It’s Time for Billboard to Change Its Charting Rules.
For decades, Billboard has reigned as one of the premier institutions within the music industry. Its charts have helped to quantify the impact that songs and albums have had, and its reliance upon pure data and numbers have made it arguably a more accurate signifier of success than even the GRAMMYs.
That is no longer the case in 2024.
The adage goes that records are meant to be broken. But over roughly the past decade, achievements that once seemed untouchable have been surmounted with an unsettling ease. Some examples: Janet Jackson’s 31-year record of the most top-10 hits from any album by a female artist (for Rhythm Nation 1814) has been surpassed not once, but twice within the past two years. Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” held the distinction of being the Hot 100’s most successful song for nearly sixty years before being supplanted by The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” in 2019.
Even the Queen of Billboard, Mariah Carey — holder of 19 #1 hits and recipient of the 2019 Billboard Icon Award — has seen many of her long-standing records broken by today’s big artists. Her 23-year title of having the longest-running #1 song in Hot 100 history (16 weeks, shared jointly with Boyz II Men for “One Sweet Day”) now belongs to Lil Nas X; she currently shares second place with multiple other songs. Her record for most combined #1’s on the Hot 100 and the Billboard 200 (their top albums chart) has been surpassed by Taylor Swift, whose newest album The Tortured Poets Department debuted with 2.4 million units to become her 14th #1 album. And perhaps most stunningly, her status as the only artist to have a trio of songs debut at #1 has been surpassed by not one, not two, not even three or four, but five artists. Those artists have combined for 31 #1 debuts so far.
If someone with no knowledge of music history were to glance over a list of Billboard achievements, they’d likely conclude that today’s artists are running circles around their predecessors. And while the argument can and should be made that we all should know better … shouldn’t Billboard, too?
The music industry has shifted in massive ways over the past several decades, and its institutions have been playing catch-up to account for such shifts. The rise of Limewire sent record labels scrambling to figure out how to sell albums during the 2000s, and the emergence of streaming prompted artists to start making longer albums with shorter tracks during the 2010s. Now, the dominance of platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels has become one of the industry’s most prominent double-edged swords, empowering independent artists with the ability to market themselves on a broad scale while frustrating signed artists whose labels now expect them to do the same.
At each of those prior turns, Billboard has tweaked its rules and metrics in order to account for these shifts, with the goal of preserving its status as a platform that allows consumers to contextualize an artist’s success within the broader landscape of the music industry and music history.
We have now arrived at another such turn.
It does not make sense for the top-10 of the Hot 100 — a chart that exists for the purpose of displaying the biggest individual songs in America — to routinely be filled with album tracks that have not displayed any hallmarks of being a “hit” beyond being included on a smash album. Nor does it make sense for Billboard to credit today’s artists with these “hits” when comparing them to artists from past decades, whose album tracks were not even eligible to chart.
Taylor Swift is undeniably the biggest artist in the world right now. Does she really need to be allowed to occupy the entire top-14 on the Hot 100 in order to prove that?
Now, let me be clear — I am not one to try and place limits on an artist’s success, especially one as clearly beloved by her fans as Taylor is. But as a fan of music as a whole, I do wonder what space Billboard’s current rules leave for smaller artists and legacy acts to quantify their own well-deserved success as well.
For instance: if you’re an artist on the verge of achieving your first top-20 hit, top-40 hit, or even just your first entry on the Hot 100 … is it really fair for you to miss out on such a major career milestone just so someone with the #1 album in the world can place *30* album tracks on a chart previously devoted to singles? And if you’re an older artist who had to put in years of promotional work in order to achieve your collection of bonafide hits, is it fair for artists of today to surpass your career tallies in a mere matter of days with songs that won’t be on the chart by the end of the month?
Even the songs that ascend to the very top of the charts in this day and age aren’t always hits. In prior eras of music, artists usually had to work a song for several months in order to even put it in contention for the top spot; that leg work is what gave the song a chance to become truly popular and earn its status as a #1 hit. But now, if an artist and their fanbase are powerful enough, they can send a song straight to #1 in its debut week — regardless of whether or not the general public likes the song or has even heard it.
Don’t believe me? Ask a random person to name all of Drake’s #1 songs and see how many they get right.
Of course, it bears acknowledging that music — like most other industries — has shifted to a rapid-consumption model in the age of social media. Consumers can fall in love with viral snippets of songs on TikTok and Instagram, without ever hearing the song in its totality. Diamond album certifications (10 million sales or more in the US) have become all but impossible for today’s artists to achieve, while diamond singles are more achievable now than ever before. And in a crushing blow to landscape-orientation enthusiasts, short-form, portrait-style videos have overtaken traditional music videos and live performances as the most effective way to promote a new song.
With listeners’ attention spans becoming shorter than ever before, many artists and labels view that first week of release as the best chance for a song to peak on the Hot 100. That’s all well and good, but if a song can’t capture the attention of listeners for long enough to even spend two weeks in the top-10, does it really deserve to be in the same company with past #1s that dominated airwaves for months or even years? In my best Kevin McAllister voice: I don’t think so.
So what exactly can be done? For one, Billboard could revert to its rule of only allowing commercially-released singles to chart. That would bring the “album bomb” phenomenon to a swift halt, at the very least . Billboard could also adopt a limit on how many songs can chart per album, a rule that is enforced on charts in other countries such as the United Kingdom. Or, they could create a system that would only allow for songs that display an *individual* boost in performance to chart, regardless of whether it’s a single or not. As for the #1 debut conundrum, perhaps a rule could be created that would require new songs to hit a higher performance threshold in order to debut at #1.
Sure, all of those rules could theoretically be worked around by an artist, label, or fanbase that is determined or crafty enough to jam their way into the history books. But it’s still worth a try, right?
Just as the film industry accounts for inflation when comparing box office numbers across the generations, the music industry owes it to its artists to do the same. Otherwise, we will continue to careen towards a point in time when legends and icons will be completely erased from the record books — not because today’s artists are more popular, but because the powers-that-be couldn’t figure out a way to accurately measure that popularity over time.
Despite how unfortunate that may be, the prolific artists who have shifted the culture with their music will maintain their status within the industry. Mariah will still be Mariah, Janet will still be Janet, and Whitney will always be Whitney. Unless the charting rules change, the same likely won’t be true for Billboard.
For more music commentary, check out my podcast “Come Get A Sip”, streaming now on all platforms, including YouTube! In the latest episode, I sat down with a special guest to talk about Mariah Carey’s legendary #1 album The Emancipation of Mimi and her latest concert series celebrating the project.
Statistics verified via Billboard’s official website and Wikipedia. All images included have been licensed for creative use.
