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Post by electriceyes on May 14, 2023 7:55:18 GMT
I can't help but suspect this is case for the Taylor Swift's, Beyonce's and Weeknd's of this world. I know they say younger people are the biggest streamers, but is this really true? Doesn't everyone under the age of 50 stream music in 2023? And I don't believe the 30-50 age bracket listen to much chart music. It just feels rigged to me, to elevate the newer music stars and relegate the veteran artists and bands whose streaming numbers are probably legit.
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Post by MattyJam on May 14, 2023 8:42:43 GMT
Wouldn't surprise me. Weren't Beyonce's streaming numbers exposed as fake on Tidal (owned by her husband)?
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Post by Russg on May 14, 2023 9:03:33 GMT
It's true that the demographics of heavy Spotify user skews to a younger average age. I’m in my 40’s so I’m probably outside of the average user age range.
Given what I wrote above, I’m still shocked at how relatively new almost all these artists are. Most of these artists are pushed heavily by the industry and yes their efforts extend beyond radio and into steaming services such as Spotify.
Also I’m curious how different the all time top steamed songs on YouTube are compared to this list.
Nearly all of the most streamed artists were in or are in there prime after Spotify took off. Naturally, since they "got in on the ground floor", they've had years to build their listens up but also while they were making chart toppers. They're probably going to retain their spots for a long time even after newer artists hit their primes due to this.
If Spotify were tracking numbers since the 90s this list would look way different.
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Post by invinciblegal on May 14, 2023 9:22:41 GMT
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Post by ghost on May 15, 2023 20:13:57 GMT
The labels have social media influencers, radio personalities, music publications and bloggers all hype up their artists music and have farms stream their music so the average joe assumes thats the wave and starts listening to it too. Its like when restaurants write fake reviews to draw customers in.
Before social media and streaming you had to organically build up hype. It was easier to differentiate who was being hyped through a label and radio and who wasnt. Now people buy into "movements" because social media makes them seem accessible.
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Post by Russg on May 16, 2023 6:02:07 GMT
There have been many recent articles about investigations into fake streams and it seems a big watershed moment is approaching within the music industry. Spotify is being sued once again for not enforcing their rules and Tidal has been sued by the Norwegian Authority for Investigation of Economic and Environmental Crime for intentionally inflating their subscriber count and manipulating streaming figures. IF a big exposé happens, artists and major labels could possibly get outed. So lets see which artists we think will get implicated so we can refer back to this and see how many we got right. I'm betting queen of the phoney bundles Taylor Swift will be at the top of the list!
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Post by history2010 on May 18, 2023 1:50:15 GMT
Keep in mind that it's also very common now for dedicated fan bases to inflate the streaming numbers of their favorite artist. Individual fans will be constantly streaming the artist's music on multiple devices using multiple streaming services and multiple accounts. They create playlists that are hundreds of hours long and they leave the playlist running 24/7 on an old phone that they keep at home. The playlists are designed to avoid Spotify's fraud detection algorithms. It'll be three Taylor Swift songs and then a song from a random artist and then three more Taylor Swift songs, just so Spotify doesn't detect that the playlist is designed to rack up streams for Taylor. The fans will buy songs and albums using multiple accounts on multiple different retail platforms. They will drive around to all the stores and buy copies of the album at each stop. It may be shocking to hear this but it's extremely common in modern stan culture. I am Gen Z and I have met plenty of people my age who do all of that for Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Lana Del Rey or BTS. They'll stream as much as possible and then spend hundreds of dollars on buying copies of the new albums to make sure it debuts at #1 and then stays there for several weeks. So the labels are inflating the numbers and then the fans are also inflating the numbers.
To be fair to those fans, we all did exactly the same thing last Halloween to try and get Thriller in the top #10. I bought Thriller four or five times on different platforms and streamed it a bunch.
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Post by Russg on May 18, 2023 16:50:23 GMT
Keep in mind that it's also very common now for dedicated fan bases to inflate the streaming numbers of their favorite artist. Individual fans will be constantly streaming the artist's music on multiple devices using multiple streaming services and multiple accounts. They create playlists that are hundreds of hours long and they leave the playlist running 24/7 on an old phone that they keep at home. The playlists are designed to avoid Spotify's fraud detection algorithms. It'll be three Taylor Swift songs and then a song from a random artist and then three more Taylor Swift songs, just so Spotify doesn't detect that the playlist is designed to rack up streams for Taylor. The fans will buy songs and albums using multiple accounts on multiple different retail platforms. They will drive around to all the stores and buy copies of the album at each stop. It may be shocking to hear this but it's extremely common in modern stan culture. I am Gen Z and I have met plenty of people my age who do all of that for Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Lana Del Rey or BTS. They'll stream as much as possible and then spend hundreds of dollars on buying copies of the new albums to make sure it debuts at #1 and then stays there for several weeks. So the labels are inflating the numbers and then the fans are also inflating the numbers. To be fair to those fans, we all did exactly the same thing last Halloween to try and get Thriller in the top #10. I bought Thriller four or five times on different platforms and streamed it a bunch. Yeah, but fans have always done shit like that. Remember the MJ fans buying all 5 different coloured copies of Invincible when it came out? And they did 5 different covers for Number Ones too. What we're talking about here is labels basically faking an artists popularity. Labels are rumoured to have "streaming farms" to rack up obscene numbers of streams for the artists they want to push, far more than any fanbase could ever collectively achieve.
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Post by respect77 on May 19, 2023 17:06:24 GMT
What a brave new world! LOL.
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Post by respect77 on May 19, 2023 17:15:51 GMT
Keep in mind that it's also very common now for dedicated fan bases to inflate the streaming numbers of their favorite artist. Individual fans will be constantly streaming the artist's music on multiple devices using multiple streaming services and multiple accounts. They create playlists that are hundreds of hours long and they leave the playlist running 24/7 on an old phone that they keep at home. The playlists are designed to avoid Spotify's fraud detection algorithms. It'll be three Taylor Swift songs and then a song from a random artist and then three more Taylor Swift songs, just so Spotify doesn't detect that the playlist is designed to rack up streams for Taylor. The fans will buy songs and albums using multiple accounts on multiple different retail platforms. They will drive around to all the stores and buy copies of the album at each stop. It may be shocking to hear this but it's extremely common in modern stan culture. I am Gen Z and I have met plenty of people my age who do all of that for Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Lana Del Rey or BTS. They'll stream as much as possible and then spend hundreds of dollars on buying copies of the new albums to make sure it debuts at #1 and then stays there for several weeks. So the labels are inflating the numbers and then the fans are also inflating the numbers.To be fair to those fans, we all did exactly the same thing last Halloween to try and get Thriller in the top #10. I bought Thriller four or five times on different platforms and streamed it a bunch.
Didn't Billboard change some rules exactly for this reason? I think it was in connection with BTS, but there have been some other fan bases as well, who did things that prompted Billboard to change some rules.
Oh, Kathy Perry! Yes, that was it. She actually tried very hard to break MJ's record (Bad) of number one songs from one album and she did all kind of tricks with Teenage Dreams for that. Like she later added new songs to a re-release of the album that weren't on the original album and that's when Billboards said it was enough and didn't acknowledge it as a record, because of the trickery. I just learned about this recently because her fans are still pressed about it on Twitter. LOL.
I know it is different than boosting streaming numbers with bots or something, but there are some other tricks as well.
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Post by history2010 on May 21, 2023 4:36:06 GMT
Keep in mind that it's also very common now for dedicated fan bases to inflate the streaming numbers of their favorite artist. Individual fans will be constantly streaming the artist's music on multiple devices using multiple streaming services and multiple accounts. They create playlists that are hundreds of hours long and they leave the playlist running 24/7 on an old phone that they keep at home. The playlists are designed to avoid Spotify's fraud detection algorithms. It'll be three Taylor Swift songs and then a song from a random artist and then three more Taylor Swift songs, just so Spotify doesn't detect that the playlist is designed to rack up streams for Taylor. The fans will buy songs and albums using multiple accounts on multiple different retail platforms. They will drive around to all the stores and buy copies of the album at each stop. It may be shocking to hear this but it's extremely common in modern stan culture. I am Gen Z and I have met plenty of people my age who do all of that for Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Lana Del Rey or BTS. They'll stream as much as possible and then spend hundreds of dollars on buying copies of the new albums to make sure it debuts at #1 and then stays there for several weeks. So the labels are inflating the numbers and then the fans are also inflating the numbers.To be fair to those fans, we all did exactly the same thing last Halloween to try and get Thriller in the top #10. I bought Thriller four or five times on different platforms and streamed it a bunch.
Didn't Billboard change some rules exactly for this reason? I think it was in connection with BTS, but there have been some other fan bases as well, who did things that prompted Billboard to change some rules.
Oh, Kathy Perry! Yes, that was it. She actually tried very hard to break MJ's record (Bad) of number one songs from one album and she did all kind of tricks with Teenage Dreams for that. Like she later added new songs to a re-release of the album that weren't on the original album and that's when Billboards said it was enough and didn't acknowledge it as a record, because of the trickery. I just learned about this recently because her fans are still pressed about it on Twitter. LOL.
I know it is different than boosting streaming numbers with bots or something, but there are some other tricks as well.
There was a rule change about only allowing a certain amount of purchases of the same album from a single debit or credit card but the fans almost immediately found ways around that. They buy physical albums in person with cash and buy iTunes/Amazon gift cards to buy digital copies of the albums. You can use cash to buy endless amounts of iTunes gift cards and then make endless iTunes accounts and buy the albums/singles on each of them. There's no way for Billboard to trace these methods.
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