Topping the Charts in the Internet Era

When, early this year, Billboard first began counting YouTube streams in its formula for determining the country’s No. 1 song, Baauer’s “Harlem Shake” immediately shot to the top of the chart—one of only fifteen songs to go straight to No. 1 in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, which has been around since 1958. This was almost entirely owing to the number of views that the goofy thirty-second video had on YouTube, as well as to all the response videos and their views, which Billboard also counts.

But was it really fair to bestow one of commercial culture’s most esteemed plaudits—an instant smash—on a composition that seemed to be more about dance than music (and wasn’t even a complete song), all because of a new methodology for measuring popularity which Billboard had just implemented? (Unlike Billboard’s album chart, which measures only sales, the Hot 100 has always blended typologically different kinds of data—at first, sales and spins, then audio streams, and now YouTube streams as well—weighting each according to a formula known only to the Billboard-chart makers.) What did this mean for the future of the august chart? In Slate, Jody Rosen asked, “Does this represent a shifting of center of pop’s center of gravity: away from megastars to weird up-and-comers, one-offs, novelty acts, Rick-Rollers?”

Eight months later, that hasn’t happened yet. True, “The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?),” a novelty song by a pair of Norwegian comedians (and brothers) who call themselves Ylvis, is creeping up the chart, threatening to upset the pop divas who roost at the top. But, for now, the top three songs in the country are pleasant, clean, middle-of-the-road ballads that both kids and parents can take pleasure in. Lorde’s song “Royals,” Katy Perry’s “Roar,” and Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball” are hardly novelties. If anything, they aren’t novel enough.

Dr. Luke, whom I wrote about in this week’s magazine, is the co-author of two of those songs, “Roar” and “Wrecking Ball.” That “Royals” topped both of them in this week’s Billboard chart is seen by some as proof that an artist who writes and controls her own material, as Lorde does, trumps the artists who bring in song-making mercenaries like Dr. Luke to help them generate hits. But it would be a mistake to read the chart that way.

What’s perhaps most interesting to chart watchers about these three songs is that each leads in only one of the three data categories. “Royals” has the most digital downloads; “Roar” has the most radio spins; and “Wrecking Ball” has the most streams. So which song is the most popular, and how on earth can Billboard tell? Last week, it was “Wrecking Ball”: the many millions who watched Cyrus swinging naked on a giant steel ball, in Terry Richardson’s video, pushed the song to the top, even though it was only the thirty-first-most-played song on the radio, where “Roar” continues to rule. But this week “Royals” is the topper, thanks to its digital sales. Of course, in sheer numeric terms, Lorde’s sales are far fewer than Cyrus’s streams, but they count for much more in the formula. Exactly how many YouTube views equals one $1.29 download is a mystery known only to Billboard’s high priests.

As popular music continues to transition from an album-based industry to a singles-based one, a new taxonomy of pop songs may develop. Some songs will be made explicitly for radio, while others will be tailored for streaming, and still others intended for downloading. Radio songs will have thunderous choruses, like “Roar” ’s, that will fill stadium-size emotional needs; streaming songs will be whispery ballads that are best heard in your headphones; and the downloadable music will be aimed at older audiences who have yet to embrace the idea of paying for access. Just as Netflix uses data about when people stop watching certain shows to inform programming decisions, so perhaps Spotify and Pandora will use the wealth of information that streaming offers—these services know how many times someone listens to a song, and how long they listen each time—to back-engineer hit songs. You’re a band with a song and you think the chorus doesn’t come soon enough? Let YouTube tell you the answer.

When I was with Dr. Luke in his studio, I was a little surprised at first at how much time he spent studying the charts. He wasn’t tracking his own songs’ progress; it was more like he was trying to understand how the whole ecosystem works. After a while, I realized that what he was really doing was attempting to divine the future of pop music, through a sort of numbers-based augury. The Hot 100, which has always been a reliable indicator of what’s hot now, also holds a clue of what’s to come.

Above: Katy Perry. Photograph by Daniel Zuchnik/FilmMagic/Getty.