lifetime stream cap (10 or so streams) is the only meaningful solution to the phenomenon of the classics clogging up the Top 100 each December (and songs lingering around forever in general) - people that shove on a playlist each December won't have the same songs clogging up the chart for eternity, they already proved they loved the song 10 years ago lol - but that's never going to happen now we're so deep in the current streaming calculation model!

I meant FTONY was the no.1 challenger - I was replyin to the post about their lack of playlisting

You could argue the same with downloads yeah you proved you love the song by buying an instrumental version but realistically how many times is anyone ever gonna listen to an instrumental version of a song other than it being a quick sales grab

2 minutes ago, December Dong said:

I meant FTONY was the no.1 challenger - I was replyin to the post about their lack of playlisting

Oops, didn't see that!

In which case, yes, I agree!

I definitely think Wham has caught up to those two in the public consciousness: but I wouldn't be surprised if alot of that was influenced by Last Christmas being so ubiquitous in its playlisting!

Though, as mentioned above, who knows what would be top dog? iTunes no longer has much relevance, and streaming has made Wham and the coroners surge in popularity, that may have just happened anyway... We'll never know! 😂

Just now, Juranamo said:

Though, as mentioned above, who knows what would be top dog? iTunes no longer has much relevance, and streaming has made Wham and the coroners surge in popularity, that may have just happened anyway... We'll never know! 😂

I think George's death played a big factor in Last Christmas becoming one of the big hitters, not sure the crooners (especially not Bobby Helms) would've become that popular here without playlisting

Can't believe the Australification of the charts. Kylie Minogue at #1, "Snowman" becoming an annual top 40 staple. Before you know it, all the disappointed cricket fans are gonna fly back after a month in Australia and start celebrating Gravy Day on the 21st of December next year😔

2 minutes ago, 777666jason said:

You could argue the same with downloads yeah you proved you love the song by buying an instrumental version but realistically how many times is anyone ever gonna listen to an instrumental version of a song other than it being a quick sales grab

There will always be ways that the chart can be manipulated. In the grand scheme of things, not enough people are going to be downloading or streaming an instrumental of a song for it to be of any notable difference in the long term.

For all the speak of Kylie's number one being 'organic', it was absolutely manipulated... (I love the song for what it's worth, and have a copy on vinyl) However, each of those manipulated sales will only happen once, and I'd say using a streaming cap model it would potentially still have been #1 with other older songs in the distance. Who knows, maybe there would be an actual race for #1 more often? Without all the classics cluttering the chart (and deadwood the rest of the year too), maybe it would clear some room to give other songs their chance to be noticed - I don't think many people would complain if 'XMAS' didn't have to work so hard to go Top 40 next year (and therefore, some actual extended exposure...) because 'Last Christmas' and the rest don't get their free pass to the top of the charts again...

1 hour ago, mkirilenkofan said:

Folk were annoyed at the Ellie song out nowhere charting at number 1. Ironic the people are silent on Kylie. The song is awful. As was Ellie’s. Hence Ellie’s song being forgotten. Kylies will be the same.

Chart manipulation at its most obvious.

People have criticized the Kylie #1 too?

Also, we are well aware that Amazon got Kylie the #1 but it did achieve almost 20k sales in physicals and paid for downloads.

The charts are a joke (if actual ‘sales’ were calculated this week and there was no ACR then Kylie would have been #7) - we have weekly charts of made up data from Spotify radio playlists so I’m all for a fave taking advantage of the mess that is the OCC.

1 minute ago, Juranamo said:

There will always be ways that the chart can be manipulated. In the grand scheme of things, not enough people are going to be downloading or streaming an instrumental of a song for it to be of any notable difference in the long term.

For all the speak of Kylie's number one being 'organic', it was absolutely manipulated... (I love the song for what it's worth, and have a copy on vinyl) However, each of those manipulated sales will only happen once, and I'd say using a streaming cap model it would potentially still have been #1 with other older songs in the distance. Who knows, maybe there would be an actual race for #1 more often? Without all the classics cluttering the chart (and deadwood the rest of the year too), maybe it would clear some room to give other songs their chance to be noticed - I don't think many people would complain if 'XMAS' didn't have to work so hard to go Top 40 next year (and therefore, some actual extended exposure...) because 'Last Christmas' and the rest don't get their free pass to the top of the charts again...

Yes, as Louis Walsh manipulated the charts about 15 times fot Westlife!! Manipulation has ALWAYS been in it. Very little is 100% organic. Spice Girls pushed back Spice Up Your Life to get a week at no.1, to avoid Elton John and Aqua! Anythin like that is unorganic, but that's the charts - Shakin Stevens pushed his sang back A WHOLE YEAR to get to no.1 etc etc