(May 30, 2025). Once upon a time, Billboard’s charts reflected a true tug-of-war between record sales and radio spins. While radio told us what stations (and record labels) wanted us to hear, sales revealed what music fans were willing to spend money on. And for years, many argued that consumer purchases — votes made with dollars — should weigh more heavily in determining a song’s Hot 100 success.
Record sales (and later digital downloads) ultimately gave way to legal streaming services in the 2010s, with that medium now being the primary means by which listeners “vote” to consume their favorite music.
Since then, streaming — with its much easier access to millions of songs — has become increasingly popular and the more dominant factor in Billboard’s chart calcs. In a typical week, streaming’s share of a top ten song’s point total on the Hot 100 averages roughly 80%, far greater than the 50/50 split between sales and airplay that Billboard strived to achieve in pre-streaming days. On this week’s Hot 100, the top 25 songs average 77.8% of their points from streaming activity. Airplay contributes just under 21%, while digital sales make up a meager 1.2%.
The only song in this week’s top 25 for which radio play makes up more than half its chart points is Doechi’s “Anxiety” (with an airplay-to-streaming ratio of 59% to 39%). Otherwise, continued heavy streaming of older songs by loyal fans has buoyed popular tunes for much longer than in years past.
This has resulted in some ridiculously lengthy chart runs at the top. In just the past year alone, records have been broken or tied for: Most weeks at No. 1 (“A Bar Song” by Shaboozey; 19 weeks, tied with Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road”); Most weeks in the top 10, in the top 40, and on the Hot 100 (“Lose Control” by Teddy Swims); Most Hot 100 weeks for a hip-hop song (Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us”; 53 weeks); Most weeks at No. 1 on Hot Country Songs (“A Bar Song”; 45 weeks); Most weeks at No. 1 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs (tied: “Not Like Us” by Kendrick Lamar and “Luther” by Lamar/SZA… the latter of which is still padding its total).
Furthermore, based primarily on continued streaming activity, “Lose Control,” “A Bar Song,” and Benson Boone’s “Beautiful Things” — the three biggest Hot 100 hits of 2024 in that order — are still riding the chart’s top ten and are projected to be among this year’s ten biggest hits. There are no signs that either tune is in danger of leaving the chart before Billboard’s 2025 chart year finishes in mid-October. Their 2025 year-end projections — if they come true — would mark the first time in history that three songs concurrently finished among the year’s ten biggest hits for two years running.
Despite this historic slowdown of the charts and the boredom it’s created with longtime chart fans (and even newer ones), Billboard will likely not adjust its formula to reduce the impact of streaming for several reasons.
One is, despite the fact that there is no longer equal representation between radio airplay and the sales/streaming component, streaming really is the best metric when it comes to what music consumers are choosing to listen to the most. To adjust the methodology now to reduce streaming’s impact on the Hot 100 and all the other charts that use that list’s formula would be no less arbitrary than whatever logic was used to create the current algorithm.
Secondly, if Billboard raised the threshold below which older songs are removed from the Hot 100 charts — currently songs listed for more than a year are nixed if they fall below No. 25, and the same goes for songs charting more than 20 weeks if they fall below No. 50 — it would simply mean that a lot of songs still generating lots of streams and airplay would be missing from the list while those with fewer chart points would rank in higher positions.
Labels could do their part and remove songs from streaming platforms after certain periods of time, like they used to remove physical product from record stores after a song peaked so that albums could sell more or the company could promote the next single. But that would be like biting the hand that feeds them. Why remove Teddy Swims’ “Lose Control” from Spotify when it costs the label nothing to keep it there and people still prefer hearing it over his latest hits?
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, despite what may be unprecedented fan interest given the amount of buzz the charts create on social media, these lists are still an industry tool created to inform labels and marketing companies which products consumers are buying, streaming or listening to the most. Billboard wont change that simply because fans don’t like that a song today ranks in the top ten for longer than all seven of Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814 singles combined.
Back in the late 1990s when airplay was increasingly becoming the predominant factor in a song’s chart success, Billboard always strived to adjust the formula to increase the sales component. This was especially true in the late 1990s as physical singles were being withheld by labels to encourage album sales and the Hot 100 began reflecting that. Under increasing pressure from those labels (not fans), Billboard ultimately changed its policy to eliminate physical single availability as a prerequisite for Hot 100 entry, which paved the way for the charts as we know them today.
It made sense then. The airplay-to-sales ratio of Hot 100 points was increasingly leaning in radio’s favor, particularly around the turn of the century when fewer physical singles were being released and paid legal digital downloads from stores like iTunes had not yet become a thing. The culmination of this was the historic moment in 2001 when Aaliyah’s “Try Again” became the first No. 1 Hot 100 song whose chart points came entirely from radio airplay as no commercial single was available.
While that feat made headlines and maybe even sold a few extra copies of the magazine, Billboard never liked having a No. 1 song that fans hadn’t actively chosen. Thanks to streaming, that dilemma is gone — and for better or worse, the charts are now fully in the consumers’ hands.
DJRob
DJRob (he/him) is a freelance music blogger from the East Coast who covers R&B, hip-hop, disco, pop, rock and country genres – plus lots of music news and current stuff! You can follow him on Bluesky at @djrobblog.bsky.social, X (formerly Twitter) at @djrobblog, on Facebook or on Meta’s Threads.
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