I dunno if this had been posted before, but I found this interesting article that describes how ineffective the Hot 100 is at currently judging a song's TRUE popularity:
http://jcole77.wordpress.com/2008/08...-chart-part-i/http://jcole77.wordpress.com/2008/08...chart-part-ii/
http://jcole77.wordpress.com/2008/08...-100-part-iii/
http://jcole77.wordpress.com/2008/08...chart-part-iv/
http://jcole77.wordpress.com/2008/08...-chart-part-v/
At the end the author has three main suggestion to "fix" the Hot 100's methodology:
1) Change the sales component to a rolling six week average. I think this is an ingenius idea. This will keep songs from debuting high before airplay peaks and most importantly keeps most non-singles from charting when a popular artist releases an album. A perfect example of this is the fact that Taylor Swift had ELEVEN charting songs when she released Fearless last year. I'm sorry but that's just a little silly in my opinion! Nobody except her fans even knew these songs! With a rolling six week average, most of these songs that fell off the Hot Digital Songs chart the next week would've been unable to chart on the rolling average sales chart and would've been unable to chart on the Hot 100 at all, thus allowing more deserving "hit" songs to chart instead. Like in the article, this also prevents repressed downloads and ridiculous nonsensical jumps on the Hot 100 that are not truly based on a song's popularity (like Kelly Clarkson's new song). A rolling average will allow songs to rise up and down the chart naturally like they used to and I suggest even calling this chart the "Hot Rolling Digital Songs". However, I would NOT suggest weighting digital sales less in the Hot 100 methodology because digital sales are still the only way songs can chart well if they do not have amazing airplay.
2) Factor in album sales for all charting songs. This in itself could get a bit messy, so I'm adding an addendum to this proposal: factoring in album sales ONLY when the single is not available for purchase SEPARATELY from the album. If album sales were allowed for EVERY song on the Hot 100, some unfair biases would develop again that Billboard would have to deal with. I would also alter the amount of sales factored in from the 75% suggested by the article to a more moderate 50%. Most album sale debuts are still higher than single sale debuts, and eventually I would imagine that artists would stop releasing singles again if they found out album sales would help more. However, considering MOST songs are available on iTunes etc, album sales should only be used for the tiny minority of singles that are NOT for sale separately from the album. In fact the only example I can think of in recent history that this rule would've actually applied to is Kid Rock's "All Summer Long" as mentioned by the article. Most of the time the single is released either before the album or available off the album from iTunes when the album is released, thus preventing further loopholes in the Hot 100 which is of course a good thing.
3) Change the airplay component back to just pop radio airplay. I am not completely convinced on this change myself. Songs from some genres, such as Rock and Country, have only been able to chart since the Hot 100's airplay was changed to all formats in 1998. I would still suggest looking into the situation some more to see if any other airplay changes could be made to reinforce the Hot 100's validity. The above changes should also be applied to the Pop 100 as well (except for the airplay of course).
A last thing I'd like to see is maybe increasing the importance of streaming and/or music video sales on the Hot and Pop 100's. This would further diminish the effect of the Rhythmic bias the Hot 100 currently has and I'd say that streaming is a pretty accurate indicator of how popular a song is, considering it's your choice to go and listen to a song online. Therefore a setup like 40% airplay, 40% digital sales, and 20% streaming/music video sales seems reasonable to me.
Thoughts? Comments?