Billboard on Monday released a detailed explanation as to why Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber’s Stuck With U edged out Doja Cat and Nicki Minaj’s Say So and Tekashi 6ix9ine’s Gooba for the top spot, after Tekashi claimed that his competition had cheated to attain the number one status.
Tekashi said that his camp had probed the issue and arrived at the conclusion that ‘six credit cards’ had accounted for 30,000 sales units in the collaboration between the Scooter Braun clients.
‘When we asked where was those six credit cards linked to, Billboard said we can’t disclose that information,’ said the 24-year-old rap artist, whose real name is Daniel Hernandez.
The latest: Billboard on Monday released a detailed explanation as to why Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber’s Stuck With U was atop the Hot 100 this week after Tekashi implied there was ‘cheating’ behind the chart placement
And while three parties – Grande, Bieber and Braun – denied any wrongdoing in the issue in subsequent social media posts, the musical stalwart itself issued a detailed statement about how the spots on the Hot 100 chart are determined, using specific examples involving this week’s songs.
The outlet said that ‘in the interest of transparency, Billboard wanted to clear up the Hot 100’s chart rules and tabulation process, the calculations that go into the determinations of its final rankings, and the stats accumulated by the two singles that marked this week’s highest debuts.’
Billboard said that Gooba has a total of 55.3 million combined audio and video U.S. streams accounted for, as they and Nielsen Music/MRC Data counted the results on this week’s charts.
Billboard also said that Tekashi was improperly counting the statistics from platforms and how they’re figured into placing on the Hot 100 charts.
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‘Streaming numbers visible to the public on audio and video data platforms do not reflect the volume included in Billboard’s chart calculations,’ the outlet said. ‘Neither do the stream counts that services make available to content owners (including 6ix9ine and his team) directly through a proprietary data feed or dashboard.’
The way the streams are tallied is when data providers auditing them then report the totals to Billboard and Nielsen Music/MRC Data, the outlet said.
Streams that would be not counted under these ‘long-standing charting parameters’ include ‘U.S.-based-only plays, minimum play length, excessive plays and lack of user verification.’
In regards to the new Tekashi song, Billboard said it ‘has reached out to YouTube’ regarding their stats for Gooba.
As far as weighing the 180 million YouTube views the song had in correlation to the 55.3 million they counted in their final tabulation, Billboard said that the number was heavily inflated by global streams, while they only tally ‘U.S.-based plays’ for their charts.
Billboard said chart forecast the rapper mentioned in his clip was from an independent source, and that they do not send any predictions about the chart ‘to labels, management or artists.’
As for the big uptick in sales for the Bieber-Grande collaboration, Billboard noted how there was a surge on the single when the artists made signed copies available on their respective webstores this past Thursday, which count toward sales. Tekashi’s release was a CD single/digital download on the final day of tracking, with no added promotions.
As for the accusation about the ‘six credit cards,’ the organization said nothing like that happened, as it audits sales numbers for potential fraud and those numbers are not counted in the total.
As for Tekashi’s accusation that they didn’t ‘disclose’ the full stats, Billboard said that it ‘and Nielsen Music/MRC Data were open and forthright with all information pertaining to Gooba with 6ix9ine’s team.’
Billboard wrapped up in putting out there the exact numbers it used to tabulate the chart this week.
‘Overall, Stuck With U drew 28.1 million U.S. streams, 26.3 million in radio airplay audience and 108,000 sold in the tracking week,’ the outlet said. ‘Gooba had 55.3 million U.S. streams, 172,000 in radio airplay audience and 24,000 sold.
‘Those sums resulted in the songs’ respective rankings on this week’s Hot 100.’