Round of 8: (1) Radiohead - OK Computer vs. (24) The Beatles - Abbey Road Bracket • Page 3

i think the argument he’s making is that playlisting doesn’t really matter in “biggest song” sense and for classic artists that existed for decades before streaming it’s kind of rewriting history, but again, it’s not like a random bside becoming pavements biggest. it isn’t like a random early ringo song. it is a song that has always been huge lol. it’s definitely their biggest. the reasoning for why it is might not be your favorite, but that doesn’t change reality.

 

I can definitely see the argument for not calling it their biggest song historically (I agree with the argument in that case, in many ways big songs were “bigger” pre-streaming), but it’s definitely not an argument for not calling it their biggest song right now. In the case of the latter, your last sentence is basically what I am trying to say too.

 

Is its history not a part of the equation? Is “Harness Your Hopes” Pavement’s signature song now? Should their bio begin there and work back to the nascent days of their actual career?

I don’t think this is an interesting topic because of thinking like “if you take out this piece data that’s inconvenient to my argument, you get my preferred outcome”.

I work in music (including a ton of catalogue) and almost all data is wildly unreliable. It’s a perennial topic of frustration with folks I talk to.

 

Like I said, history matters for “biggest song historically/of all time”, but not “biggest songs right now”

 

no one ever said it was their biggest song when they were a band or it’s their biggest song ever, i said it’s their biggest song now. it is. and it probably has been for a decade now tbh.

 

no one is arguing that playlisting isn’t a massive reason for boosting the song’s metrics. but that’s like arguing “the song can’t be their biggest bc it’s just boosted by mood playlists” as if mood playlisrs/curator playlists don’t basically run the music industry now and for the last decade lol

it sucks but it’s reality

 

signature song =/= biggest song. in some cases, they might line up like foo fighters with everlong, but in many they don’t. wonderwall is indisputably oasis’ biggest song but it’s basically been disowned by the band at this point lol. live forever is their signature song. harness your hopes is pavements biggest song. their signature song is cut your hair. i feel like more bands have a discrepancy between the two than the foo fighters example.

 

i wont be mad about this

 

Spotify streams, as has been pointed out multiple times here, is just not a reliable metric for overall popularity. I mean, there's 181 million Spotify users and 8 billion people in the world.

 

it isn't a *great* metric but it is far and away the best one available

what is a better metric for tracking popularity? better yet, what is the biggest beatles song in 2022 if not here comes the sun, since everyone keeps saying it isn't the biggest but haven't offered one single alternative

 

For work stuff, I use Spotify monthlies, Youtube, ticket sales, soundscan, social media followers (if its that kind of thing). There isn’t any one indicator

I work with one artist with 250k monthlies who probably has a stronger core concert audience than an artist with 1.3M i work with. But everybody knows one of their songs, unlike the smaller band.

For an outsized example, if you’re a promoter booking Redbone, you’re gonna see they have 3.5M monthlies and Come And Get Your Love has 500M, but you aren’t gonna see those numbers reflected in ticket sales

 

I realize this is completely unrelated to the beatles

 

i think comparing monthly listeners between two different artists and total listeners of individual songs isn’t really a 1:1 comparison