Justin Charity over at The Ringer magazine argues that the Billboard charts are no longer accurate. Billboard’s whole existence revolves around tracking which songs are popular. It does that by looking at singles and album sales across a variety of genres.
Traditionally, figuring out which songs were most popular was pretty straightforward. Radio stations played the music, fans heard that music, went to the record store and purchased their favorites. Music executives crunched the sales numbers. Billboard looked at which songs sold the most and ranked them in that order.
Today, there’s a little something called streaming. People who stream music (and I’m not even counting those who steal the music) aren’t actually factored into any equation. So, music is being consumed, but there’s no easy way of factoring music that’s streamed into the whole calculation. So, if Billboard reports that Drake’s “One Dance” is number 1 on the chart, does that mean that it really is the most popular song? Or is it the most popular only in terms of sales? For streamed music, maybe Beyoncé is actually more popular, and more deserving of that number 1 spot.
It’s easy to discount the importance of music charts. But, for DJs especially, they give some needed insight into what the crowd wants to hear. It’s in our best interest to figure out what songs are legitimately at the top of the charts. How exactly to do that, though, is still a bit of a mystery.
Do you have any ideas?
Read the article that inspired these thoughts here.
