Pre downloading and streaming, music was easy to monitor resulting in physical sales of an artist. You had an actual product you physically sold which gave you sales resulting in the weekly chart. Yes record companies manipulated sales by sending out scout buyers first week of sales usually to get a chart placing but this was costly due to having to drive around the country buying copies in the relevent shops but not too many in one purchase as this would arouse suspicion. So over all you could quite easily see who was popular and selling. The market is far more difficult to gauge and record. Physical sales especially have dropped and it tends to be middle age to older who purchase CD's. Streaming services although now counted don't give a true reflection as we know from the Lady Gaga episode of having her song on a loop so fans clicked and racked up plays. Illegal downloads especially as quality is just as good as streaming services and official downloads have impacted hugely. Record labels releasing shipment figures rather than sales. So they claim the album sold millions but realistically when you tally up sales worldwide they are no where near what the label claim.
Album sales specifically have been killed due to iTunes making all tracks individually available. Everyone used to buy an album only to find out only two tracks that were decent and the rest was fillers. Yes you will always have a few really big sellers each year Ed Shereen and Adele come to mind but overall the charts just seem to be completely irrelevant and not a true reflection of popularity. Unless you count half a dozen songs that radios appear to play on loop for the past year.
Is touring the only way now to calculate someone's popularity and success in music?

Longevity in the music business is the only real way to tell....the ones that still keep going despite not having a hit in years....that shows fans care and the record companies still have faith....success & popularity are two different things.

Yes, longevity with standards not slipping too much like Springsteen, Madonna, U2 etc.
But you can have success through influence on others. You can create music that is popular and stands the test of time like The Beatles or James Brown. Or you can sell relatively few records like The Velvet Underground or Scott Walker and influence many artists who follow and acknowledge you.

Music Popularity is perhaps based on:

-critical acclaim - reviews and awards
-sales from albums, singles and tours
-impact on culture
-preorders and streaming


radio play doesn't work as its too subjective and selective based on radio station and their criteria for playlist.

I personally don't think the standards of the three have slipped, the difficulty is is the three artists mentioned are repgarded as the three biggest names in mainstream pop U2 biggest band in the world, Bruce Springsteen biggest male solo and Madonna biggest female solo. Given that all three artists are the biggest draw touring and all have over 30 years in the music industry means they tend to get compared to younger more contemporary artists however I wouldn't expect them to have sales anywhere near when they were the young artist of their era or be competing with the likes of 1D, Ed Shereen or Taylor Swift. The only comparisons you could mave made is like for like sales and chart placements at the same time in there music timeline however as previously stated you can no longer do that due to the shift in pre-post internet streaming and download market. Unfortunately I can't see many artists of today being able to sell out Stadium Tours in 30 years time. TBH i would be very surprised if Stadium tours exist in 10 years time let alone 30.

Absolutely not. "Oh but my favourite artist from the 60s/70s/80s can still pack out venues on their tours" is the standard defence when someone challenges the true popularity of a heritage pop or rock act. It usually means they're appealing only to an ageing fan base.

Given that traditional measures of popularity such a singles and album sales are increasingly less reliable perhaps we need something new. Opinion pollsters have asked representative nationwide samples who their favourite acts are and if they did that on a regular basis we'd have a sort of 'stock exchange' of popularity.

Having been to see Prince & The Who this year, I can tell you that it was a very much mixed age range at both concerts, both young & old, so I actually would say your assertion is quite wrong.

I agree that we need a new way to measure music and popularity as the current method no longer works especially the data breakdown of streaming. As you can be really popular but due to illegal downloads have really poor sales. The problem with polls is you could be extremely popular in a poll but have no success as polls really only portray instant popularity with physical sales people had to actually take time to go out and purchase with tours they have to pay a ticket and attend. I can't think of a way of now encompassing the entire music industry into one chart. Maybe we should be more like the American charts and break it down into more genres. I really don't know.
As for appealing to an ageing fan base not sure what your point is as ever artist ages there fan base is generally going to age with them. The fact they sell well in tours and have managed to maintain a fan base past their initial breakthrough period shows they remain popular regardless of what age group is attending. When you hit a certain age doesn't mean your music choices no longer count towards popular consensus.

and that's the second defence you hear from the fans of a heritage act! I can be certain that the average age of these fans will be considerably higher than the fans of a current act.

I agree if you're trying to measure popularity across the whole population, from teens to pensioners. The singles or streaming charts and tour revenues, to give two examples, would be very poor at measuring popularity in the over 50s or 60s.

And my point about ageing fan bases is this; you cannot extrapolate current levels of popularity from tour data. Cher probably packs them in and makes a fortune, ditto Engelbert Humperdinck and Bon Jovi and many others. But there'll be nowhere if you ask about most popular artists in a survey of a 1,000 people under 35.

How many followers you have on Twitter... well that's how Radio 1 do it.

I know..i could weep. It would explain their bizarre airplay decisions though.

[quote=vauxhall1964;76377236]I agree if you're trying to measure popularity across the whole population, from teens to pensioners. The singles or streaming charts and tour revenues, to give two examples, would be very poor at measuring popularity in the over 50s or 60s.

And my point about ageing fan bases is this; you cannot extrapolate current levels of popularity from tour data. Cher probably packs them in and makes a fortune, ditto Engelbert Humperdinck and Bon Jovi and many others. But there'll be nowhere if you ask about most popular artists in a survey of a 1,000 people under 35.[/QUOTE]

Goes to show that popularity is fleeting then...as I say longevity is the only real way to measure it....come back in 10 years time and let's see how popular these current acts are, you will probably find those under 35's are now following those artists you say have an ageing fan base.

I use a piece of string.

I agree about the Radio 1 & social media criteria. I find that most baffling.

Someone has 1.2m followers on Twitter and they release a slice of Amnesia Pop (i.e. a song that you forget how it goes as soon as it's finished, it's that bland and boring).

Someone has 120k followers on Twitter and they release a song in central Europe that is considered a musical revolution and tops the charts all over Europe...but let's say the song is sung entirely in Italian.

Who will Radio 1 choose? The boring song by the more established artist, or the better song in Italian by the unknown artist?

I bet they'd go for the boring song purely because 1.2 million followers on Twitter their barometer for measuring success. LOL **sigh**

[quote=dearmrman;76378248]
But when asked to measure popularity - which the OP did - we can only measure what was popular in the past and is popular in the present. Lacking crystal balls no-one can predict longevity and what will prove to be popular in the future.

[quote=vauxhall1964;76380344]
That's where the piece of string comes in

no. there's a numbe of ways. net profit is one of the most important ones as far as the industry is concerned

But how do you get net profit from illegal downloads, and streaming especially free streaming sites.
I can see how you could incorporate advertising revenue or sponsorship revenue. That certainly would have gave U2 the most net profit last year for their album with the iTunes deal.
One of the difficulties is no record company or artist would release the net profit for tax reasons.

U2 are not the biggest band/artist/whatever currently still active. AC/DC have sold more, as has Eminem and Rihanna both sold more globally.

As to the OP point, the only way to measure success is either simple or not doable.

Success as in ability to make money. ALl you do for that is see who has the most money, not all avenues gain money, but many more than simple album/track sales (tours, merch, features, sponsors and so on).

Success as an artist of merit, much harder to do. About the only realistic way is to try to gauge how much of an impact musically that person/group had on subsequent groups.

I think a lot of pop music gets a pass on artistic merit, as its simple a means to make money, with anything approaching human emotion much further down the scale. Its been proven scientifically that we humans are slightly addicted to pop music, like a mild version of of the same thing people get with gambling addiction. When you hear a track, your mind subconsciously for the most part, but consciously at others, will guess where the track is going in terms of melody. A lot of pop music uses this, and uses very familiar melodies as a way to reward your brain. Once you get that right answer, you feel the groove or get into it, your brain rewards you with a small dose of dopamine.

"I am hooked on this new Katy Perry track" yes, you really are.

indirectly if any of those people then bought an item or used a service that did lead to a legal profit


as above. the legal streaming sites do pay however, from income raised through advertising


what do you mean? if you mean release stats of net profits, then they are published as part of the businesses accounts and aside from a minority of possible exceptions, all bands and artists trade via a company that files accounts. that's why you see things like pink floyd (1987) limited

http://companycheck.co.uk/company/02103633

Youtube views is the way I'd measure a song's popularity. At least if I see a song has over a million views, I'd expect the band is fairly well known.

Or I should say, well known in its market. For instance, right now I'm listening to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDn04KCpdR0

Which racked up over 6 million views in 6 months.. but I'm willing to bet gesu no kiwami otome is practically unknown outside of japan.

But really, who cares? Listen to what you want. Let the bands worry about popularity.

Doesn't it depend on the act and how "active" they are? you assertion certainly wouldn't apply to bands like AC/DC or Iron Maiden, both bands that started in the 1970s and have a strong following across all ages.

Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden has said recently that the average age of fans at their shows is under 25, hardly what one would expect of a so-called "heritage" act, and where did such a ridiculous name come from?

Popularity can be measured objectively, it's a quantative measure of how many people like the band or artist, so can be ascertained from sales, be they of albums, singles, merchandise, concert tickets, etc.

But success is subjective, it all depends what the artist set out to do as to whether they've succeeded or not. If they aspired to having a lifelong career in the music business and they manage that until they no longer want to, then they've succeeded, they're successful. If they want to just keep making music for the sake of making music, and have managed to do that, then despite what the sales figures are, they could still be considered successful.

I don't bother worrying about popularity and just enjoy the music.

Example, Nick Drake only released 3 albums in his short life and was not able to build up popularity like some of his contemporaries, but he made some of the best and most creative music of his time.

Forget about how popular an artist is, just enjoy their music while you can.