How Amazon appear to have had undue influence on the music charts. River by Ellie Goulding is this week’s number one, seemingly because Amazon have added it to their Christmas music playlists. So whenever anyone asked their new Alexa to play Christmas music, this new single got played — propelling it to number one.
This article also contains some interesting details about the pros and cons of different ways of compiling music charts in the streaming era.
If the voices of those clamouring for the charts to discriminate between “lean in” and “lean back” streams — i.e. those which the user has actively chosen to hear rather than simply being served up in a playlist — grow ever louder in the new year, then River will be held up as a shining example of why that needs to happen.
I am in the “lean in” camp on this one for the main chart – a curated playlist is more like a radio station than anything else, and the radio chart is a separate thing from sales/downloads/streaming.