Member Since: 12/21/2011
Posts: 412
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Telephone.
There are a few details people on both sides are leaving out:
1. Exposure
Scream and Shout was the first song to feature Britney's vocals that was heavily played on radio since a year and a half it's release, and her only recent promotion has been as the quiet judge on the X-Factor. Britney fans and the general public haven't had a good dose of Britney in such a long time, that obviously there would be a fervor reaction to the song.
Telephone was the sixth song in a string of closely released radio smashes. Gaga's still budding fan base could still have been promoting Bad Romance and Paparazzi, as well as prepping Alejandro, while Telephone was the current single. Yet, despite all of the exposure she's had on and off radio and having to compete with herself, the song continued to do tremendously.
2. Song Success vs. Artist Success
None of you are actually talking about the songs. None of Will.I.Am's previous singles which he was the lead artist did particularly well. Only when Britney was featured on a track did a single do well. The song itself isn't particularly good (subjective opinion), and if any other artist was featured on it (excluding Rihanna) the song would have arguably been paid dust. If anything, the song is a tribute to the influence of Britney Spears and has nothing to do with the song itself.
Telephone was a critically appreciated. It was so critically appreciated that even the demo version that Britney recorded was placed on the same best of list that the original was placed on. It's arguable that, since more people could have sung the song and made it a success, the song itself is a bigger hit and Gaga and Beyonce can be taken out of the equation.
3. Competition
Does Scream and Shout have any major competition worldwide? The last song to really be everywhere was Gangnam Style. No other current single seems to be as pervasive.
Telephone was released in the blitz of smash singles like Bad Romance, Tik Tok, OMG, and maybe California Gurls. It's competition was arguably more challenging, so using charts without any actual information about other charting songs does not seem completely logical. The charts do make sense as a tool, but just the numbers of what may have been one week is somewhat biased. More general information could change the meaning of the numbers.
4. Internet Growth
The Internet is growing exponentially. 2010 to 2013 may not seem like a large gap, but it actually is. The top 4 selling song were at the time just above 5 million, now a multitude of songs have reached that plateau. All recently released music videos have been garnering larger amounts of views in smaller amounts of time. There is probably some algorithm that can be used to convert the numbers so that the numbers can be unbiasedly viewed side by side, but the actual numbers are skewed more towards the recent releases. Both songs of course did extremely well for the periods they were released, but comparing the sales ad views of these two different periods isn't very reasonable.
All and all, they are both hits and the artists earned the successes of the songs, but I just can't find an unbiased reason to say Scream and Shout is bigger. Someone earlier in this thread mentioned something about the other side not knowing stats, but a big part of stats is being able to identify confounding and lurking variables and being able to connect those to the effects.
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You tried though.
