Spring 2022 brought out the superstars: Over the course of three consecutive weeks, Future released I never liked youBad Bunny released A summer without Tiand Kendrick Lamar returned after a five-year break with Mr. Morale and the Big SteppersFuture and Lamar each had four songs reach the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 in the first week of their albums, while Bad Bunny had three of them.
But few of those tracks have stuck, with nine of them falling out of the top 10 in their second week on the charts. A month later, Future’s “Wait for U,” a melancholy hip-hop ballad featuring Drake and Tems, was the only lasting reminder of that blockbuster jump into the top 10.
In July of this year, Steve Lacy took a much different path to the Hot 100. He’s not nearly as well-known as Future, Bad Bunny or Lamar, so his breezy new wave single “Bad Habit” debuted at the lowest possible position on the Hot 100. It climbed the charts for five weeks before reaching the top 10, where it stayed for 18 weeks, eventually reaching No. 1.
Songs like “Bad Habit” are getting harder to find – 75% of 2024’s top 10 hits debuted in that lofty environment in the third week of July. Ironically, the tracks that start in the upper echelons of the Hot 100, like Future’s “Puffin On Zootiez” and Lamar’s “N95,” tend to come quickly and go quickly. They don’t stick around as long as the hits that take time to get into that exclusive atmosphere.
Since 2000, a single that enters the top 10 stays there for about six weeks on average. In contrast, tracks that take two to eight weeks to reach that position stay in the top 10 for longer than 11 weeks.
In the age of streaming, this dynamic has become even more extreme. Since 2015, singles that start in the top 10 have lasted an average of 6.3 weeks, while songs that take two to four weeks to reach the top 10 have lasted more than twice as long – 12.7 weeks. And songs that take five to eight weeks to reach the top 10 have fared even better, staying for an average of 13 weeks.
Singles that chart high and then immediately plummet may be considered viral one-offs—tracks that are plucked from obscurity, usually by the masses on TikTok, incorporated into millions of videos, streamed by curious listeners, and then discarded. In truth, most of these short-lived top-10 hits are album cuts from superstars like Taylor Swift and Drake.
When artists with large followings release new albums, it’s now common for many of the tracks on the album to immediately debut on the Hot 100—as loyal fans engage with it for the first time and play it in its entirety, sometimes more than once. Listeners have always enjoyed devouring new releases from their favorite acts, but this activity wasn’t trackable at the song level before the advent of streaming, except via sales or occasional radio plays from individual DJs who happened to like a particular album track.
However, the initial enthusiasm after release week – the excitement of something new – is very difficult to sustain, and many of these songs quickly leave the upper echelons of the Hot 100. From 2000 to 2015, around 13% of top 10 songs fell out of the top 10 after one week; this number has risen rapidly, exceeding 40% in each of the last four years.
In an age where there is unprecedented competition for attention, it is hard enough to capture listeners’ interest. Sustaining that attention for longer periods of time or building it over time can be even more difficult.
Songs that manage to do this often resemble singles from the pre-streaming era, as they are supported by sustained advertising campaigns. The influence of radio on their development is often particularly evident.
While streams and sales of popular projects typically increase close to the release date and then decline, airplay tends to increase over time as more stations recognize that a song is successful and play it, in parallel with label promotion. A similar trend is seen with radio formats, which often snatch successful tracks from each other, further increasing their influence on the charts.
“A lot of times the pop format just looks at other formats and sees what’s coming up – like a Hozier or a Noah Kahan – and then says, ‘You know what, this feels like a pop record, let’s try it,'” explains Tom Poleman, chief programming officer at iHeartMedia. “Then you can turn it into a super mass record.”
Many young executives believe that airplay has little to no impact on streaming rates, but radio’s slow penetration helps songs climb into the Hot 100 — and maintain their position at the top. From a label’s perspective, this is actually one of the most important remaining benefits of airplay, as radio continues to face increasing competition from streaming services and short-form video platforms. (Some executives also believe that airplay can help artists sell tickets and land brand deals.)
Take Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” for example: When it jumped from No. 2 to No. 1 on the Hot 100 on July 27, streams and sales dropped — by 6% and 24%, respectively, according to Luminate — but radio listeners rose 11%. Shaboozey’s hit garnered 77.2 million airplay listeners, compared to 39 million official streams and 16,000 sales.
Over the next two weeks, streaming and sales continued to decline while airplay audiences continued to grow, albeit at a declining rate — 10% in week three and 6% in week four — and “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” remained at No. 1. “Radio can still move a lot,” says J Grand, an A&R veteran. “Certainly not as much as it could a decade ago, but I don’t think the decline is as steep as people are making it out to be.”
But promoting songs on the radio is costly, and radio generally plays fewer recent songs than it used to. So it’s a good thing for commercially-minded artists that airplay isn’t the only way to extend a song’s life at the top of the charts. Although the influence of music videos has waned considerably in the age of TikTok, Reels, and YouTube Shorts, a well-placed clip can still propel a single to success. (Though videos can also be expensive.)
Lamar’s “Not Like Us” jumped back to No. 1 nine weeks after its initial release thanks to its music video, which was highly anticipated due to the high attention surrounding his ugly public feud with Drake. Streams of “Not Like Us” increased 20% and sales climbed 16% – at a time when they would normally be declining.
And adding a star collaborator to a remix remains a tried-and-true technique for counteracting declining chart positions. Wizkid’s “Essence,” a bouncy, flirtatious collaboration with Tems, grew gradually over months in 2021. “The people who first connected with the song in the States were largely either from Africa or the diaspora,” says John Fleckenstein, COO of RCA Records, which released and marketed the track. “We literally went city by city, focusing on targeted radio and digital campaigns to reach those demographics.”
The big boost for “Essence,” however, came when Justin Bieber entered the fray, appearing on a remix in August of that year that boosted streams, sales and airplay simultaneously. Bieber’s presence catapulted the song from No. 44 on the Hot 100 to No. 16. In October, “Essence” slipped into the top 10 – again with the help of airplay, which continued to rise even as streams and sales declined.
Creating the long climb that eventually made “Essence” – or “Bad Habit” – inevitable is increasingly a lost art. But while the majority of the Hot 100’s top 10 hits now debut in the upper reaches of the chart, the threat of a bright flare-up is fading quickly. Nick Bobetsky, who manages Chapell Roan, likes to say, “There’s a lot more meaning in momentum than in an instant.”
