The Billboard Hot 100, Deconstructed
If I bet you $100 that you couldn’t name the #1 song on this week’s Billboard Hot 100, would you be $100 richer?
As of this writing, it’s Morgan Wallen’s behemoth “Last Night,” from One Thing At a Time. No one can really say “Last Night” isn’t the biggest song in the country right now, but the fact might come as a bit of a surprise. Read on, and you’ll understand how.
artwork by Judii Hernandez
Billboard’s “Hot 100” is designed to reflect the most popular songs of each week. The chart in its current format started in 1958 and is now considered the standard for the US music industry. The structure we know now is the latest in a long history of Billboard’s attempts at accurately capturing the success of singles. The company initially published “Last Week's Ten Best Sellers Among the Popular Songs” in 1913, documenting the best-selling sheet music of each period. By 1955, they ran three concurrent charts: “Best Sellers in Stores” ranked the best-selling records in retail stores; “Most Played by Jockeys” was their first airplay-focused chart with data from radio stations; and “Most Played in Jukeboxes” tracked the songs most often played in jukeboxes. Jukeboxes were important to measure youthful, on-demand engagement with music: the growth of rock and roll, for example, was outsized among younger audiences, and radio stations initially hesitated to heavily feature the new, disruptive genre. (Such a disconnect between on-demand listening and radio exposure has not gone away, but more on that later.) These three charts were eventually synthesized into “The Top 100” which combined each previously mentioned metric, producing the clearest picture yet of a song’s overall popularity. Premiering the phrase “Hot 100” a few short years later, this all-genre, multi-component chart is still updated every week, with the top ten songs announced on Mondays and the full chart released on Tuesdays. In certain pockets of Twitter—affectionately called “chartwatching”—it’s turned into a weekly event, with fanbases passionately rooting for their favorite artists. Billboard’s official chart account, as well as aggregators like @ChartData and @TalkOfTheCharts and predictors like @ChartEssentials and @lippredicts consistently provide statistical insight regarding these charts to the avid consumer. All of these accounts are great follows.
The Hot 100 in its current state is calculated with a proprietary “points” system that Billboard is keen on keeping close to the vest. Although the company changes its rules regarding these calculations rather often, chartwatchers have been able to piece together some aspects of what makes the chart tick. Throughout any given tracking week, songs can rack up points by way of: on-demand streams, with numbers provided by online services like Spotify and Apple Music; digital sales counted by Luminate; and radio airplay sourced from Mediabase. Given the variation in raw volume of each metric, one stream isn’t equal to one radio impression, which isn’t equal to one sale. After they’ve been weighted, each metric is summed to arrive at a song’s “points” for the tracking week. The company is notoriously private with their exact formula, but the current estimates for these weights, per @ChartEssentials, are as follows: radio airplay impressions are divided by 8,000; sales numbers are divided by 10; and streams are, well, a bit more complicated.
All streams aren’t created equally. Prior to 2018, Billboard counted all “on-demand” streams the same, with a stream through a subscription to Apple Music equal to a stream through YouTube. The only real difference was justifiably weighing “programmed” streams less, primarily isolating Pandora, as you don’t really select what you listen to on the service. Then, Billboard launched “streaming tiers” to separate free streams from paid streams. A press release about the change claimed: “The shift to a multi-level streaming approach to Billboard’s chart methodology is a reflection of how music is now being consumed on streaming services, migrating from a pure on-demand experience to a more diverse selection of listening preferences (including playlists and radio), and the various options in which a consumer can access music based on their subscription commitment.” By tracking the “subscription commitment” of a user to determine how much their stream should count, Billboard now argues that a consumer listening to music through a paid service is being more direct in their support of the music they’re consuming, and should thus be weighed more heavily than someone listening through a free service. Whether the logic of that tracks for you or not—it doesn’t for me—tiers are here to stay. They make Billboard’s private formula more complicated, while also incentivizing streaming services to find ways to convert more of their users into paid subscribers—all the corporations win! In any case, it’s currently estimated that paid streams get divided by 1250, free streams by 3750, and programmed streams by 5000. This means that if you listen to a song on Spotify’s free version, your streams matter significantly less than your friends’ with Spotify Premium.
The differences in streaming data don’t just stop at the subscription level. There are stark variations in performance between the world’s two biggest streaming platforms, Spotify and Apple Music. Sure, new releases from pop culture magnets like Taylor Swift and The Weeknd transcend platforms, but that’s not usually the case. Apple Music, launching in 2015, owed much of its initial popularity to Drake’s 2016 decision to release his fourth album Views exclusively on the platform for its first full week. Driving rap fans to the platform in anticipation of the Toronto megastar’s latest offering, the deal may have resulted in Apple Music’s user base permanently slanting towards hip-hop. In June of this year, Memphis artist Moneybagg Yo, known for slick Southern trap, released the 20-track Hard to Love which promptly went #1 on Apple Music. However, his presence on Spotify was minimal, as he was the 38th most streamed artist on the platform the week the album was released, and only two songs placed in Spotify’s top 200 chart. This trend plagues many street-level rappers—for example, Rod Wave and NBA YoungBoy are chief among those with significant gaps between their Apple Music and Spotify results—but the inverse phenomenon rings true for many poppier acts, who garner massive followings on Spotify yet struggle to find traction on Apple Music. Dance-pop hitmaker Dua Lipa and singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey fall victim here, to name a few. K-pop cut “Cupid” by group FIFTY FIFTY peaked at #6 on Spotify, and is currently still top 20 there, yet the track finds itself all the way at #168 on Apple Music. Even Tyler, The Creator’s Kali Uchis-assisted “See You Again” is in the top 10 on the former and #186 on the latter. The divide isn’t genre-specific, either, as R&B songstress Summer Walker charts far better on Apple while rapper Kanye West still charts classic singles like “Bound 2” and “Heartless,” but only on Spotify. Outside of the idiosyncratic partnership between Drake and Apple Music, it’s unclear why specific fan bases are outsized on one platform or another. To make matters worse, Apple Music is very private with their figures. They have always chosen to hide daily and weekly streams, only displaying positions of songs relative to each other. A recent press disclosure revealed that the most-streamed song ever on Apple Music—Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You”—has just over 930 million streams, while Spotify has an ever-growing 419 song playlist of their aptly-named “BILLIONS CLUB,” with SZA’s 6-month-old “Kill Bill” being the most recent addition, already having amassed more streams on Spotify than any song has on Apple Music. Understandably, many see this lack of public data as an attempt of the tech giant to obscure the impression that their service plays second fiddle to Spotify. This, combined with the introduction of streaming tiers, only further clouds an already murky operation of data aggregation and cleaning overseen by Billboard week after week.
Is airplay tracking any less complicated? Providing estimated impressions for every song active on radio, all the figures in this section are credited to the industry aggregation site Kworb. The sum of gross audience impressions across all formats are summed, then divided by approximately 8,000 to arrive at that song’s radio input towards the main Hot 100 chart. A record label that actively supports their artists is incredibly important to success here, as singles need to be “sent” or actively promoted to radio in order to receive significant play. Radio darlings like Post Malone are backed by strong label support, often resulting in over-exposure. In fact, his single “Chemical” currently ranks 92nd on Spotify and 167th on Apple, yet is top ten on radio across all formats, with over 47 million impressions. Joji is an inverse example. His viral “Glimpse of Us” debuted in the Hot 100’s top ten in July of 2022, staying there for weeks thanks to a ten-day residence atop Spotify’s global streaming chart and a top-20 bow on Apple. However, radio didn’t get behind the smash until months after its streaming peak, with an airplay peak of a modest 34 million in October to go with decent Spotify presence (#21) yet a complete absence from Apple Music. Radio overestimated “Chemical” yet undershot “Glimpse of Us,” failing to reflect what consumers are really listening to. And no, this mismatch wasn’t because “Glimpse Of Us” is a slow, sad song—Adele’s comeback single “Easy on Me” predictably debuted in October of 2021 to incredible streaming heights on all platforms. Radio, even more predictably, welcomed her back with open arms, to the tune of 23.8 million audience impressions on the song’s first full day on radio and 78.3 million by the end of its first full week. Sure, Adele, after an extended hiatus, should have a big bow, but this also mirrors practices of the industry's past. Both records are slow-burn piano ballads, but “Easy on Me” had the industry backing that “Glimpse of Us” just didn’t. Radio is generally a reactive platform; many songs that statistically warrant exposure don’t get it until too late, while songs that are no longer popular on streaming will remain on the airwaves until long past their primes. An act’s prior notoriety and a timely label push represent politics that are inseparable from the outcomes of airplay exposure, and fans remain powerless to change this.
But, the arena in which fans are most powerful has always been pure sales. The physical and digital sale of music has remained the avenue for fans to feel closest to their favorite artists, and the streaming era has not changed that. Streaming a song requires no additional monetary investment on the consumer’s part, and neither does passive listening on the radio. A “sale” in the context of a single means a consumer either bought a physical copy—which doesn’t happen in today’s landscape—or a digital single on a service like iTunes for either $1.29 or a discounted $0.69. Billboard recognizes the limited number of contemporary consumers who still buy music in this format, and accordingly, the divisor for sales is extremely low relative to the others. This is currently estimated at 10, meaning ten digital copies sold nets a song one point on the Hot 100. Given that access to music is at an all-time high in the streaming era, it should not be surprising that sales numbers have recently cratered. The vast majority of songs are now expected to receive only 1–3% of their Hot 100 points from pure sales. At the same time, some artists have cultivated fan bases that take chart performance quite seriously. BTS, for example, owe significant amounts of their success to dedicated fans who buy multiple copies of their newest material. Critics of the strategy have decried it as “mass buying,” claiming that exploitation of sales loopholes is not a genuine reflection of the general population’s consumption. A memorable Hot 100 race happened in the spring of 2021 when BTS’ “Butter” clashed at the top of the chart with Olivia Rodrigo’s runaway smash “Good 4 U.” For the chart dated June 5th, 2021, “Butter” debuted at #1 with an eye-popping 242,800 pure sales and 32.2 million streams, while the second tracking week of “Good 4 U” returned about 19,000 sales with a staggering 62.3 million streams, which was good enough for #2. (For reference, only two other songs in that week’s top 25 earned more than 10,000 pure sales.) The massive “Butter” racked up about 68% of its points from those sales, while the SOUR single received only 7% from its pure tally. Undoubtedly, tens of millions more people consumed and supported the monstrously popular Rodrigo cut, but the weight of BTS’ massive sales number brought their record to the coveted #1 position.
Billboard, on their end, seems to side with the streamers, de-emphasizing sales through numerous rule changes. In an effort to control how much an artist’s “core” fanbase can impact the general chart, the company has reduced the influence of sales in three big ways. The sales divisor used to be 5 until January 2022, when it seemed to shift up to 7.5; November 2022 brought the current system of dividing sales by 10. So, for the same point total, double the sales are required now compared to just a few short years ago. The company also used to count up to four purchases of the same song by the same consumer in a single week, but (sensibly) reduced that number to one purchase per person per week. Finally, fans used to be able to buy one copy on iTunes and another copy on an artists’ website with no penalty; now, only one of those purchases is valid for the main chart. These changes suppress how much a passionate fanbase can inflate an artists’ chart performance, as the Hot 100 is intended to capture the consumption of the widest possible audience. At the same time, the new rules effectively remove the most direct path fans have to contribute to success.
Plainly, these three metrics reflect a song’s weekly performance: streaming, airplay, and sales. There’s more than one path to success on the chart, and we can look at estimates for songs currently impacting the Hot 100 to understand that. On average, songs on last week’s chart garnered about 73% of their points from streaming, 25% from radio airplay, and 2% from sales. With current estimates for the chart dated June 10th, 2023, we can see that performance in each metric varies wildly. Contributions from sales range from less than half a percent for multiple debuts from Lil Durk’s new album Almost Healed to 18% for Taylor Swift’s “Hits Different” from another Midnights reissue. Only tracks featuring either Swift or Nicki Minaj are over 10% here, a product of having passionate fanbases. Airplay contributes virtually nothing to most debuts, but Dua Lipa, a popular artist on the airwaves, launched her newest single “Dance the Night” to over 20 million impressions in its first week, good for 31% of its total. Airplay can climb upwards of 60% for songs that have earned the trust of stations nationwide: Metro Boomin’s “Creepin’” has nearly 80 million impressions accounting for 61% of its chart total. The airplay leader for the last 17 (!) weeks has been “Flowers” by Miley Cyrus, which delivered an impressive 86 million impressions that translated to an estimated 50% of its points. Streaming is the clear leader, with some entries landing on the chart exclusively from on-demand consumption. The newest offerings from Durk have negligible airplay and sales numbers, making the 13.8 million streams of “Pelle Coat,” his highest solo song this week, responsible for over 99.5% of its points. Impressively, the emotional “Something in the Orange” by Zach Bryan has 90% of its points coming from 16.1 million streams in the slow-burner’s 58th (!) week on the chart.
Consumption looks different for every song across the country, and synthesizing all this information is often a thankless job. The Hot 100, although severely flawed and private, is the best aggregation method we have, immediately becoming the industry standard upon its publishing. The definitive all-genres singles chart has had over 1,100 different songs rank at its top spot in 65 years. The current leader, Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night,” has performed well in all metrics, clocking in this week with nearly 33 million streams (#2 on Streaming Songs) 66 million airplay impressions (4th on Radio Songs) and 8,000 sales (#6 on Digital Song Sales) to extend its reign at the top of the chart to nine weeks. It will likely remain there for at least a few more weeks. What might dethrone it? No one can say for sure, but when another track takes over at #1, now you’ll know how.
artwork by Judii Hernandez.
edited by Tarun Sethi.
