Wish artists would just release their music/videos and let the numbers come natural.

All this manipulation is bullshit and most people starting to see through all these bundles, iTunes shenanigans, etc.

Its the labels that come up with all these gimmicks and its billboard that allows them, thats the problem, not the artists.
They need to remove everything that its not streaming, sales and radio, also put limits to sales or smth, i think rolling stones chart? does that

I agree but to some extent. Labels don’t do all these gimmicks with all artists and I’m sure the artists have something to do with it.

Take the 3 biggest rap artists for example: Drake, Kendrick, Cole. None of these artists do these bullshit antics. At most they drop their songs, post em on IG & Twitter, drop a video, and fallback.

You don’t see their songs on iTunes being discounted right away from the correct $1.29 to either $0.99 or even $0.69 right off the bat (i.e. Cardi’s WAP, BTS’ Dynamite). You also don’t see like 6 versions of the same song released in the first two weeks either.

Then you have some artists who get credited with music sales on Billboard for selling lollipops and T-shirts.

All these things have completely watered down the Billboard charts, in the past couple of years especially. And I believe artists play a role in all this not just the labels.

Btw, I agree that Billboard needs to change its rules with how things are weighted. Streaming should most definitely be the highest on that list. It actually is a great representation of what people are listening to. With sales you can buy the song/album and never listen to it again there’s no way of tracking plays. And radio alone should not be weighted so much, you should have a good amount of streams or sales to compliment the radio spins. Rolling Stones Charts are doing a good job at actually giving you a good representation of what the biggest songs in the country are.

Rant over.

I also wanted to add why this annoys me so much.

You have artists like Post Malone and Travis Scott who put up big first week numbers like 500k based on a wide range of bundles selling everything but the music itself and tour bundles. This gives some people the idea that these guys are bigger than artists like Kendrick and Cole or will soon surpass them.

Come up with two charts, one for the bundlers, and one for those who don’t bundle. Or put an asterisk on those who used bundles. either way billboard needs to do a much better job contextualizing these so called music numbers.

bundles end in October

Can you explain the new rules for bundling? I genuinely don’t know them. Some people have said that bundles will still be allowed under certain terms and others are saying they are being outlawed all together.

travis & post are bigger than kendrick and cole, with or without bundles. first week #'s aren't everything

Merch bundles will be discontinued completely, bundles added to physical media like vinyls, CDs, etc wont count until those items are shipped and ticket bundles will require an opt-in in order to count

Ahh gotcha. This should help the charts dramatically. Hopefully they continue to make changes to other issues that exist but it’s a start.

what outside of recency bias makes Travis bigger than Kendrick?

i'm not 100% sure about kendrick, but they definitely bigger than cole lol

As long as artists continue to abuse different loopholes billboard will be forced to change their methods. i dont understand why they cant just use these loopholes in moderation or why they have to push the limits every time

What are you basing this on?

Travis would have done closer to 300k without bundles and post last album did 489k with tour and merch bundles.

Kendrick with DAMN. did 603k WITHOUT any bundles. Also DAMN. performed exceptionally well throughout the release year into year 2 and 3 of release.

Explain how post and travis are bigger musically. I’m not talking about fashion and all that other s***. Music only.

yeah, I mean J. Cole's last few albums just haven't had the longevity for an argument to be made that he's in the same league

Post Malone is the biggest artist on radio right now, that combined with his consistently big streaming numbers gives him unmatched longevity

he's arguably the biggest artist rn, i'd personally say it's still Drake and we dont know what an Adele era looks like in 2020 though

Post did 200k pure with bundling of tickets and merch. Kendrick did 300k pure with just the music itself. It’s not even a comparison.

This why I hate bundles they’ve deluded most of y’all’s perception of whose more popular.

If Drake Kendrick and Cole all started doing bundles they’d be near 600k (Cole) - 1M (Drake) range with Kendrick somewhere in the middle.

Damn. dropped in a completely different climate tbh, i think billboard stated that like 80% of his pure sales were from retail CD purchases and those arent a thing in 2020. he absolutely wouldnt do 300k pure without bundles today, what's important is that Damn. had 341 million streams in its first week which is comparable to Astroworld (349 million) and Hollywood's Bleeding (365 million) despite being released in a much weaker streaming climate

Yeah I can agree with the point on Cole. It’s hard to give him the benefit of the doubt because 4YEO was terrible and idk how well KOD did a year after release.

Drake and Kendrick to me are in a different class. If post wasn’t bundling tickets and merch I’d love seeing those numbers. He’d probably do 280-320k.

Post definitely does have longevity tho, his steaming numbers are great which I appreciate. It’s a great indicator.

Drake Kendrick and Cole have a much stronger and supportive fan base though which has been proven over their decade long runs.

Let’s see how post does over the course of the next 6 years.

Great point. Pure sales are dying and will continue to swindle down. Drake did like 850k pure with Views which you think about how is insane lol. Those kinds of pure sale numbers will never be done again (unless you’re Adele).

My ultimate point is that if you got rid of all these bs bundle numbers you’d have a much better perception of where everyone is ranked. Rn you have some artists bundling and some who aren’t which has been a whole mess.

Idk where Cole would honestly be ranked but Drake and Kendrick would easily still be 1 and 2 and maybe Post at 3 and Travis/Cole at 4/5.

And I’m the only one still known for the music.

Shady

merch bundles are also opt in like ticket bundles, not "discounted completely"

all albums bundled with either merchandise or concert tickets must be promoted as an à la carte add-on to those purchases in order to be counted on the charts (i.e. a separate item added to a shopping cart on its own).

I stand corrected, thanks

Should be discontinued completely.