“Choosin’ Texas” is now the longest-lived song at the #1 position in Hot 100 history, with 23 nonconsecutive weeks at the top. This comes less than two years after “All I Want for Christmas Is You” took over the top spot by spending between one and five weeks at the top over the holiday season for eight years in a row. It would be easy to say that these recent records are being set because Billboard is cataloging the taste of the American music listener more accurately than it’s ever done before–and just that the average American tends to listen to the same thing over and over…and over…and over.
But is this really true? Perhaps on some level it is. But on another level, it’s not so much that an accurate portrayal of music listening is taking place, but a more accurate portrayal of what music is being pushed out is taking place–regardless of whether that push is being done by the actual song or artist, or something else, like a company or a series of bots. And as such, the choices made by Billboard over the past decade or so to keep “accurate” with changes in music consumption have left it more vulnerable to ways for the charts to be “cooked” than even during the heights of the previous Payola eras.
Based on events like Drake suing his own record company over accusations that they were “juicing” Kendrick Lamar’s streaming numbers, many people came to the conclusion that Drake himself knew that his numbers had been juiced. In fact, a class-action lawsuit was filed last year stating exactly that. But how? Was it a push to have individual fans re-stream a small selection of songs (or even one song) over and over again**, similar to what Justin Bieber was telling his fans to do in 2020–only on a much broader level? Or are actual “bot farms” being used to mimic mass human interaction? One would need to ask today that, if mainly algorithms and bots are pushing out songs for the charts instead of radio stations and fan consumption, then how much does an audience with human ears actual matter?
*Actually, only 30 seconds of a song is required to count as a “play” on Spotify, making it much quicker to generate plays vs. the radio.
In 2026, it has also become harder to determine if the few major streaming companies are consistently using human curators do the work in generating playlists, which are the bread & butter or their music listening experiences. While Spotify continues to insist that the human curator is key, as recently as 2024, it was reported that they were shifting from human to AI in playlist creation. Just as significant, recent initiatives such as Spotify’s Discovery Mode were “allow[ing] labels and artists to submit songs for additional algorithmic promotion in exchange for lower royalty rates”. This begs the question that, if a handful of streaming companies are curating and promoting playlists as their central form of music curation or promotion, but with no solid ability to determine how much humans are taking part in either of these areas, then is taste music being shaped and defined by any…thing that can actually interact with it on an emotional level?
Additionally, Billboard having no real limits on what can chart, and with calculation methods that allows song and album charts to technically double-dip (with both Hot 100 chart numbers and “album equivalent” sales generated from the same streams), plus allowing multiple versions of an album to count as a single entity for charting purposes, artists are seemingly doing much more of two specific things over the last few years: (1) Putting out albums with more and/or shorter tracks, since every single song can now debut at the same time on the Hot 100**, and (2) putting out multiple, “alternate” versions of the same album with the same (or virtually the same) music, but with different covers, different colored vinyl or CD pressings, albums bundled with posters, etc. This helps generate more physical sales among artists who can afford to do this, but it also treats the music like Pokémon, tempting the fan to “collect them all”; pumping up sales, but treating the songs themselves as, if not quite an afterthought, then something much less significant than its own marketing strategy.
**Compare that to, for instance, the current UK music charts, which allow for only three songs from an album to chart on the “singles” chart at the same time. Streaming info is still generated, and tracks that become more popular can switch out with those less so, but no more than three, allowing greater diversity on the charts, and greater capacity for music discovery.
So then, finally, what is the actual significance of the Billboard charts anymore? Are we even talking about music anymore when talking about its place in pop culture? Or is it a backdrop to cross-promotions with online influencers and various advertisers? Has all “popular” music become culturally like “ringtone rap” on steroids, with songs crafted so that one small section can be re-looped and (in 2026) danced to on TikTok? On a deeper level, can much of music which currently appears on the Billboard charts still be considered art, or is it just product, and artists now just “producers” in the most Randian sense of the word?
The “Dead Internet Theory” posits that the internet has basically been reduced to communications with (or even between) bots, designed to either keep engagement going by playing to base emotions regardless of which ones are being triggered, or to just push out advertisements. If Billboard charts are now dominated by streaming numbers which can be gamed, with songs hosted by companies who are less then forthcoming with how songs get and stay on their playlists, then are we really being given an accurate picture of the charts? Or are we pretty much now just witnessing a “Dead Billboard,” as we view the results of virtual listeners communicating with each other in between pushing out adverts to other bots and the occasional, actual human listener?
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