BTS’s ‘Butter’ Hits 100 Million Spotify Streams In Record Time - Forbes

BTS’s “Butter” has officially been out for one week now, and to the surprise of absolutely nobody who pays even remote attention to pop music, it has gotten off to an explosive start on streaming services, posting the biggest seven-day streaming total in Spotify history—sort of.

The Korean pop septet’s delectable new single collected 99.37 million Spotify streams in its first seven days, according to the platform’s stream counter. It cruised past the 100 million mark on its eighth day (May 28), lifting its total to 110.481 million. It’s the fastest song to hit 100 million streams in Spotify history, and the biggest first-week total ever, according to the stream counter.

But there’s a catch. Spotify appears to have heavily (and I mean heavily) filtered the streams for “Butter” when tabulating its “official” total, far more than other streaming smashes of a similar caliber. “Butter” officially earned 11,042,335 global Spotify streams in its first day, the biggest song debut ever and the ninth-biggest single-day total in the platform’s history. That number is nothing to scoff at, but it pales in comparison to the roughly 20.9 million first-day streams that appeared on the Spotify counter, according to Chart Data. That would give “Butter” the biggest single-day streaming total in Spotify history, bar none, by more than 3 million streams, obliterating the record currently held by Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” (17,223,237 streams on Dec. 24, 2020).

Alas, when the official first-day total for “Butter” came out, Spotify had shaved off nearly 50% of its reported streams. Streaming services implement filtering as a safeguard against “low-quality” streams, i.e. songs that are looped ad nauseum or played on mute or super low volume in an obvious attempt to juice the numbers.

While repeat streams from a passionate fan base would typically be seen as a positive, they could actually hurt BTS. Music Business Worldwide reports that “only the first 10 plays of a track by each user on the platform [Spotify] are chart-eligible within each 24 hour period.” 

Spotify is less precise in the explanation on its own website, claiming only to use “a formula that protects against any artificial inflation of chart positions.” As a result, “the data might look different from other reported stream numbers we share (e.g. in Spotify for Artists, the desktop app, and other custom usage reports).”

While some degree of foul play certainly happens with all popular streaming hits, the claim that nearly half the first-day streams for “Butter” would be low-quality or “fake” seems dubious—especially when you consider that the “Butter” music video earned the biggest premiere and the biggest 24-hour debut in YouTube history (3.9 million and 108.2 million, respectively). Unfortunately, companies like Spotify and YouTube are unlikely to reveal exactly how they calculate streaming totals and suss out low-quality streams, forcing journalists to use their own deduction skills or get friendly with music industry insiders. (Spotify did not immediately respond to my request for comment, but I’ll update this article accordingly if they do.)

So, here’s the bad news: The first-week “filtered” streaming total for “Butter” is 58,122,349, according to Spotify Charts, roughly 59% of the “raw” total of 99.37 million. Now here’s the good news: It’s still a vast improvement over “Dynamite,” which earned 39,904,687 filtered Spotify streams in its first week. “Butter” also reached 200 million YouTube views in record time (five days, according to Chart Data) and now sits at a healthy 257 million and counting, and it is reportedly the first song by an international group to be added by every U.S. pop radio station in its first week of release. 

In other words: Even if streaming services are excessively filtering “Butter”—which I cannot confirm, nor do I expect to confirm in the future, as streaming services are notoriously tight-lipped about the particulars of their calculations—it’s still outperforming its chart-topping predecessors by nearly every metric. Factor in the inevitably robust first-week downloads (two versions of “Butter” occupied the top two slots on the iTunes song chart in its first tracking week, with a new remix now climbing the charts as well), and “Butter” is going to have a mammoth debut.

Whether BTS’s new song dethrones Olivia Rodrigo’s streaming juggernaut “Good 4 U” on the Hot 100 remains to be seen—and eagle-eyed fans should expect an excruciating wait for the charts to refresh this week, given the holiday weekend and the potentially tight race for No. 1. But no matter how the Hot 100 shakes out next week, BTS have earned themselves another win. Butter Summer has arrived.

This article has been updated with information about Spotify’s streaming calculation formulas from both Spotify and Music Business Worldwide.

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