Eric_Blob

^Ed Sheeran's entire discography seems to have fallen a lot in recurrent streams the past year or so I've noticed. It's nice the songs at the top of the list are all so close! I remember when there was almost no movement in the all-time list for years on end.

Surely wouldn't the absent years hurt them though? Part of the reason Chase & Status debuted at #1 I think is because they had a load of hits last year.

I can't believe we have 3 country songs in the YTD top 10 in August in 2024. And 2 are by black people and 2 are by women. For a genre that is (was) seen as old-fashioned, almost American-exclusive and white male dominated for most of my life it's quite incredible. I do have a theory that a lot of kids have parents now who go "I like everything except country music", which might entice more younger people to want to listen to it. But that's just a guess, I would've never expected it. Maybe we'll get a heavy metal resurgence one day lol.

I guess (npi), but I'm personally looking for a UK-only #1 hit. We used to have loads which were UK and Ireland only. Now it seems every hit song has to be international, or at the very least a hit in the anglosphere or Europe. If Adele or Ed Sheeran (or Charli XCX) got a #1 soon it wouldn't be the same imo because they're international stars. With a song like The Promise by Girls Aloud for example, it was a massive hit here and felt a bit like our little secret. I guess it's the curse of English being our main language. It seems like some other European countries are still getting loads of local hits. Although when I checked Spain's charts a couple of years ago they had tons of South American songs there so maybe they have a similar issue to us. We'll always have Thee Lions so there is that. :lol: I believe Radio 1 are still sticking to their 50% UK artists on their playlist rule but they just don't impact the charts noticeably anymore.

Yeah, I think the autoplay boosts need to be more subtle so that people don't notice anything strange is happening. If a song was always in the 1st 10 songs (and genre, language and time period appropriate) most people wouldn't notice anything, but if the same song is always first up then people start thinking their Spotify is glitched or something lol. Maybe they've already worked to make it more subtle as it seems to have calmed down a bit as you said. It's really lucky Espresso is a really catchy song with broad appeal that lots of people like. Can you imagine if it was a terrible song that most people hated? I used to listen to Beg For It quite a bit so I should check if I'm getting her now.

The Spotify autoplay algorithm does take into account the listening history of each user (and it goes quite far back) so that could be natural (although it's suspicious it's coming 1st so often for you all of a sudden so I don't know).

The article is more-or-less what we've all discussed constantly for years. Since everybody can choose what music they listen to now for almost free, in addition to the fact that they can track (most of) what people listen to, it means I don't think we can get songs which are phenomenons again. People don't have limited access to entertainment, like 5 TV channels and and analogue radio anymore where everybody just has to consume what's on there and deal with it. The closest we've had in recent years is honestly the Spotify autoplay. That works a bit like radio in the past where you HAD to listen to the songs played and eventually people start to like it and learn who the artist is. I think it's been studied that most people need to hear a pop song a dozen times before it gets stuck in their head and they start liking it, which back in the day wasn't too hard to accomplish, but nowadays it's difficult because you can't force people to hear songs anymore.

Ah yeah I know what you mean. Although I think that case can be mostly attributed to streaming inflating "sales" of hits in the streaming Age.

Yeah. Thats what you'd really expect as "all time" is by definition an ever-longer period of time. The songs in the past couple of years making this list would be the equivalent of a Thursday release making the top 100 in the weekly chart

I checked the same happens for me too. Great promotion obviously, but why her? I don't have anything against her, but obviously a bunch of businessmen at her record label had meetings and were like "We have 200 female singers signed to our label, and we're going to choose Sabrina Carpenter and give her the best promotion any pop star has ever had and make sure she's the next big thing". I guess we'll never find out the truth why they chose her, but I really wish I could know, this kind of thing makes me really curious what is going on behind the scenes. But obviously they all have NDAs and that kind of stuff so they can't talk about it in public.

The first time I ever used Spotify was in 2010 and they definitely had a UK chart back then (I can't remember if it was daily or weekly). It wasn't wildly different to the official charts except for hip hop and indie/alternative songs being higher at the time. So I think all big hits since then would have charted tbh. They used to have album charts back then as well.

Didn't it have an average chart run in the US? That's not really the opposite of huge.

Its interesting that the 5 biggest 2024-released albums seem to be all female pop stars. Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande, Beyonce and Dua Lipa.

I fully understand labels want to get monoculture pop hits back, but they need to figure out a more subtle way to do it, because I think it will taint Sabrina as an artist because people will know how she became popular. Playing after Frank Sinatra and rap and rock and non-English songs is a bit extreme. And I think Espresso wouldn't have needed it anyway.

Do they have to be "people"? Because you could probably count The Teletubbies, Bob the Builder, Lady Gaga, Chef, Crazy Frog, Mr. Blobby, etc.

Yeah as a pop star it is the whole point of it to be successful. And ive listened to Espresso now in full and it is a good song. Although I do wonder why they've put so much into promoting her. Because there's loads of good pop music out there which doesn't get any promotion, I always wonder how labels choose which artists to promote over others. It's not the first time this has happened, the same happened with Dua Lipa and Zara Larsson and others. Sometimes they choose a pop star (seemingly at random) and just promote the hell out of them whilst others get ignored and I can never figure out how and why they choose which ones to do it to. Some are obvious like Harry Styles was a heartthrob from One Direction, or Duffy is a more mainstream version of Amy Winehouse, so those types or cases make sense. But some just seem to have no explanation.

It is. It's some combination of music that similar to the song/album/playlist with weighting towards music similar to what you usually listen to. There's also a random number generator involved so the songs will be in a different order each day with some new ones added in and some removed. For example, if you listen obsessively to some unknown artist they will start appearing in the autoplay lists of songs/albums/playlists that are considered by the Spotify algorithm to be vaguely similar, but just for you, not for other people. But these autoplay deals (I think they call it "Discovery mode") bypasses most of this, which is why it's so noticeable to those that use the feature. Like it's a cool feature because before these autoplay deals started you could put on California Gurls, for example, and then get a "2012 Capital FM" experience generated if you're in the mood for it lol. But now Espresso always plays and it kind of ruins it. Well not really because you can skip it every time, but you know.

Well obviously it's not. You have to adjust for when the songs were released/popullar to compare them properly. Maybe if they coule go back in time they would have chosen a different sales:streaming ratio. But at the time when it was 1:100 or 1:150 it made an almost negligible difference they probably thought it would be silly to put it even lower. And I don't think they can really change it now. Although as I have mentioned a few times on here I don't think it would be that hard to get a computer to calculate a multiplier for each year to balance things out a bit for their all-time lists. That's assuming they're not deleting the sales data from past years at least.

I agree, I think we need a Bad Habits-sized hit to be released ASAP to beat it. Or one of the other big hits of the year to go viral or something and get a 2nd wind. Espresso is still doing really well even though it's not the top autoplay song anymore so I suspect it'll be very high up though. I agree it could be top 5 year-end. I think for Espresso to be #1 of the year they would have to do a Cat Burns and make a REALLY good drum & bass or house remix of it (that could get hundreds of thousands of sales by itself) and promote it as if it's a new song.

Well, isn't it kind of the same thing as Jack U, The Throne, Bad Meets Evil, LSD, The Carters, Silk City, etc? I would count them if they decide on a group name. As for bands I general, apparently they are more complicated for record labels, because you have to sign each band BOTH as a band and as individual solo artists. There were cases of band line-ups changing, band names changing, people going solo, etc. in the past causing loads of drama because they could claim they are now no longer signed if the band is in anyway different to what is on the contract, so that is how they get around it. But it sounds more complicated. And probably they are harder to manage with maybe a lot of drama and people to keep track of, loads more expenses (hotel rooms, plane tickets, etc.), maybe more difficult to market than a solo artist. So maybe those things play a factor. Because its weird there are so few groups these days so there must be a reason.

The closest is that we've kind of had some "spiritual" double A sides since then, like Shape of You/Castle on the Hill, Texas Hold Em/16 Carriages, etc. Also there are radio edits of Blue Room which are 3-4 mins long so maybe OP got mixed up that way. It's an interesting read though, I had no idea songs in the 50's/60's were so short. I was joking to myself at Christmas that Rockin Around the Christmas Tree had the length of a modern song, but I guess that was just normal for its time.

I can't remember the exact years but for a long time there were songs which seemed to be all based on the template for Lean On which I didn't enjoy, it was way too much and for too long. I'm glad that's over. Some of those songs were good but a lot I found to be very forgettable.

Does anyone know why streams at the top of the chart have skyrocketed recently? It's great to see, but I can't think of a reason that explains it happening so drastically and so suddenly. I get why Taylor, etc. would have huge streams but what about all the other songs. Have loads of people simulatenously decided they like current pop music again? I can't figure it out. When it first happened I thought it was just coincidentally a few big hits at the same time but it's happening again and again and again and I think it's just the new normal now. But why? It annoys me when a big shift happens in the music market and I can't figure out the reason.

I agree with this. Although what I see going on is: - People who use the autoplay feature regularly are noticing Espresso is getting auto-played when it shouldn't be normally and it is/was probably getting the song 100,000-200,000 streams extra each day. - People (I think who most likely don't use the autoplay feature) are claiming that we're all making this up, saying the song wouldn't be in the top 200 otherwise. Which is absolutely NOT what a single person has said. And that's what is causing the arguments I think. It seems like fans of Espresso or whoever are getting insulted by people pointing out the autoplay boost and taking it personally. All anybody is saying is that it probably would have peaked at 850,000 streams instead of 1 million without the autoplay deal. It's not anything to be upset/offended about. The labels are just doing their job and promoting the song really, and it will happen to a plethora of other songs in the future too. And I just want to add that Stick Season didn't get anywhere near this much autoplay. It's not simply down to Espresso being a big hit.

It used to be fantastic. I was amazed how you could put a song of any genre, any language, any decade, and level of popularity, and it can somehow generate other similar songs. I've been using it for years because I'm often indecisive about what I want to listen to so it's nice just to play a song I like and let Spotify generate other songs I think I'll like. And I can discover new songs as well. Like if I want to discover more 90's underground house songs I can just put one on and then let autoplay give me loads more. It's not as good now because they keep interfering with it and adding unrelated new releases (usually Espresso at the moment) in the 1st, 2nd or 3rd spot rather than letting the algorithm do its job, but I normally skip songs that I don't like or that I can tell shouldn't be there, so it's still not too bad.