Should charts consider money made or unique listeners as the success metric?

Money Made.

The issue with billboard is a song that had more units and money was not the number 1 for alot of weeks.

You bring up BTS but im pretty sure overall G4U sold more units and made more money.

Is billboard the only chart where you could have more units but not number 1?

G4U is 11th while Butter is 34th.

Quote from Tic_tac_toe

With this whole Fandom Vs GP

The whole drama with BTS and Billboard

Everything comes down to answering this question.

Lots of people think unless you have more unique people listening to you you’re not popular and don’t deserve to be on the charts.

For me I don’t agree. The era of the internet and streaming has made casual listening more easy that doesn’t mean it’s valuable. For me in fact it’s less valuable.

Before the digital streaming era ‘causal’ listening never affected the charts. The ppl who bought an album were the ones affecting the chart. The only casual listening you can do is on the radio and no other way.

For example if you take up many of the hit songs for past which have high sales and hence charted high and put them up in the streaming era we have no idea how those charts will chnage.

REMEMBER : FANDOM EFFORT IS NOT NEW. That’s how charts have ALWAYS been. Streaming era ENABLING causal listening is what is new.

For me an act that can’t tour can’t sell but had a lot of casual listeners and are high on the charts that’s not a true picture of the strength of an artist.

Casual listening is EASY. Why should it even be the paramount metric of success. It is the opposite.

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Even if they made unique listeners the main metric people can still make new accounts

Quote from reesul29

Even if they made unique listeners the main metric people can still make new accounts

its much harder to make alot of itunes accounts then just rebuying the 16 copies each week through a website.

Quote from ForgottenSoul

Money Made.

The issue with billboard is a song that had more units and money was not the number 1 for alot of weeks.

You bring up BTS but im pretty sure overall G4U sold more units and made more money.

Is billboard the only chart where you could have more units but not number 1?

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Are you saying sales units? If you are then I think you are wrong because Butter is one of the top best selling songs in the U.S of 2021.

There is no way a song with huge unique listeners doesn't make more money. A hit will always sell.

Quote from ArmyBlink0

Are you saying sales units? If you are then I think you are wrong because Butter is one of the top best selling songs in the U.S of 2021.

I think you are wrong, only a week difference btw yet like 700k units difference.

Quote from ForgottenSoul

I think you are wrong, only a week difference btw yet like 700k units difference.

Wow I didn't know she sold that much, that's crazy

Quote from Tic_tac_toe

Anyway this is irrelevant to the conversation at present.

I wanted to say massive downloads and fandom streaming buying is more important than unique listeners.

If you have anything to say to that please continue otherwise don’t derail.

I just disagree that fandom and bulk buying is more relevant to what the general public think. Its a music chart not a fandom chart. Its the streaming era and downloads are irrelevant unless you are basically BTS and found a way to use them in your favor. Downloads are overestimated as billboard have proven this last few months.

The song that is the biggest or made the most revenue should be number 1 its really that simple.

I would prefer a German system or UK system over billboard awful system.

I think the purpose of the hot 100 is to show which songs are the most profitable and not necessarily the most popular so I agree with you

Quote from Tic_tac_toe

Yeah and that’s why I said it’s causal listening that’s overrated and a new metric if you bothered reading the OP.

Anyone can causally listen to the song. Causally listening also not exist without the streaming era that’s the point.

Yeah which I disagree with as I just replied with?

Maybe you should read everything I said I just literally responded to that lmfao.

Quote from reesul29

I think the purpose of the hot 100 is to show which songs are the most profitable and not necessarily the most popular so I agree with you

Its not even like that though if it was based on revenue things would look very different.

Quote from reesul29

I think the purpose of the hot 100 is to show which songs are the most profitable and not necessarily the most popular so I agree with you

Hot 100 considers radio so the revenue thing is ruled out. U could just chart with good radio on billboard. And if units r taken into consideration the chart would look different.

Quote from atropos

Hot 100 considers radio so the revenue thing is ruled out. U could just chart with good radio on billboard. And if units r taken into consideration the chart would look different.

There are some charts in America that take into account revenue I forgot which chart that is cant think of it atm.

Quote from Tic_tac_toe

Yup I don’t think solosis and digimons who can’t even hold comprehensive large concerts I’m Korea are all that popular.

It’s the fandoms who are mass streaming and mass buying who attend concerts and are valuable.

Ofc in the end a big fandom translates to big touring and that’s the MOST important metrics.

Previously touring and charting somewhat concertante cuz we only had psychical albums. Now we have so much causal listening in the era of streaming. But poorer acts.

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I dont think how much your tour should be relevant to a weekly music chart.

These are weekly music charts for the most popular or listened to song that week not how many copies your fandom can buy.

Quote from Tic_tac_toe

No but if we consider revenue as the ability to tour big things will indeed change. Money made in the end depends on how big you can tour.

It always boils down to that in case it wasn’t clear.

(Let’s stick to Korea idc about billboard)

Korea charts are just a mess but I do think they should be streamlined this digital points thing is pretty shitty I think moving to a units thing would be better.

Quote from Tic_tac_toe

Again the question is fandom effort over casual listening. The conversation is not about the idiosyncrasies of the billboard chart.

The article insinuated that fandom effort was some how ‘manipulation’. I disagree. Fandom effort is the truest way to measure an artist’s success.

You're correct, fandom effort and the money made is the correct measurement of an artist's success. But are they also an accurate indication of a given song's popularity? It's difficult to say. Maybe we should first decide what popularity really is: a thousand person deliberately buying the same song 10 times each just to support the artist or ten thousand people buying the same song once each because they simply like it?

Quote from Tic_tac_toe

fandom power influencing charts is for me the right way that shows who can actually earn.

I mean sure and fans already do that though if your fandom is big you will most likely have a random high week on digital points or debut high.

Fandom in Korea is not enough though to keep your song at the top though.

Depends on the type of data you value. Do you want to find out which acts have fans that will spend the most money on them or do you want to find out which song is an earworm?

Quote from reesul29

I think the purpose of the hot 100 is to show which songs are the most profitable and not necessarily the most popular so I agree with you

That is literally what it has always been. It started as a sales chart and hasn't stopped being one since 1958.

Quote from Tic_tac_toe

Let’s stick to Korea and charts that I know

Korea pretty much directly shows hits vs flop song earnings on gaon. Gaon is a revenue chart. Songs with high uls r the high selling songs.

Fandom powered song gaon points at max will be 150M while hits go beyond 500M with big uls. Gaon directly throws out fan driven songs.

I have to control myself responding to this thread, if I don't want to be mean.

Quote from Tic_tac_toe

REMEMBER : FANDOM EFFORT IS NOT NEW. That’s how charts have ALWAYS been. Streaming era ENABLING causal listening is what is new.

I disagree with this statement. Almost everyday on this forum I see someone say all fandoms play the charts game but I don't think it's true. I've never seen the stan culture anywhere besides k-pop. And certainly not 25 years ago.

Back in the days, the only metric to take into account was the number of copies sold. Whether the purchaser was a casual listener or a hardcore fan was irrelevant. I guess there were already some people who used to purchase multiple copies but they most likely were very few. People simply bought albums out of necessity as it was the only way to listen to it anytime they wanted to; they didn't do it out of duty towards the artists or anything. They didn't set up crowdfunding campaigns to buy in bulk.

Now with all the different metrics out there, most of them related to streaming, I don't think there's a definite way to measure success/popularity. The most solid one would be touring power in my opinion because that's the most enduring. Besides that, I wonder if massive polls wouldn't be better than raw streaming numbers. Ask the people directly the artists they heard of, the artists they listen to and those they enjoy the most. One person, one vote; no zombie streaming and whatnot, no cheating the game.

Quote from Tic_tac_toe

It’s not revenue. It’s actually very very filtered. Gaon shows nothing about how much money was actually paid to the artist.

This is entirely false, they literally made a video about it.