"Dark Matter" and its tracks on the charts

The Juggler said:

vedpunk said:

BF25394 said:

T-Bone 82 said:

That's kind of bizarre that it just fell off, isn't it? Usually songs just kind of work their way down the charts slowly and fade. Weird to see it be around top 10 and then just disappear.

But, then again, I know nothing about this...

In the old days of physical singles, it used to be common that a single would be "deleted"-- i.e., removed from retailers' shelves on the order of the distributor-- to make room for the next song the label wanted to boost up the chart, whether by the same artist or, more often, by a different artist. But things don't work that way anymore, in part because physical singles have largely disappeared. Songs now stay on the charts for multiples of what they used to. A song that spent 16 weeks in the top 40 in 1987 was an unusually long-running hit. Now you have songs that spend more than 30 weeks just in the top ten. "Blinding Lights" stayed in the top ten for 57 weeks!

In this instance, I can think of two possible explanations, although both would be unusual. The first is that there was some sort of glitch  whereby either the encoded song-specific identifier that tracks airplay malfunctioned and no spins were recorded. The second is that there was somehow a reporting error that resulted in the song's airplay metrics being omitted from the Luminate data. I guess it's also possible that there was a corporate decision at iHeartRadio to pull the song across their channels, thus cratering its overall airplay totals.

Or it could be that Elon Musk has stuck his nose somewhere else it doesn't belong...

Really had to add that at the end?  It’s just sooooo horrible that somebody is actually trying to expose government corruption and a misallocation of our tax dollars.  

The gov just awarded his company $400 million for fucking tesla army trucks. Get your head out of your ass. 

BF25394 said:

T-Bone 82 said:

That's kind of bizarre that it just fell off, isn't it? Usually songs just kind of work their way down the charts slowly and fade. Weird to see it be around top 10 and then just disappear.

But, then again, I know nothing about this...

In the old days of physical singles, it used to be common that a single would be "deleted"-- i.e., removed from retailers' shelves on the order of the distributor-- to make room for the next song the label wanted to boost up the chart, whether by the same artist or, more often, by a different artist. But things don't work that way anymore, in part because physical singles have largely disappeared. Songs now stay on the charts for multiples of what they used to. A song that spent 16 weeks in the top 40 in 1987 was an unusually long-running hit. Now you have songs that spend more than 30 weeks just in the top ten. "Blinding Lights" stayed in the top ten for 57 weeks!

In this instance, I can think of two possible explanations, although both would be unusual. The first is that there was some sort of glitch  whereby either the encoded song-specific identifier that tracks airplay malfunctioned and no spins were recorded. The second is that there was somehow a reporting error that resulted in the song's airplay metrics being omitted from the Luminate data. I guess it's also possible that there was a corporate decision at iHeartRadio to pull the song across their channels, thus cratering its overall airplay totals.

Or it could be that Elon Musk has stuck his nose somewhere else it doesn't belong...

BF25394 said:

marumaruko said:

I think it's just as likely that the song was played less because demand decreased. I like WFS a lot, but without the solo at the end, it's just a regular good song. Hundreds of new "regular good" rock songs come out every week—there's no need to hold onto one that doesn't stand out.

(and I know we hate to face that truth as PJ fans) 

So it turns out that what happened is that the song fell out of the top 20 and, under the recurrent rules for the Mainstream Rock Airplay chart, if a song has been on the chart for more than 20 weeks and is below the top 20, it is removed from the chart. This is because the chart is intended to be a ranking of "current" songs. (If they didn't do this, the chart would be led by "Mr. Brightside" and "Seven Nation Army" and all of those perennial chestnuts that get played all the time on rock radio.)

This should have occurred to me. I don't pay much attention to this chart if I'm not tracking Pearl Jam on it, but it should have occurred to me that it has recurrent rules like the Hot 100. The song that was right behind "Waiting for Stevie" on Mainstream Rock Airplay at No. 12 last week-- "TokSik" by Starset-- also plummeted directly out of the top 40 (and 23 weeks, and from its peak). And then the week before, "What Remains" by Pop Evil, fell off the chart from No. 7 after 23 weeks and "Liar" by Jelly Roll fell off from No. 13 after 23 weeks. All of these moves were because of the recurrent rules.

Sorry for wildly speculating about conspiratorial reasons for the drop (but not sorry for blaming Elon Musk, who I still think could be behind this).

vedpunk said:

igotid88 said:

The Juggler said:

vedpunk said:

BF25394 said:

T-Bone 82 said:

That's kind of bizarre that it just fell off, isn't it? Usually songs just kind of work their way down the charts slowly and fade. Weird to see it be around top 10 and then just disappear.

But, then again, I know nothing about this...

In the old days of physical singles, it used to be common that a single would be "deleted"-- i.e., removed from retailers' shelves on the order of the distributor-- to make room for the next song the label wanted to boost up the chart, whether by the same artist or, more often, by a different artist. But things don't work that way anymore, in part because physical singles have largely disappeared. Songs now stay on the charts for multiples of what they used to. A song that spent 16 weeks in the top 40 in 1987 was an unusually long-running hit. Now you have songs that spend more than 30 weeks just in the top ten. "Blinding Lights" stayed in the top ten for 57 weeks!

In this instance, I can think of two possible explanations, although both would be unusual. The first is that there was some sort of glitch  whereby either the encoded song-specific identifier that tracks airplay malfunctioned and no spins were recorded. The second is that there was somehow a reporting error that resulted in the song's airplay metrics being omitted from the Luminate data. I guess it's also possible that there was a corporate decision at iHeartRadio to pull the song across their channels, thus cratering its overall airplay totals.

Or it could be that Elon Musk has stuck his nose somewhere else it doesn't belong...

Really had to add that at the end?  It’s just sooooo horrible that somebody is actually trying to expose government corruption and a misallocation of our tax dollars.  

The gov just awarded his company $400 million for fucking tesla army trucks. Get your head out of your ass. 

You can't really argue with these people. They put in a guy in office who stole from his charity. 

Really sad that people continue to believe the legacy media after repeatedly lying to the public and being funded by our tax dollars to spew false narratives.  

And the Tesla truck deal was in the works during the last administration.  Why?  Because Tesla trucks are the best product at the lowest price.  

BF25394 said:

As of the charts for the week ending February 22, 2025, neither Dark Matter nor any of its tracks are on any Billboard chart. There had been at least on Dark Matter track on a chart for the past 52 weeks.

igotid88 said:

The Juggler said:

BF25394 said:

As of the charts for the week ending February 22, 2025, neither Dark Matter nor any of its tracks are on any Billboard chart. There had been at least on Dark Matter track on a chart for the past 52 weeks.

Well that's a bummer. 

How's this compare to Gigaton?

I would say better because DOTC was the only single that had more of an impact. SBWM and Quick Escape did okay. Thought the latter 2 would do better. Especially QE since that's the one that didn't get any hate. Maybe some stations didn't want to play it because he called out agent orange? I don't know.

If they had toured in 2020 maybe the Gigaton songs do better on the charts. I thought they should have released Take the Long Way as a single. That felt like a song rock radio would play.