Just as somebody pointed out earlier a single is just a mean to promote your album.
Well yes, sort of, from a financial perspective. But don't forget that it's songs we love artists for, so the most popular singles are an important metric as well.
A song's dominance is more noticeable than an album mainly because there are more areas that you have to excel (downloads, radio, streaming) than just copies sold. Your song LITERALLY have to be everywhere to reach the summit. More people remember singles too than albums as a whole, especially the lead singles which can really define an era. It's quite easy to ignore an album's chart run unless it made a gigantic impact (say 21 or Thriller)
I agree. Very well said.
It's true that the album sales bring easily more revenues, but put that aside, a #1 charting single is much more significant and valuable for an artist and their career progression. As long as their album still sells somewhat well/decently...
With albums, sales are more important. There have been #1 albums which haven't gone platinum (like F.A.M.E.) and #3 albums which are almost 2x platinum (LOUD), so with albums the position they debuted in isn't important. However with singles, nobody's like "Carly Rae Jepson's 3x platinum hit Call Me Maybe" are they? Because singles sales don't matter, it's about positions. People are like "the #1 single Call Me Maybe"
The question is not which is the hardest to top .. The question is which one is more important or like prestigeous.
The hot 100 is more competitive and you need airplay support plus sales so it could be harder, but a billboard 200 #1 album is considered a more important and prestigeous fact. And there are still some artists that can't have a #1 album despite having #1 singles
Singles duh, that's when people know your songs and you're getring airplay.
You can release an album and get a BB 200 #1 with low ass sales you just release it in the right week, that doesn't mean ****.
It really depends on the various circumstances surrounding each release. Nothing exists in a void. But the general attitude I get from around here towards pop artists is that it's much more of a proud achievement to sell a million copies of your album and have zero top 40 hits and that it's a total embarrassment if you get that #1 hit single and proceed to flop with a completely irrelevant album.