Originally Posted by Aura101:
“Streaming is ****ing up the chart . IMO”
It's not if you believe that the purpose of the chart is to find out what the most popular songs are with the British public on a weekly basis, as streaming is the way that most of the British public listens to music on a weekly basis.
However, I don't believe that chart feats achieved in the streaming era should even for one moment be compared with feats achieved in the days of sales only purely because the parameters of both are so different.
Compare the situation now with Bieber to the last time that someone had such a stranglehold on the top end of the singles chart, namely John Lennon in 1981.
To add a unit onto Bieber's tally, someone just had to play one of his songs on a streaming service for free when they're at home or on the move, whereas someone wanting a Lennon unit had to physically go to a record shop and pay money for a single to register one.
As for the sheer number of hits, all of Bieber's tracks on his latest album are split up on streaming services and therefore get registered as individual singles, whereas the only hits Lennon had were those which were released as individual singles; someone wanting all of them would've had to buy his album which would have obviously counted towards the album chart.
Furthermore, the number of singles Lennon could sell was dictated by the number that could be physically obtained and stocked by individual record stores, which is obviously not a problem in today's digital music world.
All of those reasons - and there are probably more - makes me think that Bieber's achievement is rather more obtainable through the current method of consuming music and therefore less outstanding than that which John Lennon achieved some 35 years ago - and at the very least both should be put in separate categories.