By Andy Steiner, The Ringer | With the rise of streaming—and a fantasy football–style approach to chart analytics—fandoms are working the system for their favorite pop stars . On April 9, Billboard announced a new app called the Hot 100 Challenge. The publication, known for producing weekly music charts, offered “fantasy-sports-style gameplay” for pop music fans. In the app, players listened to songs and predicted the peak position those songs would reach on the Hot 100 chart before the “season” ended on July 16. The closer the guess, the more points the player would get. If they predicted correctly, they’d earn 7,500 points. If their guess was within one position, they’d be given 4,999 points. If their guess was within 10 positions, they would earn 4,945 points, and so on.
The app was the ultimate test for pop fans. To succeed in the Hot 100 Challenge, you had to do more than infer what a song’s peak chart position would be. You had to understand the music industry’s game. Where would a song that’s driven by streaming, like Chappell Roan’s “Femininomenon,” land compared to a song driven by radio airplay, like Post Malone’s “I Had Some Help”? What would matter more: the cultural momentum of Brat Summer or the TikTok-fueled success of a two-year-old song like Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season”? The Billboard Hot 100 used to be the industry standard to understand what is popular in the U.S. music market. Now, it’s a fan-focused product, inciting competition and fantasy football–esque gaming, themselves.
The Hot 100 Challenge might be a unique offering from Billboard, but it’s just one example of how the music industry caters to pop music’s most devoted fans. In 2024, fandoms had more agency than ever to manipulate, influence, and gamify pop music. This power comes from the popularization of music streaming, the growth of stan communities, and more access than ever to music data. The result is something like the data-driven, analytically minded sports fandom for music. Some fandoms are applying sports mentalities to their favorite pop stars, quantifying and methodizing how to support and follow their idols. As the experience of pop fandom evolves into a high-stakes competition, it’s increasingly obvious that the game is an impossible one to win.
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Read the whole article here:
https://www.theringer.com/2025/01/03/music/gamification-of-pop-music-billboard-hot-100-challenge-justin-bieber-bts-chart-data-streaming?
Andy Steiner writes about pop, prog rock, music culture, and more. His work can be found in Paste and The Daily Beast, among others. Follow him on Twitter @nofinersteiner.