Today’s thread is brought to you by the numbers 6, 36, 65 and 750M.
Billboard reports that Rihanna’s “Work” featuring Drake continues to dominate the top of the chart for a fourth week. And when we say dominate, we mean it. The song has 1.5 as many points as second place “Love Yourself” from Bieber (who continues to top the airplay chart for the fifth week). “Work” is slowly slipping downward because it used to be 2:1, but those are some impressive numbers – driven largely by streaming. It has now been 36 weeks since an American artist has topped that chart with no likely contenders in site.
The top 4 of the chart is stagnant. Following “Work” and “Love Yourself” are twenty one pilot’s “Stressed Out” and Flo Rida’s “My House”. Danish group Lukus Graham makes the biggest move in the top 10 with “7 Years” going from 9th to 5th. They’ve taken over the top of the digital chart with 121K in sales.
ZAYN’s “Pillowtalk” has made a bed at 6th where it has lived for weeks. This X-Factor alum is the top air-play gainer moving up to an AI of 65M (up 21%). G-eazy’s “Me, Myself and I” is 7th, Bieber’s “Sorry” is 8th (if it last one more week it will tie for most number of weeks in the top 10 since debut with Nicki Minaj’s “Starship”, Maroon 5’s “Sugar” and his own “What Do You Mean” at 21 weeks). DNCE’s “Cake by the Ocean” is 9th. Mike Posner’s “I Took a Pill” is the only new song in the top 10.
Billboard also has an interesting article about Nielsen’s report on how Instagram can be used to connect with music buyers. Instagram users seem to buy more music and pay for streaming services. Lots of great graphs and pictograms summarizing the data.
Several music sites are reporting that the Michael Jackson estate has agreed to sell it’s 50% share of the Sony/ATV catalog to Sony for $750M. The catalog famously includes music from The Beatles. The estate will retain 100% control over MJ’s songs. They don’t want to end up like Paul with no control.
