BAS⁷ ⊙⊝⊜@BARMYSTREAM
Hey, ARMY 💜
It seems like every month we come back to this topic, but with today’s adjustments on Spotify and the accusations that long Latin American playlists might be the main cause, we wanted to bring a simple analysis with numbers for everyone to evaluate whether the conversation going around the fandom really makes sense.
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▪️ TLDR
• Swim had a monthly adjustment ~7x larger than Body to Body
• In Latin America as a whole, Swim does only 1.5–2x more streams than Body to Body (never close to 7x)
• Brazil + Mexico = represent ~20% of the total streams on the tracks, but these tracks did not have anywhere near 20% of removals
• The long playlists strongly recommended in these countries include both songs, with SWIM having at most 3x more repetitions
Therefore, these numbers do not support that Latin playlists are the only, or even the strongest explanation, for the beginning-of-the-month adjustments.
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▪️ EXTENDED EXPLANATION
Since we do not have access to the non-filtered data from each country, we are using only what we can see:
• Global totals
• Contribution per country charts
For this:
• We ignored the United States (even though it was the largest contributing country in the first week, they did not adopt these playlists)
• We focused on Brazil + Mexico (main global contributors)
• We know that other Latin American countries use these playlists, but Brazil and Mexico are by far the largest contributors
• We assume, for analysis purposes, that a large portion of the streams in these countries came from these playlists
• The playlists are long (12h+), containing all the tracks from the album, no looping (they have 2 or more, in most cases, fillers between repetitions of the same song)
We'll be comparing:
• SWIM (title track)
• Body to Body (B-side)
We will not do a complete analysis of all the B-sides, but just taking the most popular B-side for comparative purposes.
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▪️ MONTHLY ADJUSTMENTS (MARCH)
On March 31:
• Swim → ~10.9M streams daily
• Body to Body → ~5.0M streams daily
On April 1:
• Swim → ~5K streams daily (-10.8M / 99%)
• Body to Body → ~4.3M streams daily (-700K / 14%)
To estimate the adjustments, we assume that daily streams on April 1 would be similar to the previous day, since our drops have been gradual, and not significant drops from one day to the next.
There is indeed a natural decline over time, so the real adjustment may be slightly smaller than the estimate, but not enough to explain a drop from 10.9M daily to 5K (SWIM), or from 5M daily to 4.3M (BTB).
So, as an approximation:
• Swim → ~99% adjustment
• Body to Body → ~14% adjustment
SWIM had an adjustment ~7x larger than BTB’s adjustment.
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▪️ GLOBAL vs BRA + MEX (So far)
SWIM
• Global Total → ~148.8M streams
• BR + MX → ~29.0M streams (~20%)
Body to Body
• Global Total → ~80.8M streams
• BR + MX → ~17.5M streams (~22%)
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▪️ LATIN AMERICA
In several countries in the region:
• Swim does about 1.5x to 2x more streams than Body to Body in countries in the region
• No country comes close to 7x more streams on the main track
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▪️ WHY THIS MATTERS
If the problem were mainly these playlists:
• The difference in adjustments should reflect the stream behavior.
But we see:
• Stream difference → SWIM being streamed ~1.5–2x more times than B-Sides
• Adjustment difference → SWIM being adjusted ~7x more than B-Sides
It just doesn’t match.
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▪️ PLAYLISTS
• Both songs are present throughout these long playlists
• In the most extreme playlists, SWIM appears at most 3x more
• Adequate spacing between repetitions in ALL cases (2 or more fillers)
None of this explains a difference of 7x more reductions in the title track compared to the B-side.
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▪️ CONCLUSION
• Latin America shows consistent behavior across countries, averaging just 1.7x more streams in SWIM than other tracks
• BRA+MEX, where long playlists are majorly adopted by ARMYS, represent ~20% of global streams, but did not cause anywhere near 20% of removals in the total streams of the tracks
• The playlists include both songs simultaneously, so SWIM and BTB are not being streamed in different playlist types
The size and difference of the adjustments cannot be explained by these playlists alone.
Most likely there are other factors involved that weigh much more in the removals.
For us at BARMYSTREAM personally, our hypothesis has been the same for quite some time, and we think we should look at the scenarios where there is in fact a striking disparity between the streams on the single compared to the B-sides, and analyze what behavior occurs there, because it seems to weigh more for removals.
We do need to continue analyzing and improving, and we do welcome other ARMYs analyses. This has always been ARMY’s strength and we will always be here to adjust our methods for the benefit of BTS.
However, before starting to treat a guess as truth and spreading accusations, we expect a minimum level of evidence and critical thinking from such a highly educated fandom.
