Billboard Responds To Tekashi 6ix9ine’s Accusations Of Chart Manipulation
Tekashi 6ix9ine has had enough with Billboard. On Monday, the Hot 100 chart dropped, and Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande made it to the top of the list with their new single, “Stuck With U.”
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Many people including Tekashi thought his new comeback song “Gooba” had a good chance of going No. 1, but it fell short at No. 3. The New York rapper took to social media after Billboard shared their top 10 songs and accused them of manipulating the charts. “@Billboard caught cheating,” he wrote. “You’re a lie and corrupt. You got caught cheating and the world will know.” Now, Billboard has decided to publish a response to his accusations:
“In an effort towards transparency regarding the Hot 100’s chart rules and tabulation process—and the calculations that go into the determinations of its final rankings—Billboard wanted to clear some things up regarding this week’s chart, and the stats accumulated by the two singles that marked its highest debuts,” the Billboard staff said in the response piece published late Monday. While speaking specifically about Tekashi 6ix9ine, Billboard explained:
“The total stream count for “Gooba”: 55.3 million combined audio and video U.S. streams for “Gooba” were reported to Nielsen Music/MRC Data and Billboard for this week’s Hot 100. 6ix9ine’s claims that not all of his streams were properly counted: Streaming numbers visible to the public on audio and video data platforms do not reflect the volume included in Billboard’s chart calculations. Neither do the stream counts that services make available to content owners (including 6ix9ine and his team) directly through a proprietary data feed or dashboard.”
Billboard went on to break it down:
“The Hot 100 forecast 6ix9ine referenced in his Instagram video: The chart forecast referenced was not created nor provided by Billboard to the industry. Those with access to sales, streaming and radio data from various sources often create their own chart models and update them at their own frequency. Billboard does not distribute any Hot 100 ranking forecast to labels, management or artists.”
“The late 24-hour sales spike for “Stuck With U” alleged by 6ix9ine in the video: “Stuck With U” was available to purchase through the week as a digital download, as well as in various physical format/digital download combinations through Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber’s webstores. The sales spike is likely referring to sales on Thursday, May 14 — the final day of the tracking week — when signed “Stuck With U” singles were put up for sale in Grande and Bieber’s webstores.”
A spokesperson for YouTube also released a statement to Billboard saying,
“YouTube takes abuse of our systems, such as attempts to artificially inflate video viewcounts, very seriously, and take action against known abusers, including termination of their YouTube accounts. YouTube continues to employ proprietary technology to prevent the artificial inflation of a video’s view count by spam bots, malware and other means and the data we provide for the charts reflects this process.”
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