Read on Twitter
The Billboard Hot 100 has become easier to manipulate over the past few years. This week, we'll be looking at how mass bundling, bulk buying and chart manipulation has corrupted the past week's Hot 100 race.
Prior to the last 2 or 3 days of the tracking week, Savage Remix by Megan thee Stallion was predicted to top the Hot 100. It had a healthy lead over Say So by Doja Cat, topping the iTunes sales chart for 6 consecutive days and leading on streaming too.
That was up until chart prediction accounts which labels, artists and stans usually monitor such as Talkofthecharts began detailing exactly how Say So could beat Savage. Prediction accounts NEVER go into this kind of detail to avoid corrupting the charts.
It was at this point that members of Doja's team began getting into contact with chart accounts in hopes of mass buying and bundling to beat the popularity of Savage as noted in this conversation with Doja's manager.
In addition to maintaining direct contact with Doja's team, both Nicki & Doja fans bought MULTIPLE copies of the songs in the last 2 days of tracking to further boost the song.
In order to avoid tracking by Billboard and sites that report to Billboard, they sought advice from merch shops on how to look less suspicious.
Fans not based in the US even went as far as creating fake billing addresses to avoid detection since the Billboard Hot 100 only tracks the most popular songs in the United States.
More blatantly, fans even relied on bots to fake sales and streams for Say So.
