songs that weren't a bands biggest hit, but have gone on to be their legacy song and biggest iTunes seller

Takes the fun out of it but there's an official playlist with all the songs over a billion streams xps

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DX7iB3RCnBnN4?si=JOwwAZu9Qgalo37TZ6gXVA&utm_source=copy-link&dl_branch=1

poll?

i mean that is a grim list but it would be interesting seeing people argue their cases

The thing is, how much streams a song gets is mostly determined by how aggressively Spotify/Youtube themselves push that song into people’s play queue, their own curated playlists and search results. That’s not to say the songs aren’t loved (they clearly are big hits) but these “billion” numbers are not fully the result of conscious choices. Spotify of course has the numbers of “real clicks” but afaik there’s no way to filter out the auto-plays.

'mostly determined' makes that quite a strong and specific claim that i am not sure is accurate (perhaps closer to accurate for youtube than spotify but not comfortable agreeing either way). people do indeed use personal playlists and actually look up the things they want to listen to. i don't understand why people want so badly for it to be true that streaming is somehow more passive than more traditional media like radio and tv (??)

that tedder interview excerpt is interesting and not entirely without its points but he neglects to mention a couple important things. one is "counting stars" was without a doubt ALSO receiving far more exposure, even as a recurrent (actually industry folks would call it a 'gold'), than that more-current song at radio, i.e. the medium that adult contemporary acts like his rely on most heavily -- and one that is also becoming significantly more reliant on ever-tightening lists of old tried-and-true hits, even at supposedly currents-based formats. it is consequently 100% normal for an act's last major hit, even if it was ages ago, to be outperforming scores of their most-recent offerings -- not only in streams, but also in download sales and just about every other conceivable metric. browse currently-relevant artists' top tracks on the streaming services and you'll see just how often this is true. "counting stars" has been outperforming "run" for far longer than can be explained solely by an ephemeral tiktok thing. "counting stars" was (and therefore is) a smash. "run" appears to have been a blip at best. it didn't catch -- it happens. it happened back in the day too.

his recounting of "blinding lights's" ascent is accurate but also omits key context, namely that it was released more-or-less simultaneously with "heartless," which, at least in the states, was the main promotional focus (including at top 40) for a few months before "lights" took over. i strongly doubt that he and his team were biting their nails and panicking at its slow start. moreover, the car commercial that helped bring it to the stratosphere in europe was not just some happenstance thing that they stumbled into -- the commercial literally came out before the song itself did and the artist acted in it

Streaming is clearly not more passive than radio, but it's more passive than making the effort to buy a record and playing it - Spotify is basically a mix between "putting money in a jukebox to play what you want" and "listening to radio where the station determines what gets played next".

I mean there must be many older hits that had the equivalent of "a billion streams", i.e. the sum of (records sold x number of times played) + (played on the radio x number of listeners).

Queen has the only music before the 80s on that list and, you know what, good for them

not completely up to date but this has the 10 biggest songs by decade

https://datastudio.google.com/u/0/reporting/74cda77c-f120-40f7-932f-5cdca9d2120a/page/VrXI

Very weird results !

Indeed. One which stands out is that Marvin Gaye’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”. Peaked at #19 originally, now has 700 million+ streams, more than the streams of his three number one singles combined. No way would I have guessed that would be #1 streamed track from the 1970s.

*1960s*

was it in a movie?

One thing I learned from that billion streams playlist: ignoring their collaboration with The Chainsmokers, Coldplay's most streamed song is 'The Scientist", which barely charted on its initial US release (#18 on the mainstream rock chart, #34 on the Adult Top 40 Chart, didn't even make the Hot 100).

Xpost

Good call, it was in “Guardians of the Galaxy” and in a key scene too.

the diana ross cover being massively successful returned attention to the song, so the relatively minor hit by motown standards made its way onto a bunch of best-of compilations

“ain’t no mountain high enough” also played a big role in remember the titans, fwiw

We've gone through some kind of paradigm shift with streaming video and video social media that comparing a songs performances on the charts back then may be like wondering why such-and-such sheet music bestseller isn't generating cover versions on the jukeboxes.

So, these are all of the 20th-century songs with a billion streams:

1. Queen, "Bohemian Rhapsody" 1.59B
2. Oasis, "Wonderwall" 1.22B
3. Queen, "Don't Stop Now" 1.13B
4. Journey, "Don't Stop Believin'" 1.12B
5. Queen, "Another One Bites the Dust" 1.09B
6. Nirvana, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" 1.06B
7. Toto, "Africa" 1.06B

Oh, and this one, which isn't yet on the BILLIONS CLUB playlist:

8. Guns N Roses, "Sweet Child O' Mine" 1.02B

We've gone through some kind of paradigm shift with streaming video and video social media that comparing a songs performances on the charts back then may be like wondering why such-and-such sheet music bestseller isn't generating cover versions on the jukeboxes.

I think this might have been an interesting discussion topic in 1955!

yeah those lists are depressing

That’s not the list that I would have expected on December 31st, 1999. I couldn’t even have put a tune to “Don’t Stop Believin” and “Africa”.

It's funny that Bohemian Rhapsody will increasingly shape what people think of "what pop music typically sounded like in 1975".

idk, I think “Bohemian Rhapsody” is pretty well established as an outlier. It’s even a plot point in the movie

Imagine if the dry run for BoRap, "The March of the Black Queen", had been released as a single and hit it big instead. Actually you'd then have the most played song on Spotify having a racial epithet in it so maybe not such a good idea. When did "Don't Stop Me Now" get so big anyway, by the way?

This seems to suggest it's use in 'Shaun if the Dead' in 2004 as a catalyst for its revival.

https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/rock/8501348/queen-dont-stop-me-now-biggest-hits

Probably a stupid question but who's getting rich off the enormous Spotify plays of Africa, Don't Stop Me Now etc? The bands? Spotify? The record companies? No one?

How the owners of the rights have divided up the revenue, that’s different for everyone.

The Spotify model is roughly like this: payout per stream is ~$0,004 so that’s $4M for a billion streams over the full lifetime of the song so far. That’s gross, but of course you don’t make a hit without some massive promotion expenses. Spotify is clearly not where you make that money back.

How much Spotify takes depends on how much you listen, ie you pay Spotify $16 per month, say you stream 600 songs a month (20 a day on avg) @ $0,004 per stream that’s $2.40 go to the owners of the rights, rest is for Spotify. Obviously, Spotify itself also has costs - last year they spent all of that cashflow (and more) on advertising/marketing themselves.

^based on how Glenn has explained it in the Spotify thread, I don’t think that’s accurate.

it would be good to hear if I’m wrong, but that’s what I see in their quarterly numbers.

None of the main current streaming services set a per-stream rate, all of them actually pay by taking ~70% of revenue for a payment period and splitting it up according to stream-shares from that period. In Spotify's case (and I assume the others), this is actually done for each payment-option in each country, so the money from US full-price premium accounts is split up according to the stream-shares from just those account-holders for that period, same for the Canadian family-plan accounts, the Belgian ad-supported accounts, etc. So this is why the actual effective rates an individual artist sees will vary both across plans and countries and over time.

Probably a stupid question but who's getting rich off the enormous Spotify plays of Africa, Don't Stop Me Now etc? The bands? Spotify? The record companies? No one?

― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Sunday, September 5, 2021 5:30 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Joe Rogan

ouch

and what’s “hilarious” is that this deal hasn’t actually worked out very well for rogan - his reach is down, his influence is down. the next deal he makes will be smaller.

Kinda sad that half of the most streamed from the 1950s are Christmas songs. Xmas about the only time anything from the decade gets mainstream exposure anymore.

I would think even flamey shirt GenXers who adore 50s stuff aren’t among those of the generation who’d stream.

To do that old thing – how many people in the 1950s wanted to listen to music from the 1880s?

Fair, I think Satie's Gymnopedies had to wait a decade to really get revived. I'm sure people still dug Tchaikovsky and early Debussy, though.

The local rock station mostly plays stuff from the 21st century but occasionally will throw in something as far back as late '60s like Jimi Hendrix. I can't imagine any radio station I listened to in the '80s or '90s that mostly played recent material occasionally playing anything from the '30s or '40s.

If Twitter is any indication, the new generation really loves Dabussy too

I mean also, it bears being said, that tastes do not conform to strict chronological timelines, possibly thanks to the mediums we recieve it on (i.e. the advent of TV as a monocultural force or the last 20 years of the internet flattening time/stratifying culture)

And Gilbert & Sullivan and Sousa marches still managed to endure!

Sure they endured, but weren’t exactly holding their own in terms of chart popularity (which is what we’re taking about here). Obviously it’s not apples to apples anyway

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ouMaLRth-s

(I wish more ppl listened to ‘50s music, I love it, but I’m not surprised that “Kansas City” or whatever isn’t among the top 10000 most streamed songs.)

Jailhouse Rock and Johnny B Goode have ~250 million streams so not terrible for ancient tracks

Honestly the grandpa in 1955 buying an LP of Sousa marches is pretty much an exact analogy to the Boomers on YouTube streaming ‘50s music.

Huge part of this is that by 1975 multi track recording had completely matured and plateaued, so “Bohemian Rhapsody” or “Born to Run” don’t have much of a retro sheen, even if the style and genre are older. So these days a lot of 50 year old music can be played alongside contemporary music ( especially if it’s been compressed) without a startling shift timbre and fidelity.

i was going to post something like that bendy, but not as concise. photography keeps getting better and better. it may be ready finally to hit something like a plateau but personal snaps from even 6 or 7 years ago look dated already. movies from the 1990s look dated, both in the film grain and lighting sensitivity but also in the stodgy fixed camera movements. but 'high definition' audio recording already sounded as perfect as it ever needed to sound by the mid-60s (i'd say?) and yes, multitrack recording matured not long after, and by the early 1980s you even had absolutely locked MIDI timings. there is just not a dropoff in quality, even back to blue note and stax and motown. nothing comparable to 4:3 aspect ratios or shooting on film with giant heavy cameras

That's interesting. DAW-based digital audio, esp with mostly DId or in-the-box instruments, does sound pretty different to me from the mic-ed amps recorded to tape you hear on 70s records - often not as good to my ears but definitely different. There have been objective advances in signal:noise ratio and dynamic range but it might be the case that things have advanced beyond what the ear needs, at least as far as pop music is concerned?

I'd argue that those are stylistic choices. You can play to a click track and pro-tools the kick drum onto the grid, the record bass on top of that, add some sampled loops. Or you could mic each drum and isolate from other other musicians playing live, then mix for a "natural" sounding drum track with the push-pull rapport of a live band. But the final recording isn't going to sound more pristine than say, My Life in the Bush with Ghosts or Zuma. Like, aughts lofi rock is lo-fidelity for expedience and lack of access to eight high-end microphones. In one band I was in, we actually borrowed two mics worth more than all our cars combined, but we couldn't get any more quality out of them than a SM57 and a plate mic I borrowed from the work teleconference system, and the results weren't glossy, but they were definately more than lofi.