Thread by @fuckyanext, How weekly audio streams in the US & songs credits work: a [...]

How weekly audio streams in the US & songs credits work: a very necessary thread

Since there’s a lot of confusion on this I’m gonna clear all your doubts and get the stuff straight in this thread

Ok so first of all let’s make a big distinction between: solo-lead songs, co-lead songs and featurings.
Let’s see the difference through some examples below

Solo-lead song:
Ariana Grande - Into You

Co-lead song:
Lady Gaga & Ariana Grande - Rain On Me

Featuring:
Troye Sivan - Dance To This (feat. Ariana Grande)

As you can see collaborations are divided into co-lead songs (or duets) and featurings. There’s a big difference between the two and y’all have to let that sink in somewhat

In co-lead songs, both the artists “own” the song in the same way. We can say it’s a 50% each. In featurings, the only “owner” of the song is the lead artist on it. For example, Dance to This is 100% a Troye’s song, Ariana is a credited as a featuring therefore it’s NOT her song

Back to audio streams,, as y’all know the main source to them in the US is Rolling Stone. They have a chart for artists, and here the difference between co-lead songs and featurings has never been clearer

On the Artists 500 *only* solo-lead songs are counted towards a certain artist’s total; this is due the fact that they create a whole new artist for duets which includes both the artists involved in the song. Here some examples

Now you know that co-lead songs/duets get counted separately. On the other hand, featurings’ streams are counted towards the main artist’s total. For example, Problem (feat. Iggy Azalea) is entirely counted towards Ariana

Look: Rockstar by DaBaby feat. Roddy Ricch gained 24.3M streams last week, however the “Da Baby, Roddy Ricch” / “Da Baby & Rossy Ricch” is nowhere to be seen because all the streams go to the lead artist, Da Baby

So basically featurings are solo-lead songs as well. There are no credits differences between

Ariana Grande - One Last Time

Ariana Grande - Problem (feat. Iggy Azalea)

In both cases it’s 100% Ariana’s song

Why am I making a big deal out of this? That’s because Nielsen counts co-lead songs/duets towards both artists’ consumption in their reports, meanwhile featurings get counted exclusively towards the lead artist.

Now, these are Ariana’s co-lead songs:

Almost Is Never Enough
Bang Bang
Love Me Harder
E più ti penso
Beauty and the Beast
MONOPOLY
boyfriend
Don’t Call Me Angel
Bad to You
Nobody
Got Her Own

Which, again, are NOT counted towards her own total on the Rolling Stones chart

The chart stops at 5M for this week, which means all these songs got a lower amount of streams. If - for example - Bang Bang gained 5.5M streams last week, the “Jessie J, Ariana Grande, Nicki Minaj” / “Jessie J & Ariana Grande & Nicki Minaj” artist would’ve entered the chart

For what concerns video streams, there’s the YouTube Charts website which luckily includes all credits & unofficial videos too, just like Nielsen

So far, Ariana has accumulated 1.616B total (audio & video) streams this year as a lead artist; and that’s excluding all the songs above since there are no datas about them as they never entered the Rolling Stone’s chart this year

So that’s it, I hope I was clear and understandable enough. If y’all have questions and doubts don’t mind asking

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