Music clog stopping artists getting to top of charts
Hot new singles are taking weeks to bust into the top of Australia’s music charts. See why and what it means for record-breaking artists.
Even pop record-breakers Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran are finding it tough to smash through the logjam clogging the Australian charts with dozens of songs and albums which have been in the top 50 for years.
Streaming algorithms and playlists have engineered a music ecosystem where it can take several weeks for a hot new single to bust into the top 10.
The reigning ARIA singles chart queen Miley Cyrus appears to have unlocked the formula for swift entry to the chart summit.
Her comeback single Flowers is the only big hit to debut at No. 1 back in January and has stayed there for 12 weeks.
Cyrus teased the release of Flowers via social media more than a week ahead of its release, with fans encouraged to pre-save or pre-order the song.
The excitement for the song was fuelled by the intrigue about its lyrics and whether they were about her famous ex, Australian actor Liam Hemsworth; the savvy operator released Flowers on her former husband’s birthday.
That speculation, coupled with the Wrecking Ball singer’s enduring popularity here, pushed the song straight to the top but streaming playlists have kept it there.
And it’s not just the most popular Spotify and Apple playlists, curated by the platforms’ editorial teams behind her algorithm-fuelled dominance.
As more fans and tastemakers added Flowers to their own library of favourite songs, her grip on No. 1, not just in Australia but also on the UK and US charts, became tighter.
The song has more than 827 million streams on Spotify alone and is likely to have already eclipsed the one billion plays threshold across all platforms; Apple Music does not disclose their data.
“Some of the tastemaker playlists have hundreds of thousands of followers and they can have a big impact on keeping a song going even as if might slip a few places on the big Hot Hits playlist,” said an industry insider.
Sheeran followed the Cyrus script for his comeback single Eyes Closed, a deeply personal exploration of his grief following the sudden death of his friends, music promoter Jamal Edwards and Australian cricket legend Shane Warne last year.
He announced the song and incoming album Subtract on March 1, while on his record-breaking Mathematics stadium tour of Australia.
Another master manipulator of social media’s power to marshall the fan forces, Sheeran stoked anticipation with the release of the Eyes Closed video and a steady stream of content.
While the single claimed No. 1 back home in the UK, it landed at No. 6 on the ARIA chart and No. 26 on the US Billboard Hot 100. It slipped to No. 10 on the ARIA chart as Harry Styles’ As It Was muscled its way back into the top 10 for its 53rd week in the top 50.
Chart analyst Gavin Ryan said announcing a single in advance, as Cyrus and Sheeran did can give an artist a higher debut as all those pre-saves and pre-orders become streams and downloads counted for the charts.
The chart debut can also influence pop radio to add a song to their station playlists which further fuels the song’s ascent or descent. Radio airplay is now the final piece of the music ecosystem puzzle.
“Pre-order or pre-saving shows the upcoming potential for the release to the acts and record companies,” he said.
“Luke Combs has recently been dropping upcoming songs from his new album Gettin’ Old, which has helped build momentum, whereas a whole album dump on the singles chart in one week means there are no future singles to chart.
“That makes it harder for their chart runs to be consistently up and down, it’s continual nowadays.”
Ryan said the top 10 began getting clogged by the same songs during the pandemic because the lack of live shows meant “it was up to streaming services to keep the music flowing, or ebbing.”
Swift’s latest “single” All The Girls You Loved Before hit that top 10 blockade.
She didn’t tease the unreleased single, including it with three Taylor’s Version rerecordings which she surprise dropped as she kicked off her Eras tour in the US last month.
The song debuted at just No. 18 and rose only three places to No. 15 last week, while her recent No. 1 smash Anti-Hero has bounced in and out of the top 10 for the past six months.
An analysis of the ARIA singles charts released on April 3 found songs can spend an average of 27 weeks in the top 50.
All The Girls dropped all the way to No. 42 on Friday.
TikTok now exerts the power to push fresh talent such as Pinkpantheress, Coi Leray and RAYE who have been fixtures in the top 10 in recent weeks.
Touring also has an effect on shoring up the logjam, as witnessed by American country star Morgan Wallen breaching the ARIA top 10 for the first time with his hit Last Night.
But the logjam is even greater on the album charts.
The April 3 top 50 was swamped by 31 records which have spent more than a year in the top 50 including Swift’s 1989 clocking up its 345th week courtesy of a flurry of streaming of all of her records as she opened the Eras tour.
The plethora of older records in the charts is not only tied to anniversaries or tours. As older music fans swap their CD collections for streaming, they are playing the soundtracks of their youth rather than discovering new artists, contributing to the constant presence of Elton John’s Diamonds (228 weeks), Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours (287 weeks) and the Bohemian Rhapsody soundtrack by Queen (208 weeks).
While there has been a rush of records debut straight into the ARIA top 10 in the last couple of weeks, most will suffer a swift exit as Matt Corby’s Everything Is Fine and Fall Out Boy’s So Much (For) Stardust did this week.
There is a bigger churn rate on the album charts because vinyl sales – mostly from pre-orders – are weighted more heavily against streams in ARIA calculations.
So everyone buys their vinyl copy in the first couple of weeks after release and are unlikely to keep streaming that fave record.
Without a hit single helping to keep the streams count ticking over, albums which enjoy high chart debuts courtesy of big vinyl sales contributing to their first week find it tough to sustain their run.
But those records with a succession of hit after hit such as The Weeknd or one monster song such as Harry Styles’ As It Was maintain their stranglehold on a top 50 spot for over a year.
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Originally published as Music clog stopping artists getting to top of charts
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