4 minutes 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...

I don't think they will though because other than few that buck the trend , if they did that sales would tank even more than they are already

8 minutes ago, Dircadirca said:

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😔

Not sure what this is contributing 🤣

FWIW, I have nothing against American classics being in the chart. Just that their streaming playlisting, and limitless cap to streams, gives them a free pass to hog the Top 100 each year. I don't think someone listening to a song for the 100th time because it's eternally top of their chosen Christmas playlist should count towards the chart if it's at the detriment of new Christmas hits (or any hit) getting their chance to chart (and therefore get the media attention that will give it a chance to solidify itself).

I think in all seriousness if you want to talk about a paradigm shift through playlists for Christmas music, is there really an 'organic' way for it to happen? We're all talking about arbitrary (to us) songs benefitting over the original favourites. How did those songs get there in the first place? Probably radio stations decided to play them. For all we know, the current state of affairs should've always been what it was like but those older songs weren't given the proper chance. Now it's been going so long that there are young listeners who've only known the Bobby Helms revival era, and so forth. I agree there should be better regulations for local content quotas on playlists, but I don't think we can safely say these songs aren't genuinely popular just because they didn't have the correct rite of passage. I didn't know "Feliz Navidad" when I was a kid. I know it now, think it's great and will willingly listen to it. I'm sure there are many such cases.

1 minute ago, Juranamo said:

Not sure what this is contributing 🤣

FWIW, I have nothing against American classics being in the chart. Just that their streaming playlisting, and limitless cap to streams, gives them a free pass to hog the Top 100 each year. I don't think someone listening to a song for the 100th time because it's eternally top of their chosen Christmas playlist should count towards the chart if it's at the detriment of new Christmas hits (or any hit) getting their chance to chart (and therefore get the media attention that will give it a chance to solidify itself).

Just having a bit of fun! Christmas discourse in both senses of that phrase can get oddly heated lmao.

4 minutes ago, 777666jason said:

I don't think they will though because other than few that buck the trend , if they did that sales would tank even more than they are already

I don't think sales would drop, I think they'd increase for singles at the top of the chart. I think what we'd see is songs lifetime sales become representative of when they were discovered and first enjoyed (when it was first released, went viral, or promoted) rather than lingering around and accumulating substantial "sales" forever.

Artists might release remixes/instrumentals/physicals etc to gain boosts (as they do now), but they wouldn't be able to sustain those forever.

Anyway, I'm gonna shut up now because I think I'm pulling this more off topic than I thought! 😂

Edited Monday at 13:052 days by Juranamo

15 minutes 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...

38 minutes ago, Juranamo said:

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’ve always thought a lifetime streaming cap would be preferable to ACR.

At the same time I have a sneaking suspicion that the effect wouldn’t be what we assume, and that we’d be shocked how many of the plays of “Last Christmas” each year are only that user’s 4th play and not their 104th.

4 minutes ago, Juranamo said:

I don't think sales would drop, I think they'd increase for singles at the top of the chart. I think what we'd see is songs lifetime sales become representative of when they were discovered and first enjoyed (when it was first released, went viral, or promoted) rather than lingering around and accumulating substantial "sales" forever.

Artists might release remixes/instrumentals/physicals etc to gain boosts (as they do now), but they wouldn't be able to sustain those forever.

Anyway, I'm gonna shut up now because I think I'm pulling this more off topic than I thought! 😂

I highly doubt it because other than artists with fanbases like a Kylie or a Taylor multiple remixes really are negligible as people aren't buying them 🤣

1 hour ago, gasman449 said:

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

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!

A campaign of Kylie fans. Buying multiple copies. Hopefully they are buying week 2 and also next year…and the years to come :)

Just now, Julian_ said:

I’ve always thought a lifetime streaming cap would be preferable to ACR.

At the same time I have a sneaking suspicion that the effect wouldn’t be what we assume, and that we’d be shocked how many of the plays of “Last Christmas” each year are only that user’s 4th play and not their 104th.

OCC no doubt have the data, I'd be very interested to see what (if any) difference it makes! Surely most people have listened to Mr Brightside at least 10 times by now and it would be mostly charting very lowly from new discoveries, if at all... 🤣

No idea on the figures, but you'd hope the number of people unable to contribute 0.1 sale (or contributing their final chunk of a sale) to Wham would be outweighed by the number of people who would have contributed 0.5 sales this week to The Pretty Reckless' new single (just plucking one out lol). Though I know my listening habits are probably different to the average person haha

Edited Monday at 13:172 days by Juranamo

4 minutes ago, 777666jason said:

I highly doubt it because other than artists with fanbases like a Kylie or a Taylor multiple remixes really are negligible as people aren't buying them 🤣

Ah, yeah, that's why I said I doubt instrumentals etc would make any meaningful lasting impact as any sales (if any) would be one-offs. Sorry, misunderstood you!

5 minutes ago, Juranamo said:

OCC no doubt have the data, I'd be very interested to see what (if any) difference it makes! Surely most people have listened to Mr Brightside at least 10 times by now and it would be mostly charting very lowly from new discoveries, if at all... 🤣

I’m sure I vaguely remember @Dircadirca having some concrete data that suggested songs like “Mr Brightside” are in fact finding huge numbers of new listeners every year.

It's funny how worked up some of you are getting about Kylie. I'm glad she's playing the game like so many other artists. Why shouldn't she? Madonna got into the top 10 for the first time in 15 years because she used The Weeknd's enormous streaming and social media popularity. Go Kylie, I say.

1 minute ago, Julian_ said:

I’m sure I vaguely remember @Dircadirca having some concrete data that suggested songs like “Mr Brightside” are in fact finding huge numbers of new listeners every year.

I wonder if that would be outweighed by newer music having more people contributing their 0.1 sale for each listen (which would usually see a much quicker tail off of than someone discovering an old song).

That sounds like really interesting data! I guess you'll always have some lingerers, but my assumption will always be that that sort of model would help newer songs to have their time to shine in a more "natural" way (i.e. With every song having their new streamers contribute streams in the same way - no "this song is lower because it's been in the chart for 10 weeks and had its streams halved, but this other song has been in the chart for 15 weeks and is still having it's streams counted in full, despite there being no real meaningful reason for it to be penalised other than having a rough few weeks...") until I see otherwise haha

Edited Monday at 13:322 days by Juranamo

54 minutes ago, Juranamo said:

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!

It’s a ‘chicken and egg’ thing. Increased popularity (globally) and consciousness of ‘Last Christmas’ has led to better playlisting and the cycle continues. George’s death was a massive factor in this.

In general, better playlisting is given to the more popular songs.

The big BUT factor is the fact that Spotify has a massive impact and gives preferential treatment to songs that are popular in the US. Songs like FONY manage to buck the trend despite poor Spotify playlisting .

‘Last Christmas’ becoming more popular in the US has boosted its fortunes in the UK and globally.

As people previously said, it used to take a distant 3rd to AIWFCIY and FONY.

I wouldn’t say pushing back releases is chart manipulation when that’s just scheduling. Shaky still wasn’t guaranteed a #1 by pushing it back a year but he gave the song more of a chance. He still needed people to go out and buy it.

What is manipulation from the old days are those rumours of managers of the likes of Boyzone and Take That re-buying cd stock in the bulk load to appear were more popular then they were, but it worked, got them into the newspapers and smash hits and they took off. But the bigger the budget doesn’t always guarantee success - look at Girl Thing.

The way the charts are now, it’s an odd one, in truth, it’s probably on a whole less manipulative then back in the day as let’s face it, this last week, how many people actively listening to Raye and the non Christmas songs, as opposed to Xmas, Last Christmas and All I Want?

The Amazon manipulation is an interesting one, but I think with Kylie it was a case of all the right ingredients mixed together. A loyal fanbase who will go out and purchase a physical/digital copy adding complete sales in one go - combined with being high on the playlist of your favourite Aunt Alexa. It’s not a unique situation but it’s one that will be hard to replicate with the powers that the more seasoned Christmas songs have.

2 hours 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...

I don't think being the most popular Christmas song of recent decades is "a free pass".

1 hour ago, Julian_ said:

I’m sure I vaguely remember @Dircadirca having some concrete data that suggested songs like “Mr Brightside” are in fact finding huge numbers of new listeners every year.

It's a well that I seem to tap every six months. I wouldn't entirely call it proof because it's just a smaller specific subset of listeners, and the greater picture can reveal unusual results, but I am inclined to think last fm users are more active and on the pulse listeners than average (as well as receiving less new users per capita than streaming services), so the whole story would probably be one of less repeat plays, and more delayed discovery, to amplify the point.

I suspect that there is maybe enough data given by Spotify in its daily play counts and monthly listener stats to discover some interesting info (eg. the different monthly listeners spike a new Taylor Swift album generates for her and the lucky artists who get to be featured on it), but I'm probably not the one to do it. 😄

For an update a year and a half later, "Mr. Brightside" is up to 13.5 scrobbles per listener (up from 12), while "BIRDS OF A FEATHER" is up to 25 scrobbles per listener (up from 15). Also roughly a third of listeners to the Billie track only first recorded it in the past year. I wish I could say what it is for The Killers but the Wayback Machine is down as I'm writing this. Let's pick some new song ratios to look at!

21 - Taylor Swift - The Fate of Ophelia

17 - KATSEYE - Gabriela

16 - sombr - back to friends

10 - Alex Warren - Ordinary

10 - Alex Warren - Eternity

10 - EsDeeKid - Century

10 - sombr - 12 to 12

9 - RAYE - WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!

8 - Olivia Dean - Man I Need

8 - Tyla - CHANEL
7.5 - Dave - Raindance

7 - Olivia Dean - So Easy (To Fall In Love)

Not sure it correlates to much of anything! "Mood" by 24kGoldn is also just languishing ahead of the peloton at 10.5, a smash hit from 5 years ago!

Surge for Driving home for christmas since Chris Rea just died? 😢

Edited Monday at 15:142 days by stebags

Very sad news :( Genuinely shocked and it would be an Absolute travesty if it didn't make number 1 this week in his honour. I really hope it gets there by some miracle.

Edited Monday at 15:202 days by Mr. C. Joel

Just now, stebags said:

Surge for Driving home for christmas since Chris Rea just died? 🥲

Oh no, RIP Chris! Think he only lived about 40 mins away from me so Driving Home For Christmas always hit a bit harder than other Christmas songs. Hope it at least gets a new peak this week

That was playing on the radio at work when I got the alert on my phone. So sad.