You can only rip off the public so many times before there is a backlash. Wasn’t that one of the drivers of Napster, overpriced CDs with only one good track? People felt entitled to steal, they were sticking it to the man.

And as Howard Stern famously learned in therapy, everybody else doesn’t need to lose in order for him to win. Howard now has friends, he’s living a happier life, maybe Taylor Swift needs intensive therapy too.

How many weeks has “Tortured Poets Society” been number one? I’ve got no idea. Only Swift and her minions are aware of this number. Not even her fans know. But Swift needed to deny Billie Elish’s new album number one status because..? I can’t figure out a reason why.

And is it an album or a collection of streams? In other words, in the old days of sales, an album was an album was an album. But that’s not true anymore. Students of the chart realize that the longer an album is, the more tracks it contains, the larger the total number of streams and therefore the higher the chart position, because true fans play the album throughout, and then again. And Swift’s album has 31 tracks and Eilish’s 10. In other words, we’re incentivizing longer albums in most cases for no other reason than chart position and revenue. It’s no longer an artistic statement, it’s about money, pure and simple.

Maybe you’re unaware of this. As many should be. It’s inside baseball. How there are umpteen versions of an LP so brain-dead fans caught up in the mania will purchase the same damn record over and over again. You can only listen to one song at one time, no one needs multiple versions of an LP, NO ONE! But now the business is based on selling these items and of course there is money involved, but frequently the main goal is chart position and bragging rights.

And number one doesn’t mean what it used to anyway. Number one used to represent ubiquity, the greatest exposure to the most people, you were world-dominant. Not anymore. Today it just means in the plethora of diversions you got the most manipulated attention. The biggest success of the past plus year is Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time,” which is still number three all these weeks after release. Showing pure demand, no shenanigans necessary. Then again, “One Thing at a Time” has 36 tracks, if the old system were still in place, where an album was an album was an album would “One Thing at a Time” include so many? OF COURSE NOT!

The business has lost touch with the consumer. Everybody’s trying to game the system. The advantage to the customer is nil, you risk backlash. But backlash be damned, I’ve got to be number one!

And then you’ve got the outsiders complaining that they can’t get paid by Spotify and other streaming outlets, that they must be helped by the government. This is like believing breaking up Live Nation and Ticketmaster will lower ticket prices. Of course it will not, because it’s a matter of supply and demand. And the truth is there are a few acts, well, more than a few, but a limited number, who stream in prodigious numbers and then the rest. But the rest can’t accept this. But let me ask you, do you know what Fox News said today? Or in the alternative, MSNBC? For most people it’s one or the other. Just like most people are not listening to Taylor Swift whatsoever. And cable news outlets have been decreasing in viewership. You can’t have it both ways, reach fewer people and get paid more. Sure, to the winner goes the spoils, but you don’t have to be a winner to be successful these days, artistically or financially, but if you’re inured to old thinking, locked in the pre-internet era, you refuse to admit this to yourself.

Think of politics. In the old days a heroin addict would have no chance of becoming President, i.e. RFK, Jr. And Trump’s court losses would make it impossible for him to win. And the thought that only Biden can beat Trump is a fiction that no one would have gone for previously. But true believers can’t be swayed. And today we have great swaths of true believers, and even greater swaths of those who have tuned out and don’t care.

Weekly chart numbers are not like Presidential elections. There are no consequences. It’s little better than winning your hometown Little League championship. It only matters to those who are paying attention, and those are very few.

And there are a lot of things competing for your attention. And science tells us multitasking is a myth. Everybody can truly do only one thing at one time and there are only twenty four hours in a day. They can’t watch sports, listen to music and tune in Netflix simultaneously, something has got to give, but everybody’s operating like nothing has changed.

Kudos to Billie Eilish for only including 10 tracks on “Hit Me Hard and Soft.” And if you analyze the numbers, Eilish won by a mile. Each cut on her album was streamed 19 million times to Swift’s 7. If we say an album is an album is an album, Eilish trounced Swift.

What we need is a consumption chart, especially since most of the vinyl purchases are souvenirs anyway. And we can have total consumption for the week, of all tracks by an artist, or of an album in its entirety, i.e. how many times the complete album is listened to.

But this would veer closer to reality.

Used to be charts impacted sales. Because retailers would order and feature more product. Now that paradigm is dead. What is the chart even for?

Oh, that’s right, to stroke the egos of the artists and teams involved. Period.

Except for publicity value. Which means less than ever before. Unless you’re in the business you’re unaware of this chart nonsense. And who needs more disinformation in their feed anyway? 

“Taylor Swift Prevails Over Billie Eilish for a Fifth Week at No. 1”

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