MORE FROM FORBES The Grammys Once Again Did The Bare Minimum For BTS By Bryan Rolli If you want to argue that the pop charts are useless, you’ve got to be willing to admit they have been for decades. And if we’re talking about dubious sales tactics, let’s not forget that prior to the introduction of Nielsen SoundScan in 1991, Billboard tracked sales by calling record stores across the country, an honor system that was subject to outright fraud by clerks with a vendetta against certain artists or a little financial incentive from record labels. The fact that radio stations were so quick to add their two English-language hits, “Dynamite” and “Butter,” is exciting on one hand, but also indicative of the systemic issues still plaguing the format.Īs for streaming, companies like Spotify will likely never be fully transparent about their streaming filtration methods, which knocked the official first-day streams of “Butter” to roughly 11 million, down from the 20.9 million unfiltered streams it garnered, which would have been the biggest single-day total in Spotify history. pop radio for simply daring to sing in their native Korean. For the first several years of their career, BTS were effectively blackballed from U.S. Pop radio is an outdated monolith designed to uphold the status quo of algorithmic pop songs by Western artists bonus points if those artists are white and conventionally attractive. Is it unconventional and a little excessive to spectators who don’t understand the fandom? Maybe, but really, what’s the difference between downloading a single multiple times-when Billboard only counts up to four purchases per transaction, mind you-and buying an overpriced hoodie from an artist? Fans are entitled to spend their hard-earned money however they want, and it’s weird to scold them for doing so.īTS aren’t tarnishing the credibility of the Billboard charts they’re spotlighting just how fundamentally broken the charts, and the metrics by which they are calculated, have been for years. In a way, you could consider the BTS ARMY the largest grassroots organization in pop music, supporting their favorite artist 69 cents at a time. That’s how popularity works: You get more fans, you get better chart placement. BTS have been methodically growing their audience for years, and now, their enormous, global fan base has the power to shoot their songs and albums to No. You can’t fabricate that sort of otherworldly success, nor can you rush it. They’re doing concert numbers on par with U2, the Rolling Stones and Metallica, while doing chart numbers comparable to Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande. Music video streaming records, collaborations with major Western pop stars and the leap from arenas to stadiums followed, cementing BTS’s status as not just the biggest “K-pop” group, but one of the biggest musical artists in the world. Their first several albums didn’t even crack the Billboard 200, and once they started to do so, the group enjoyed a years-long ascent before finally topping the chart with 2018’s Love Yourself: Tear. Eight years ago, the group started out with virtually no stateside presence. 1 hits and shattering sales and streaming records. They’re one of the few artists capable of selling out stadiums all over the world while simultaneously netting No. It’s worth noting now that BTS have never relied on merch or ticket bundles to sell their music because they don’t have to. He claims that “Butter” is not, in fact, the most popular song in America right now, and that “if you look at the charts, then, you’re going to get a completely distorted idea of how popular BTS actually are.” 1 based largely off the strength of 69-cent digital downloads (plus an instrumental version that was independently available for download and also counts toward its chart placement) while trailing several new Olivia Rodrigo songs on streaming services and falling short of Silk Sonic’s “Leave the Door Open” at radio, its success is somehow inorganic. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, argues that because “Butter” soared to No. On Wednesday, Stereogum’s Tom Breihan published an article titled “BTS And Their Fan Army Are Rendering The Pop Charts Useless.” Breihan, who writes a weekly column about every song to ever hit No. The news of “Butter” topping the Hot 100 delighted the millions-strong BTS ARMY, who propelled the disco-pop smash to No.
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