Harlem Shake got 350% more Hot 100 points than Thrift Shop
Quote:
Baauer (born Harry Rodrigues) has taken advantage of the digital era (and the Hot 100's formula revision) to quickly make his hit the most popular song in the country. The track has surged thanks to the suddenly wildly popular "Harlem Shake" meme. (Its concept: a 30-second video begins with a person dancing to the song alone for 15 seconds, while other people appear unaware of the movement. Then, all participants join in for the clip's second half.) Fueled by the song's audio as a backing track, "Shake" debuts on the BDS-based Streaming Songs chart with an astounding 103 million weekly streams. The title does not appear on On-Demand Songs as only 309,000 of its streams stem from the online subscription services that contribute to that chart.
As "Shake" takes over atop the Hot 100 (and Dance/Electronic Songs, where it leaps from No. 12), it dethrones Macklemore & Ryan Lewis' "Thrift Shop," featuring Wanz, after a four-week reign. Showing just how strong "Shake" is in streaming, "Shop" registered an impressive 10.1 million streams in the chart's tracking week (dipping 1-2 on Streaming Songs), but the figure is clearly exponentially lower than the 103 million for "Shake." "Shake," in fact, leads the Hot 100 with three-and-a-half times the overall chart points total of "Shop."
They'll just change the formula again. There's no legit way of measuring popularity. Billboard needs to just make separate charts for sales, airplay, streams, YouTube parodies, etc.