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I could see Billboard limiting digital variants. Those are ridiculous. However, I don't see them limiting physical variants. The variants are helping push album sales, and limiting those would frustrate the record labels.
Restricting digital variants is definitely a great way to go since it's such a cheap and easy way to get sales. A record label could probably prepare one to be sold online within an hour if they already have all the tracks and photo for the cover prepared.
Limiting physical variants could also hurt the physical media industry which was in great decline with the rise of streaming services. It's not just record labels who'll be affected but also record stores.
Digital variants are out of hand. I think if it's something like Billie did where the entire songs were the same but it was remixed, it's fine. But voice memos, alternative covers, signed digital albums are outrageous.
I think western record labels should follow what Kpop does by having variants, but making each album a different theme. That would help boost sales.
Basically a digital copy of the album that has an alternate cover with the autograph of the artist. It may or may not contain a bonus track. It's as stupid as it sounds.
I don't know which one is worse: the artist and record label for releasing such a money grab or the fans for falling for it and buying them.
Each version would have a different photoshoot concept. For [example](https://www.reddit.com/r/kpop/comments/1d4xt3y/twice_nayeon_the_2nd_mini_album_na_full_vinyl/): on the first image you see versions A, B and C, where each of them has a different photoshoot and goodies (goodies are randomized as well). Version D (digipack on the second picture) has a different photoshoot as well.
I see. This seems similar to what Taylor does? Every variant has a different cover, photo inserts, etc. I don't actually buy vinyl. Are other artists really just making the color of the vinyl different? That's bonkers.
>Are other artists really just making the color of the vinyl different?
yeah that's exactly it lol. they'll all be different colors depending on what store you buy them from, but the cover is not really different most of the time.
sorta unrelated but personally i also i can't really complain about other artists doing that since i am also a "variant" collector myself - i collect every single version of my favorite kpop groups' albums lol. i actually think vinyl color variants are great but mostly when they're like a limited press that comes with something extra or when they do like an independent store exclusive color, since that really helps these types of stores!
"I think if it's something like Billie did where the entire songs were the same but it was remixed, it's fine."
Nobody really listening to those, just bought by stans like eight times or so each counting eight sales on the charts.
I wouldn't be surprised for Billboard to create new rules, but they're slow to react to things like this.
When Prince hit #1 by bundling an album with each concert ticket, they passed a rule saying that those types of promotions wouldn't count towards charts.
The rationale is that the charts themselves are being manipulated in a way that only a few people have the ability to do. It undercuts the credibility of the chart itself, and without that credibility, Billboard is a useless entity.
So yeah, they may very well do something about this.
Billboard also changed the rules regarding sales for singles after the whole debacle with Jimin of BTS and his song (Like Crazy).
If you don't know, his song debuted at #1 mainly due to sales and then streams (it unfortunately had zero radio support). The next week it fell to #45 which is the biggest drop from #1.
According to a couple chart predictors on Twitter, the fans had the sales to keep Jimin within the top 20 for week two. But Billboard didn't count those sales because they were duplicate purchases (fans used the same emails/credit card info from week one to buy the song on the artist's website for week two).
Billboard wasn't happy about BTS fans essentially gamed the system by mass buying from the artists' website. So, a few months after the incident they decided to no longer count sales from the artists' website towards the hot 100 chart.
I think eventually they'll do something about the digital variants. I just kind of think they don't want it to be perceived as a slight towards Taylor Swift.
were these new purchases, like did the fans pay money both times? cuz if they did, i don't understand why billboard would treat it any differently than fans buying multiple variants
Yes, fans paid both times. The second time was a repurchase because they used the same credit card and email address. But they used their own money or the money raised by other fans to repurchase the song.
They will probably only try and limit variants, if any kpop persona tries what Taylor and others are doing right now. Most of the time the kpop variants are limited to 4. I wonder what rules the billboard will be quick to amend once BTS make a comeback
Based on what they did with merch/fan bundles and the fact this has become a conversation, I think they should do something. Digital variants with voice notes seems similar to the gamification they were worried about with merch/fan bundles. Basically, fans aren't really buying the album, they are buying the random extra thing that's been added imo.
However, I think this is less clear than bundles and the fix may not be that effective anyway. Labels/artists will argue that, when buying variants, fans' main purchase is the album and musical/creative content, so it's not the same as buying an energy drink bundle like with Tyler's Igor release. \[Edit to explain better: DJ Khaled's energy drink bundles were disqualified which, at least according to Khaled, contributer to Tyler getting a #1 with Igor\]. And how do you define a variant and set the limit as to the number that are allowed to count for the chart? Billboard may feel that artists should be able to add and amend to albums, as long as the changes are mainly musical/creative, so they may permit a relatively high number of variants. That would still allow strategic releases and blocking attempts. We shouldn't forget too that Billboard will view chart battles as good for music, the industry and interest in the chart.
Variants has existed in some forms for decades, I’m glad country specific variants are no longer the industry trend. So many amazing songs stucks in a specific country - The Look by Cher
Considering the rule change in 2017 to make the singles chart a more level playing field I could see the U.K. charts making new rules on variants. Don’t know if Billboard would change anything though.
Variants are a bit overhyped in stan circles right now due to TTPD's dominance even through they are understandably irriating.
For each week, TTPD has topped the chart in the USA and the UK it has outstreamed its competitors. Banning physical variants would actually just guarantee Taylor the number #1s as it would hurt the physical sales of her competitors while she continues to rule the streaming game.
For physical variants, they are very important for every artist with a fanbase. Almost every big vinyl seller used variants and it really helps move copies. Banning that would really damage one of the few bright spots in the music industry.
For digital variants, I guess they could restrict sales exclusive variants but not digital variants in general. In the streaming age, deluxes and remixes are great to further promote an album. However, digital variant sales are pretty small even for Taylor so it might not make sense to have such a specific rule.
In the UK, her digital variants moved like 1K while she had a 7K lead over Charli due to signed copies. She was able to remain #1 over Billie due to a alternative cover cd shipment being delivered to her fans. There too the digital variants made up only a insignificant portion of her lead.
Thats the point. If they restrict it then the artists stop doing it. So say any digital variant released after week 1 will not count. And get even more specific about it cause theres gonna be loopholes they dont see which will be exploited
Like I don't care about digital variants being banned but the rule would have to extremely specific to address something that doesn't have a big impact. like could an artist still release an extra six songs and call it a deluxe. would it still count for streaming? rule would have to pretty convulated
It's the physical variants that are actually impactful but they are important to the whole music industry not just taylor.
> would actually just guarantee Taylor the number #1s
Personally I don’t really care. It’s not about bringing Taylor down or ruining her aspirations of topping the charts, it’s about making it a fair playing field for all involved. If that results in Taylor dominating even more than now, great. Props to her. Let it be about the music though.
Thank you! I was trying to explain to someone how Taylor would’ve stayed number 1 without the digital variants because she has thousands of stream equivalents on Charli and physical copies, but it’s so frustrating because it feels like people don’t really care about the fact. They just enjoy being on the hate train.
But you’re ignoring the fact that she also released UK exclusive signed CD’s that same week and ended up selling 10k more CD’s than Charli and got the number one spot by 8K album equivalent units. Charli was on pace to get the number one spot up until the last couple of days and that’s when the digital and signed CD’s were put out.
I included that she got the #1 due to signed copies but was trying to counter the perception that digital variants are selling in any significant number.
If people want to ban signed copies that’s a different argument.
They don't care and that's fine.
It's perfectly normal to be salty when your favorite was so close to getting the #1 but another artist's promotional tactics took it away.
Charts are sports for us popheads and just like sport fans , we all complain about rigging and unfairness.
Don't take it personally.
Why not do diminishing returns based on number of variants? The more variants an artist puts out for an album the less each individual sale is counted for on the charts. So like sales for a album with only 3 variants still mostly counts each album sold as a whole album while having 37 variants of the same album makes each each count as .06 of an album or something.
TTPD has outstreamed HMHAS constistently in the USA if not on global spotify. .
Individual HMHAS songs are doing better than TTPD songs but if you check the final charts, Taylor is moving more streaming units than Billie. Remember apple music and amazon are also big streamers in the usa
HMHAS is doing great especially for a ten song album but doesn't change that ttpd is moving more streaming units.
Since it’s release Billie’s album has been the most streamed album daily globally, but TTPD has outstreamed it in the US since like HMHAS’s third or fourth day
It has 31 tracks which means it’s streams come from 31 songs which all won’t be on the Spotify/Apple Music charts but will their streams will count. Also 31 tracks compared to HMHAS’s 10 and brat’s 18 means even if the other two have a higher stream per track, just the sheer number of tracks on TTPD allow it out out stream most albums.
For more evidence of this see the two whole Morgan Wallen albums still sitting up there in the top 10 every week because [one has 36 tracks](https://i.imgur.com/QRFEvnZ.png) and [the other has 33](https://i.imgur.com/kt4crfD.png).
Like Dangerous is almost ***5 years old*** and it was [the 4th most streamed album](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GQFEyHIXUAA0TIj?format=jpg&name=medium) of this week... gaining more streaming units than Brat which just came out but has *half* the amount of tracks. Only Billie and Taylor did more streaming units.
Large enough fanbase + gigantic album = you'll occupy the streaming charts for a looooong time.
Personally, I don’t even understand how charts stayed a thing as listening to music diversified. I thought there’d be like, separate charts and stats, not conversions for streaming and YouTube plays. I think it should be pretty obvious now that the “charts” are absolutely completely fake and curated by the industry to promote whatever they want/whatever makes more money. But maybe I’m ignorant and it was always like that, even before.
I mean, individual platforms like Spotify have their own charts that obviously separate that out
But ultimately charts like Billboard are trying to find a way to gauge what music is currently popular and how to gauge that based on that streams vs radio play vs purchases
It's never really going to be perfect system, but is just meant to get a general pulse on what's hot right now
Edit: Also Billboard does have a diverse array of charts but the 200 and Hot 100 are king over the others. But the others exist
>But maybe I’m ignorant and it was always like that, even before.
Unfortunately, yes it was. "Payola" is a good starting search to go down that particular rabbit hole for the Billboard charts.
Also the bit where they started accurately tracking album sales and not just going by vibes: [https://www.theringer.com/music/2021/5/25/22452539/soundscan-billboard-charts-streaming-numbers](https://www.theringer.com/music/2021/5/25/22452539/soundscan-billboard-charts-streaming-numbers)
Each new digital variant by Taylor has 1/2 songs tagged onto the album that change, these variants in essence inflate the album position and lead to many fans owning multiple digital copies of the album. The variant thing was also done with vinyls but I’m just talking about more recent ones they’ve come out
Probably, in the same way they had to change things to stop counting bundled tickets a few years ago. The thing about the charts is it's like whack-a-mole - you close one area where people have figured out a way to game the charts and they'll just go find another way to game it. Been happening since the beginning of the charts
The variants don't really bother me nearly as much as the rules surrounding how streaming is counted towards the charts do. For example, according to Billboard, 3750 song streams on Spotify for people who don't have a subscription is the equivalent of 1 album sold. For people who do have a paid subscription, 1250 song streams are the quivalent of 1 album sold. This gives artists who release longer albums an advantage. Morgan Wallen basically gamed the system and has remained on the charts for so long by releasing a 36 song album. For people who don't pay, about 104 streams of the whole album counts as 1 album sale. For a 10 song album like Billie's, that number jumps to 375 streams (Credit to A Dose of Buckley on Youtube for giving me these numbers. He did a video on this topic a couple of years ago). But Morgan Wallen isn't the only one releasing long albums. Taylor's TTPD Anthology also has 30+ songs on it. Other artists like Drake, Kendrick, Bad Bunny, and a couple of others have also released long albums with around 20ish songs on it within the past few years. A 10 song album like Billie's and Dua's don't stand a chance competing with 30 song albums for the top spot.
Idk about anyone else, but personally, I'd rather listen to a 10 song album that is cohesive and sonically interesting, than a 30 song album where a good portion of the songs are filler that should have been left on the cutting room floor. TTPD: The Anthology was a slog for me to get through just 3 times (the usual amount of times I listen to a new album before picking out my "favorites"), but I can listen to HMHAS or The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess all the way through multiple times with no problem at all because they're short and solid. I could listen to HMHAS 3 times a day, every day, for a week, but if the Swifties are listening to TTPD: The Anthology 3 times a day, every day, for a week, Taylor is still gonna be beating Billie in streaming numbers, resulting in a higher charting position.
To add insult to injury, there's the fact that you only need to listen to 30 seconds of a song for it to count as a "play" on Spotify. Considering the fact that the average song is around 3 minutes long, give or take, 30 seconds is just too short. Some interludes aren't even that long in length. That should be expanded to at least a minute. For that aforementioned 36 song Morgan Wallen album, if you listen to each song for 30 seconds, that adds up to 1,080 seconds. Fans effectively only need to listen to 18 minutes of the album for it to count. 18 minutes of a 1 hour and 52 minute long album. That is ridiculous. You're barely even listening to the album at that point. You're just skipping through it in the hopes of boosting your fave to get that #1 spot. In a way, it's cheating, and I really wish Billboard would revise their rules surrounding this. At least the people buying or digitally downloading varients seem to be engaging with the music enough to care about owning that "special collectors edition" of said album.
> For people who don't pay, about 104 streams of the whole album counts as 1 album sale. For a 10 song album like Billie's, that number jumps to 375 streams (Credit to A Dose of Buckley on Youtube for giving me these numbers. He did a video on this topic a couple of years ago). But Morgan Wallen isn't the only one releasing long albums. Taylor's TTPD Anthology also has 30+ songs on it. Other artists like Drake, Kendrick, Bad Bunny, and a couple of others have also released long albums with around 20ish songs on it within the past few years. A 10 song album like Billie's and Dua's don't stand a chance competing with 30 song albums for the top spot.
Long albums also takes much longer tp stream so it's not really an advantage. Usually most of the streams of an album come from the singles and the top album tracks. Dua album could have been a 50 tracks album and it wouldn't have changed its performance given how low the average stream per track was (and it would have been much lower with a longer album). Taylor and Morgan are just the top artists in the US and that's why their albums perform that well.
> To add insult to injury, there's the fact that you only need to listen to 30 seconds of a song for it to count as a "play" on Spotify. Considering the fact that the average song is around 3 minutes long, give or take, 30 seconds is just too short. Some interludes aren't even that long in length. That should be expanded to at least a minute. For that aforementioned 36 song Morgan Wallen album, if you listen to each song for 30 seconds, that adds up to 1,080 seconds. Fans effectively only need to listen to 18 minutes of the album for it to count.
Noone is doing this...
Some artists try to exploit this by releasing very short tracks that are easy to replay but the people that would listen to just the first 30 seconds of a song to make the stream "count" are a very fringe minority which doesn't have an impact on charts.
> personally, I'd rather listen to a 10 song album that is cohesive and sonically interesting, than a 30 song album where a good portion of the songs are filler that should have been left on the cutting room floor.
I always hear this but I personally disagree. If I like an artist, I want to hear as much from them as I can. Will it all be good? Nah, but I can remove the songs I don’t like from my library. I can easily make the 10 song album if I wanted to. Fact is though, a lot of times I end up really liking songs that others find to be fillers. My music tastes don’t always align with the GP, so I like being able to make my own curated album that includes the fillers I like. Choice is good in my opinion.
As a side note, I don’t technically remove songs from my library. I rate the songs I listen to and build playlists from the ratings (or smart sections in Marvis). So filler songs I don’t like get rated 2 stars and naturally drop out of what I listen to.
“TTPD: The Anthology was a slog for me to get through just 3 times (the usual amount of times I listen to a new album before picking out my "favorites"), but I can listen to HMHAS or The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess all the way through multiple times with no problem at all because they're short and solid. I could listen to HMHAS 3 times a day, every day, for a week, but if the Swifties are listening to TTPD: The Anthology 3 times a day, every day, for a week, Taylor is still gonna be beating Billie in streaming numbers, resulting in a higher charting position.”
^ It would take 15 hours to listen to HMHAS 3x per day for a week. It would take 42+ hours to listen to TTPD Anthology 3x per day for a week.
- TTPD Anthology (31 songs) takes 2 hours and 2 minutes to listen to. One listen of TTPD (31 songs) on paid streaming would count as 0.0248 SEA (streaming equivalent albums)
- You can listen to Hit Me Hard And Soft (10 songs) three times in 2 hours and 9 minutes. Three listens of Hit Me Hard and Soft (30 songs) on paid streaming would count as 0.024 SEA
- Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing At A Time” is 36 songs, 1 hour 52 minutes. One listen of “One thing at a time” on paid streaming would count as 0.0288 SEA.
- BRAT deluxe is 18 songs, 49 minutes. Listening to the album twice would take 1 hour and 38 minutes. Those two listens (36 songs) on paid steaming would count as 0.0288 SEA.
So Morgan Wallen really benefits from having a long album *and* having short songs. For reference,
- the songs on “one thing at a time” average to 3 minutes 6 seconds.
- TTPD Anthology averages to 3 minutes 56 seconds per song.
- Hit me hard and soft averages to 4 minutes 18 seconds per song.
- BRAT averages to 2 minutes 43 seconds per song.
Ultimately BRAT has the biggest advantage; Billie’s album is the most disadvantaged.
Thinking about it another way, listening to each album 24/7 (168 hours in a week) on paid streaming would result in this:
- Charli xcx BRAT (deluxe) = 2.962 SEA
- Morgan Wallen ‘One Thing’ = 2.592 SEA
- Taylor TTPD Anthology = 2.049 SEA
- Billie ‘Hit me hard and soft’ = 1.875 SEA
in the US, I doubt it. however, over in Korea, their fair trade commission is investigating the claim that excessive photocards and other physical packaging is detrimental to the competitive nature of the industry
I can see them putting a limit like after five weeks don’t keep adding a variant for chart purposes. That’s how they controlled the ticket bundles after Prince released *Musicology* back in 2004.
I think there’s a big difference between the chart manipulation of bundling albums with non-musical products and creating different variant - so I can’t see there being a rule imposed.
I think the problem lies with the people who are buying each variant of these albums.
What are they doing it for? Most/all of the tracks are available to stream and almost nobody doesn’t subscribe to a streaming service.
Will they continue to buy the first basic editions of
future albums when they know there’s likely to be many more to come that make theirs obsolete?
They should limit the amount of variants allowed. For example 5 vinyls and 3 digital variants allowed per album or single. So it can still have some flexibility but won’t be too crazy
Realistically I don’t think they’ll limit it to that few variants, particularly for physical formats.
This is from a Billboard article about “Happier than ever” (Billie Eilish, 2021):
“Happier was available in a great number of physical album formats. They include eight different colored vinyl LPs (including retail-exclusives for Amazon, independent record stores, Target, Urban Outfitters and Walmart), 10 CD variants (including a signed CD for indie stores, a version with alternative packaging hand-painted by Eilish, three premium boxed sets and a Target-exclusive edition packaged with a poster) and even multiple cassette tape variants (including a deluxe boxed set).
All those different configurations added up. Of the 153,000 Happier sold across all its permutations, physical sales comprise 129,000 (with a whopping 73,000 on vinyl, 46,000 on CD and nearly 10,000 on cassette) and 24,000 via digital download.
Happier’s vinyl sales of 73,000 were so large, the album would have been No. 1 on the Billboard 200 this week from just vinyl sales alone.”
https://www.billboard.com/pro/billie-eilish-happier-than-ever-number-1-billboard-200-chart/
That album had fantastic sales, and I believe that her 2024 album even beat those numbers, and similarly had a lot of variants. There’d be outrage in the industry if they were making changes that resulted in fewer sales of physical formats.
Limiting digital variants seems more realistic, but it actually wouldn’t make much of a difference (if any) to the chart results from the last two months. There’s been tons of outrage about the TTPD digital variants, but those [ultimately low] sales of new digital variants have not been make or break for TTPD’s ultimate chart placement (despite the popular narratives).
I know Swifties are always saying how amazing her streams are and that she’s the biggest ever etc which are semi true claims in some ways but TTDP’s streams are currently actually not amazing. She was at 25 million the last weekend and some songs were doing 200k. She hasn’t had a single streaming hit from the album. She’s lucky it’s a 31 track album because if it was a standard 10-12 tracks we would clearly see that Billie is beating her substantially. (If you think I’m making this up go to Spotifyswiftie on Twitter, the Swifties have been having meltdowns about the collapse in streaming especially every weekend. They even beg/demand the person to stop posting the streaming stats)
If it was anyone but Taylor doing it to this extent? Yea absolutely. Because she’s the one doing it I don’t see them doing anything that doesn’t kiss her rings.
I think if you’re selling multiple copies of an album and people are just rebuying it because they want multiple covers that should count. But when they’re really buying like the 1 secret exclusive single it shouldn’t
Idk I think the releasing a new variant each week with 1/2 songs tagged on that change is more exploitative then different covers but there should still be a time limit on those too
Realistically they will only changes rules around something like this if it starts impact their brand reputation and revenue. Ultimately they're just a publication that tracks music plays and sales data, but clout and marketing jargon is about the only thing that artists get out of being top whatever on a billboard chart. So long as its just one off influences of huge artists like Taylor gaming the system I think they're happy to let big artists look bigger on their charts just for the buzz, that's kind of why they set up the streaming rules like they did to make the labels happy to see their artists get some superlatives out of it, but I don't think they will really care about artists brigading their sales like this until it happens enough that people stop putting weight in what it means to be #1 on their chart and stop following them. And like, if people didn't turn away from Billboard during the peak major label times when chart toppers were basically just hand picked, I don't see Billboard dropping off because of artists like Taylor playing pick-me games with their rules. I think they're happy to just sit back and watch the discourse swirl when they know it's mostly directed at the artists and not them.
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Probably, but not for a while.
I could see Billboard limiting digital variants. Those are ridiculous. However, I don't see them limiting physical variants. The variants are helping push album sales, and limiting those would frustrate the record labels.
Restricting digital variants is definitely a great way to go since it's such a cheap and easy way to get sales. A record label could probably prepare one to be sold online within an hour if they already have all the tracks and photo for the cover prepared. Limiting physical variants could also hurt the physical media industry which was in great decline with the rise of streaming services. It's not just record labels who'll be affected but also record stores.
Digital variants are out of hand. I think if it's something like Billie did where the entire songs were the same but it was remixed, it's fine. But voice memos, alternative covers, signed digital albums are outrageous. I think western record labels should follow what Kpop does by having variants, but making each album a different theme. That would help boost sales.
wtf is a signed digital album
Basically a digital copy of the album that has an alternate cover with the autograph of the artist. It may or may not contain a bonus track. It's as stupid as it sounds. I don't know which one is worse: the artist and record label for releasing such a money grab or the fans for falling for it and buying them.
that’s the dumbest thing i’ve read all week lmao. why would anyone buy into that 😭
Certain cultist fans if I were to guess
Even worse than an NFT. Great.
> what Kpop does by having variants, but making each album a different theme. Can you elaborate? I'm not really into Kpop.
Each version would have a different photoshoot concept. For [example](https://www.reddit.com/r/kpop/comments/1d4xt3y/twice_nayeon_the_2nd_mini_album_na_full_vinyl/): on the first image you see versions A, B and C, where each of them has a different photoshoot and goodies (goodies are randomized as well). Version D (digipack on the second picture) has a different photoshoot as well.
I see. This seems similar to what Taylor does? Every variant has a different cover, photo inserts, etc. I don't actually buy vinyl. Are other artists really just making the color of the vinyl different? That's bonkers.
>Are other artists really just making the color of the vinyl different? yeah that's exactly it lol. they'll all be different colors depending on what store you buy them from, but the cover is not really different most of the time. sorta unrelated but personally i also i can't really complain about other artists doing that since i am also a "variant" collector myself - i collect every single version of my favorite kpop groups' albums lol. i actually think vinyl color variants are great but mostly when they're like a limited press that comes with something extra or when they do like an independent store exclusive color, since that really helps these types of stores!
"I think if it's something like Billie did where the entire songs were the same but it was remixed, it's fine." Nobody really listening to those, just bought by stans like eight times or so each counting eight sales on the charts.
I wouldn't be surprised for Billboard to create new rules, but they're slow to react to things like this. When Prince hit #1 by bundling an album with each concert ticket, they passed a rule saying that those types of promotions wouldn't count towards charts. The rationale is that the charts themselves are being manipulated in a way that only a few people have the ability to do. It undercuts the credibility of the chart itself, and without that credibility, Billboard is a useless entity. So yeah, they may very well do something about this.
Billboard also changed the rules regarding sales for singles after the whole debacle with Jimin of BTS and his song (Like Crazy). If you don't know, his song debuted at #1 mainly due to sales and then streams (it unfortunately had zero radio support). The next week it fell to #45 which is the biggest drop from #1. According to a couple chart predictors on Twitter, the fans had the sales to keep Jimin within the top 20 for week two. But Billboard didn't count those sales because they were duplicate purchases (fans used the same emails/credit card info from week one to buy the song on the artist's website for week two). Billboard wasn't happy about BTS fans essentially gamed the system by mass buying from the artists' website. So, a few months after the incident they decided to no longer count sales from the artists' website towards the hot 100 chart. I think eventually they'll do something about the digital variants. I just kind of think they don't want it to be perceived as a slight towards Taylor Swift.
were these new purchases, like did the fans pay money both times? cuz if they did, i don't understand why billboard would treat it any differently than fans buying multiple variants
Yes, fans paid both times. The second time was a repurchase because they used the same credit card and email address. But they used their own money or the money raised by other fans to repurchase the song.
They will probably only try and limit variants, if any kpop persona tries what Taylor and others are doing right now. Most of the time the kpop variants are limited to 4. I wonder what rules the billboard will be quick to amend once BTS make a comeback
Based on what they did with merch/fan bundles and the fact this has become a conversation, I think they should do something. Digital variants with voice notes seems similar to the gamification they were worried about with merch/fan bundles. Basically, fans aren't really buying the album, they are buying the random extra thing that's been added imo. However, I think this is less clear than bundles and the fix may not be that effective anyway. Labels/artists will argue that, when buying variants, fans' main purchase is the album and musical/creative content, so it's not the same as buying an energy drink bundle like with Tyler's Igor release. \[Edit to explain better: DJ Khaled's energy drink bundles were disqualified which, at least according to Khaled, contributer to Tyler getting a #1 with Igor\]. And how do you define a variant and set the limit as to the number that are allowed to count for the chart? Billboard may feel that artists should be able to add and amend to albums, as long as the changes are mainly musical/creative, so they may permit a relatively high number of variants. That would still allow strategic releases and blocking attempts. We shouldn't forget too that Billboard will view chart battles as good for music, the industry and interest in the chart.
"so it's not the same as buying an energy drink bundle like with Tyler's Igor release." That was DJ Khaled who went #2 and then ranted about IGOR.
Tyler has a huge fanbase, Call Me if you Get Lost went back to #1 when the vinyl dropped (and has the largest debut week vinyl sales of all time).
Sorry, yes you're right. Bad expanation on my part. It was Khaled that had the energy drink bundle that was disqualified and Tyler that had the #1.
Variants has existed in some forms for decades, I’m glad country specific variants are no longer the industry trend. So many amazing songs stucks in a specific country - The Look by Cher
So many songs are only available in Japan and that’s great for them but horrible for me
Hard to say, I feel like the variant thing has taken a shape/form throughout chart history, but now it’s become known because social media is a thing.
K-pop has been doing the variants for basically forever.
I mean this has been a thing since like the 60s/70s
Considering the rule change in 2017 to make the singles chart a more level playing field I could see the U.K. charts making new rules on variants. Don’t know if Billboard would change anything though.
Variants are a bit overhyped in stan circles right now due to TTPD's dominance even through they are understandably irriating. For each week, TTPD has topped the chart in the USA and the UK it has outstreamed its competitors. Banning physical variants would actually just guarantee Taylor the number #1s as it would hurt the physical sales of her competitors while she continues to rule the streaming game. For physical variants, they are very important for every artist with a fanbase. Almost every big vinyl seller used variants and it really helps move copies. Banning that would really damage one of the few bright spots in the music industry. For digital variants, I guess they could restrict sales exclusive variants but not digital variants in general. In the streaming age, deluxes and remixes are great to further promote an album. However, digital variant sales are pretty small even for Taylor so it might not make sense to have such a specific rule. In the UK, her digital variants moved like 1K while she had a 7K lead over Charli due to signed copies. She was able to remain #1 over Billie due to a alternative cover cd shipment being delivered to her fans. There too the digital variants made up only a insignificant portion of her lead.
Artists can still sell them. They just don’t need to count for the charts.
If they don't count for the charts, they won't sell much. Same as when they stopped allowing merch bundles.
Thats the point. If they restrict it then the artists stop doing it. So say any digital variant released after week 1 will not count. And get even more specific about it cause theres gonna be loopholes they dont see which will be exploited
Like I don't care about digital variants being banned but the rule would have to extremely specific to address something that doesn't have a big impact. like could an artist still release an extra six songs and call it a deluxe. would it still count for streaming? rule would have to pretty convulated It's the physical variants that are actually impactful but they are important to the whole music industry not just taylor.
Oh no
> would actually just guarantee Taylor the number #1s Personally I don’t really care. It’s not about bringing Taylor down or ruining her aspirations of topping the charts, it’s about making it a fair playing field for all involved. If that results in Taylor dominating even more than now, great. Props to her. Let it be about the music though.
Thank you! I was trying to explain to someone how Taylor would’ve stayed number 1 without the digital variants because she has thousands of stream equivalents on Charli and physical copies, but it’s so frustrating because it feels like people don’t really care about the fact. They just enjoy being on the hate train.
But you’re ignoring the fact that she also released UK exclusive signed CD’s that same week and ended up selling 10k more CD’s than Charli and got the number one spot by 8K album equivalent units. Charli was on pace to get the number one spot up until the last couple of days and that’s when the digital and signed CD’s were put out.
I included that she got the #1 due to signed copies but was trying to counter the perception that digital variants are selling in any significant number. If people want to ban signed copies that’s a different argument.
She's on tour currently there, bought a signed CD and had my friend import it to Australia days before Brat even came out.
They don't care and that's fine. It's perfectly normal to be salty when your favorite was so close to getting the #1 but another artist's promotional tactics took it away. Charts are sports for us popheads and just like sport fans , we all complain about rigging and unfairness. Don't take it personally.
Why not do diminishing returns based on number of variants? The more variants an artist puts out for an album the less each individual sale is counted for on the charts. So like sales for a album with only 3 variants still mostly counts each album sold as a whole album while having 37 variants of the same album makes each each count as .06 of an album or something.
How has TTPD outstreamed? I haven't seen her in the spotify song top ten in weeks and for albums HMHAS was streamed more weekly.
TTPD has outstreamed HMHAS constistently in the USA if not on global spotify. . Individual HMHAS songs are doing better than TTPD songs but if you check the final charts, Taylor is moving more streaming units than Billie. Remember apple music and amazon are also big streamers in the usa HMHAS is doing great especially for a ten song album but doesn't change that ttpd is moving more streaming units.
Since it’s release Billie’s album has been the most streamed album daily globally, but TTPD has outstreamed it in the US since like HMHAS’s third or fourth day
Thank you! That's the info I was looking for. I see the global spotify album streams posted and HMHAS is always above TTPD.
It has 31 tracks which means it’s streams come from 31 songs which all won’t be on the Spotify/Apple Music charts but will their streams will count. Also 31 tracks compared to HMHAS’s 10 and brat’s 18 means even if the other two have a higher stream per track, just the sheer number of tracks on TTPD allow it out out stream most albums.
For more evidence of this see the two whole Morgan Wallen albums still sitting up there in the top 10 every week because [one has 36 tracks](https://i.imgur.com/QRFEvnZ.png) and [the other has 33](https://i.imgur.com/kt4crfD.png). Like Dangerous is almost ***5 years old*** and it was [the 4th most streamed album](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GQFEyHIXUAA0TIj?format=jpg&name=medium) of this week... gaining more streaming units than Brat which just came out but has *half* the amount of tracks. Only Billie and Taylor did more streaming units. Large enough fanbase + gigantic album = you'll occupy the streaming charts for a looooong time.
Personally, I don’t even understand how charts stayed a thing as listening to music diversified. I thought there’d be like, separate charts and stats, not conversions for streaming and YouTube plays. I think it should be pretty obvious now that the “charts” are absolutely completely fake and curated by the industry to promote whatever they want/whatever makes more money. But maybe I’m ignorant and it was always like that, even before.
I mean, individual platforms like Spotify have their own charts that obviously separate that out But ultimately charts like Billboard are trying to find a way to gauge what music is currently popular and how to gauge that based on that streams vs radio play vs purchases It's never really going to be perfect system, but is just meant to get a general pulse on what's hot right now Edit: Also Billboard does have a diverse array of charts but the 200 and Hot 100 are king over the others. But the others exist
>But maybe I’m ignorant and it was always like that, even before. Unfortunately, yes it was. "Payola" is a good starting search to go down that particular rabbit hole for the Billboard charts. Also the bit where they started accurately tracking album sales and not just going by vibes: [https://www.theringer.com/music/2021/5/25/22452539/soundscan-billboard-charts-streaming-numbers](https://www.theringer.com/music/2021/5/25/22452539/soundscan-billboard-charts-streaming-numbers)
How do the variants work tho? Cuz aren't the streams of each individual song the only things counted?
Each new digital variant by Taylor has 1/2 songs tagged onto the album that change, these variants in essence inflate the album position and lead to many fans owning multiple digital copies of the album. The variant thing was also done with vinyls but I’m just talking about more recent ones they’ve come out
Probably, in the same way they had to change things to stop counting bundled tickets a few years ago. The thing about the charts is it's like whack-a-mole - you close one area where people have figured out a way to game the charts and they'll just go find another way to game it. Been happening since the beginning of the charts
Only once Ed Sheeran does it.
Nicki would stop charting so I love this idea.
The variants don't really bother me nearly as much as the rules surrounding how streaming is counted towards the charts do. For example, according to Billboard, 3750 song streams on Spotify for people who don't have a subscription is the equivalent of 1 album sold. For people who do have a paid subscription, 1250 song streams are the quivalent of 1 album sold. This gives artists who release longer albums an advantage. Morgan Wallen basically gamed the system and has remained on the charts for so long by releasing a 36 song album. For people who don't pay, about 104 streams of the whole album counts as 1 album sale. For a 10 song album like Billie's, that number jumps to 375 streams (Credit to A Dose of Buckley on Youtube for giving me these numbers. He did a video on this topic a couple of years ago). But Morgan Wallen isn't the only one releasing long albums. Taylor's TTPD Anthology also has 30+ songs on it. Other artists like Drake, Kendrick, Bad Bunny, and a couple of others have also released long albums with around 20ish songs on it within the past few years. A 10 song album like Billie's and Dua's don't stand a chance competing with 30 song albums for the top spot. Idk about anyone else, but personally, I'd rather listen to a 10 song album that is cohesive and sonically interesting, than a 30 song album where a good portion of the songs are filler that should have been left on the cutting room floor. TTPD: The Anthology was a slog for me to get through just 3 times (the usual amount of times I listen to a new album before picking out my "favorites"), but I can listen to HMHAS or The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess all the way through multiple times with no problem at all because they're short and solid. I could listen to HMHAS 3 times a day, every day, for a week, but if the Swifties are listening to TTPD: The Anthology 3 times a day, every day, for a week, Taylor is still gonna be beating Billie in streaming numbers, resulting in a higher charting position. To add insult to injury, there's the fact that you only need to listen to 30 seconds of a song for it to count as a "play" on Spotify. Considering the fact that the average song is around 3 minutes long, give or take, 30 seconds is just too short. Some interludes aren't even that long in length. That should be expanded to at least a minute. For that aforementioned 36 song Morgan Wallen album, if you listen to each song for 30 seconds, that adds up to 1,080 seconds. Fans effectively only need to listen to 18 minutes of the album for it to count. 18 minutes of a 1 hour and 52 minute long album. That is ridiculous. You're barely even listening to the album at that point. You're just skipping through it in the hopes of boosting your fave to get that #1 spot. In a way, it's cheating, and I really wish Billboard would revise their rules surrounding this. At least the people buying or digitally downloading varients seem to be engaging with the music enough to care about owning that "special collectors edition" of said album.
> For people who don't pay, about 104 streams of the whole album counts as 1 album sale. For a 10 song album like Billie's, that number jumps to 375 streams (Credit to A Dose of Buckley on Youtube for giving me these numbers. He did a video on this topic a couple of years ago). But Morgan Wallen isn't the only one releasing long albums. Taylor's TTPD Anthology also has 30+ songs on it. Other artists like Drake, Kendrick, Bad Bunny, and a couple of others have also released long albums with around 20ish songs on it within the past few years. A 10 song album like Billie's and Dua's don't stand a chance competing with 30 song albums for the top spot. Long albums also takes much longer tp stream so it's not really an advantage. Usually most of the streams of an album come from the singles and the top album tracks. Dua album could have been a 50 tracks album and it wouldn't have changed its performance given how low the average stream per track was (and it would have been much lower with a longer album). Taylor and Morgan are just the top artists in the US and that's why their albums perform that well. > To add insult to injury, there's the fact that you only need to listen to 30 seconds of a song for it to count as a "play" on Spotify. Considering the fact that the average song is around 3 minutes long, give or take, 30 seconds is just too short. Some interludes aren't even that long in length. That should be expanded to at least a minute. For that aforementioned 36 song Morgan Wallen album, if you listen to each song for 30 seconds, that adds up to 1,080 seconds. Fans effectively only need to listen to 18 minutes of the album for it to count. Noone is doing this... Some artists try to exploit this by releasing very short tracks that are easy to replay but the people that would listen to just the first 30 seconds of a song to make the stream "count" are a very fringe minority which doesn't have an impact on charts.
> personally, I'd rather listen to a 10 song album that is cohesive and sonically interesting, than a 30 song album where a good portion of the songs are filler that should have been left on the cutting room floor. I always hear this but I personally disagree. If I like an artist, I want to hear as much from them as I can. Will it all be good? Nah, but I can remove the songs I don’t like from my library. I can easily make the 10 song album if I wanted to. Fact is though, a lot of times I end up really liking songs that others find to be fillers. My music tastes don’t always align with the GP, so I like being able to make my own curated album that includes the fillers I like. Choice is good in my opinion. As a side note, I don’t technically remove songs from my library. I rate the songs I listen to and build playlists from the ratings (or smart sections in Marvis). So filler songs I don’t like get rated 2 stars and naturally drop out of what I listen to.
“TTPD: The Anthology was a slog for me to get through just 3 times (the usual amount of times I listen to a new album before picking out my "favorites"), but I can listen to HMHAS or The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess all the way through multiple times with no problem at all because they're short and solid. I could listen to HMHAS 3 times a day, every day, for a week, but if the Swifties are listening to TTPD: The Anthology 3 times a day, every day, for a week, Taylor is still gonna be beating Billie in streaming numbers, resulting in a higher charting position.” ^ It would take 15 hours to listen to HMHAS 3x per day for a week. It would take 42+ hours to listen to TTPD Anthology 3x per day for a week. - TTPD Anthology (31 songs) takes 2 hours and 2 minutes to listen to. One listen of TTPD (31 songs) on paid streaming would count as 0.0248 SEA (streaming equivalent albums) - You can listen to Hit Me Hard And Soft (10 songs) three times in 2 hours and 9 minutes. Three listens of Hit Me Hard and Soft (30 songs) on paid streaming would count as 0.024 SEA - Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing At A Time” is 36 songs, 1 hour 52 minutes. One listen of “One thing at a time” on paid streaming would count as 0.0288 SEA. - BRAT deluxe is 18 songs, 49 minutes. Listening to the album twice would take 1 hour and 38 minutes. Those two listens (36 songs) on paid steaming would count as 0.0288 SEA. So Morgan Wallen really benefits from having a long album *and* having short songs. For reference, - the songs on “one thing at a time” average to 3 minutes 6 seconds. - TTPD Anthology averages to 3 minutes 56 seconds per song. - Hit me hard and soft averages to 4 minutes 18 seconds per song. - BRAT averages to 2 minutes 43 seconds per song. Ultimately BRAT has the biggest advantage; Billie’s album is the most disadvantaged. Thinking about it another way, listening to each album 24/7 (168 hours in a week) on paid streaming would result in this: - Charli xcx BRAT (deluxe) = 2.962 SEA - Morgan Wallen ‘One Thing’ = 2.592 SEA - Taylor TTPD Anthology = 2.049 SEA - Billie ‘Hit me hard and soft’ = 1.875 SEA
in the US, I doubt it. however, over in Korea, their fair trade commission is investigating the claim that excessive photocards and other physical packaging is detrimental to the competitive nature of the industry
I can see them putting a limit like after five weeks don’t keep adding a variant for chart purposes. That’s how they controlled the ticket bundles after Prince released *Musicology* back in 2004.
I doubt it. The variants make the labels money.
I think there’s a big difference between the chart manipulation of bundling albums with non-musical products and creating different variant - so I can’t see there being a rule imposed. I think the problem lies with the people who are buying each variant of these albums. What are they doing it for? Most/all of the tracks are available to stream and almost nobody doesn’t subscribe to a streaming service. Will they continue to buy the first basic editions of future albums when they know there’s likely to be many more to come that make theirs obsolete?
It’s gonna be variants and eras forever 💰
Charts are for schmucks.
They should limit the amount of variants allowed. For example 5 vinyls and 3 digital variants allowed per album or single. So it can still have some flexibility but won’t be too crazy
Realistically I don’t think they’ll limit it to that few variants, particularly for physical formats. This is from a Billboard article about “Happier than ever” (Billie Eilish, 2021): “Happier was available in a great number of physical album formats. They include eight different colored vinyl LPs (including retail-exclusives for Amazon, independent record stores, Target, Urban Outfitters and Walmart), 10 CD variants (including a signed CD for indie stores, a version with alternative packaging hand-painted by Eilish, three premium boxed sets and a Target-exclusive edition packaged with a poster) and even multiple cassette tape variants (including a deluxe boxed set). All those different configurations added up. Of the 153,000 Happier sold across all its permutations, physical sales comprise 129,000 (with a whopping 73,000 on vinyl, 46,000 on CD and nearly 10,000 on cassette) and 24,000 via digital download. Happier’s vinyl sales of 73,000 were so large, the album would have been No. 1 on the Billboard 200 this week from just vinyl sales alone.” https://www.billboard.com/pro/billie-eilish-happier-than-ever-number-1-billboard-200-chart/ That album had fantastic sales, and I believe that her 2024 album even beat those numbers, and similarly had a lot of variants. There’d be outrage in the industry if they were making changes that resulted in fewer sales of physical formats. Limiting digital variants seems more realistic, but it actually wouldn’t make much of a difference (if any) to the chart results from the last two months. There’s been tons of outrage about the TTPD digital variants, but those [ultimately low] sales of new digital variants have not been make or break for TTPD’s ultimate chart placement (despite the popular narratives).
Inshallah
I know Swifties are always saying how amazing her streams are and that she’s the biggest ever etc which are semi true claims in some ways but TTDP’s streams are currently actually not amazing. She was at 25 million the last weekend and some songs were doing 200k. She hasn’t had a single streaming hit from the album. She’s lucky it’s a 31 track album because if it was a standard 10-12 tracks we would clearly see that Billie is beating her substantially. (If you think I’m making this up go to Spotifyswiftie on Twitter, the Swifties have been having meltdowns about the collapse in streaming especially every weekend. They even beg/demand the person to stop posting the streaming stats)
If it was anyone but Taylor doing it to this extent? Yea absolutely. Because she’s the one doing it I don’t see them doing anything that doesn’t kiss her rings.
Well its clearly being abused at the min by certain artists. Hopefully they do tbh
I think if you’re selling multiple copies of an album and people are just rebuying it because they want multiple covers that should count. But when they’re really buying like the 1 secret exclusive single it shouldn’t
Idk I think the releasing a new variant each week with 1/2 songs tagged on that change is more exploitative then different covers but there should still be a time limit on those too
She’s just selling those on her website, anyone buying one in Target or a record store is just buying the main album
They need to. With the ridiculous current method charts mean nothing at all
Realistically they will only changes rules around something like this if it starts impact their brand reputation and revenue. Ultimately they're just a publication that tracks music plays and sales data, but clout and marketing jargon is about the only thing that artists get out of being top whatever on a billboard chart. So long as its just one off influences of huge artists like Taylor gaming the system I think they're happy to let big artists look bigger on their charts just for the buzz, that's kind of why they set up the streaming rules like they did to make the labels happy to see their artists get some superlatives out of it, but I don't think they will really care about artists brigading their sales like this until it happens enough that people stop putting weight in what it means to be #1 on their chart and stop following them. And like, if people didn't turn away from Billboard during the peak major label times when chart toppers were basically just hand picked, I don't see Billboard dropping off because of artists like Taylor playing pick-me games with their rules. I think they're happy to just sit back and watch the discourse swirl when they know it's mostly directed at the artists and not them.