“ Billboard could have a free chart if they want,” says Apple Music head Jimmy Iovine, “but the chart that people argue for, that they strive to be Number One on, has to be a real chart.” Otherwise, he continues, “they’re mixing – no pun intended – apples and oranges.” Do people spend time with it is another way.” As a result, there’s a rift between the music industry, which wants to know what’s keeping the lights on, and listeners, who want to know what’s turning their friends on.Īpple Music believes the charts should be revenue-focused.
“How you measure the biggest has become very, very complicated,” says Matthew Adell, former CEO of the online dance-music store Beatport. In the old days, the revenue side and the popularity side were effectively equivalent, because to hear a song, a listener either bought a CD or turned to easily monitored outlets like radio and MTV. (I also contribute to Billboard.) “It’s how you balance two sides of the equation: One side is recognizing the revenue for artists the other side ends up being demand or popularity from the consumer point of view,” says Ryan Redington, Director of Amazon Music, which has paid streaming that counts toward the Billboard charts.
The decision to up-weight paid streams is just the latest in a series of changes to the charts that Billboard has initiated in the last five years as it attempts to grapple with an increasingly complicated task in the streaming era. “I have to assume we will see less of that.” “Five years ago, you never saw a rap record in the Top 40 this year you see them regularly in the Top 10, and not manufactured crossover records, but cultural songs,” he says. Paid streams will also count more on the Billboard 200, which tracks the most popular albums in the country each week.įor Jeff Vaughn – who has worked with Kevin Gates, Young Thug and Kehlani as Vice President of A&R at Artist Partners Group, a joint venture with Atlantic Records – the question is not whether rap singles will have less impact on the charts it’s how drastic the drop will be.
The Hot 100 has three components – sales, radio play and streaming – and starting in 2018, Billboard will give more weight to streams from platforms that listeners pay for, discounting the impacts of YouTube, the largest music-streaming site in the world, and the free (or ad-supported) tier of Spotify. Balvin and Willy William’s “Mi Gente” flew to Number Three, it marked the first time ever that two non-English-language tracks held spots in the Top 10 simultaneously.īut all this could change next year, due to a shift in the way Billboard plans to track its charts. It’s also been a banner year for Latin pop – Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s “Despacito” tied the record for the most weeks spent at Number One (16), and when J. Five hip-hop tracks have taken the Number One spot, tying a chart record, and in April, rap singles singlehandedly accounted for half of the Top 10.