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How TV Pirates Accidentally Pushed a 25-Year-Old Indie Song to the Top of the Charts in Japan (gizmodo.com)

Posted by msmash on from the algorithm-gods-at-work dept.

Last week, an alt-rock mystery puzzled the music press. Almost 25 years after its release, the Dinosaur Jr. song "Over Your Shoulder" appeared at number 18 on Japan's Hot 100 chart, beating out major new releases like Ariana Grande's "7 Rings." Here's what drove the popularity of the old song: More than 15 years ago, it was used on a Japanese reality show about boxing bad boys. Six years ago, Billboard started counting YouTube plays. And just days ago, YouTube apparently began recommending pirated episodes of that reality show to Japanese users, who seemingly binged it in the thousands, playing "Over Your Shoulder" over and over again in the process.

43 comments

  1. It's been said by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Japanese are just weirdos.

    1. Re:It's been said by Cipheron · · Score: 1

      There's nothing weird or Japanese-culture-specific in this story however.

      The videos popped up in Japanese Youtube's recommendations due to an automartic algorithm. As more people watched it - purely because of the recommendations system - positive feedback exposed it to more and more people via the algorithm, driving views, but also *autoplay* views. Next, another algorithm counted those views and added them to the music charts rating for that song.

      Maybe the reason is that these algorithms were design for international English-speaking Youtube, but they've applied verbatim them to the much smaller segment of Japanese-speaking Youtube, meaning small fluctuations have an oversized effect. The only news is that Youtube and the song-rating people need to calibrate things better for the Japanese market to prevent silly things happening.

    2. Re:It's been said by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, but there's something really strange going on. From the summary:

      Japanese users, who seemingly binged it in the thousands,

      They did what in the thousands, exactly?
      And more to the point, why would even 9,999 searches end up generating enough views to drive this all the way onto the Charts?

  2. News you can use by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    FreeBSD is not Linux. Here's a summary:

    • Linux is a success.
    • FreeBSD is a failure.

    Hope this helps.

    1. Re: News you can use by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      FreeBSD owns Tuxs little ass!

    2. Re: News you can use by ArchieBunker · · Score: 0

      Agreed. I now have a job dealing with Linux directly. For some reason they picked Ubuntu because it's what everybody runs. So far my job has been try running all the old software on Ubuntu 18.04 and seeing what broke. What is the deal with that systemd network wait service? If one interface doesn't have an ethernet link it causes a two minute delay in booting. Also found out that was causing sshd to be delayed for several minutes. No warnings or errors. Just systemd saying sshd died and trying to restart the service gives me a blinking prompt. I told them for embedded shit I'd use Slackware because you only add what you need. Nobody had heard of it. Oh the joys of working with people in the early 20s. Also turned off AppArmor becuase it was causing problems with other daemons running.

      You have enough fucking features already. Now make them work and write some documentation.

      --
      Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
    3. Re: News you can use by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      Archie,

      You're preaching to the choir. Modern software development is called "happy development."
      The developers work in silos (read - don't consider the possible affect a change makes on
      other (unrelated) modules, applications, and libraries) and only test simple code paths and
      rarely check edge cases. Regressions happen all of the time (by definition, a regression
      shouldn't happen because that means it failed a test that passed before a change).

      I'm glad I wont live pass 2055 to have to deal with all of this nonsense...

      CAP === 'prosper'

    4. Re: News you can use by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      Silos are a feature, not a bug, if you are following the Unix way of writing small tools that do one thing and do that thing well. It's when you get bloatware like SystemD that silos become a problem.

  3. Stupid chart by Ecuador · · Score: 1

    So this Japanese Top-100 chart decided to include YouTube a few years ago. But the way they implemented it, it does not count any "official" channels, just it looks for what is called "International Standard Recording Code" on any video, which means if you embed a song somewhere in your video and your video goes viral, the song appears on the Top-100, regardless of how you used it / what percentage of your video the song accounts for.
    Quite silly process really, but it is mostly harmless, I mean some weird things appear on the Top-100, big deal.
    Anyway, in this case youtube was promoting a sort of reality boxing series that featured this song often.

    --
    Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
    1. Re:Stupid chart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/02/japan-nominated-trump-nobel-peace-prize.html - Apparently telling useful idiots in Japan what you want to hear is pretty common.

      https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/world/europe/nobel-peace-prize-trump-fake-nomination.html - Ouch.

    2. Re:Stupid chart by Iconoclysm · · Score: 1

      Japan has a very different culture from what we are used to in the US. They definitely act with more uniformity but no, they don't do what they're told so much as move as a unit. In Japan, industries throw everything at the wall to see what sticks, not focus on one thing.

  4. wtf is a ariana grande by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    why wouldnt something be more popular than something that sounds like a west coast pretentious overpriced coffee sold by some wannabe boutique coffee retailer?

    1. Re:wtf is a ariana grande by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your failed joke attempt is 100x more pretentious and ridiculous-fail even than that teenage songwriter's tattoo adventures. Go suck Pete Davidson's cock for inspiration you dull red state closet case.

    2. Re: wtf is a ariana grande by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The other replier said it quite well already so I'll be brief: you're a tool.

    3. Re: wtf is a ariana grande by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A small gril

  5. Seafaring thugs? Or media execs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Which ones do you mean?

    In both cases their only purpose of life is to leech on society by stealing your valuables, abusing emotional people (women/artists), and avoiding honest work. But at least they work a *bit* for it, ... those seafaring thugs!

  6. Or perhaps modern pop music just sucks ass. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    NBT.

    1. Re:Or perhaps modern pop music just sucks ass. by sound+vision · · Score: 2

      After listening to the Dinosaur Jr. track, I couldn't call it either "modern" or "pop". It's in the general vein of 90s alt-rock, which is a space that I dig, but this particular track Over Your Shoulder is pretty boring. If I'm picking obscure B-sides from that era I'd rather go to something from the Pixies, Modest Mouse, Toadies, the Flaming Lips, etc...

    2. Re: Or perhaps modern pop music just sucks ass. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      I can't tell if you're really young or really old, but your opinions on music are pedestrian at best and you should keep them to yourself.

    3. Re: Or perhaps modern pop music just sucks ass. by sound+vision · · Score: 1

      You're right, I must not be old or young or cool enough to like Dinosaur Jr. I'll try-harder next time, maybe some day I can post a momentously blank non-opinion like yours. Thanks for the great advice!

  7. Show me The Way by QuietLagoon · · Score: 1

    I like their cover of that Frampton song.... ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?... )

  8. frost p&ist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    May do, may n0t Fate. let's not be

  9. This happens a lot in Japan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    One of the more famous exmaple's is Electric Light Orchestra's Twilight, which was featured in an anime short film in the 1980s.

    1. Re:This happens a lot in Japan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's why I bought a copy of ELO's Time album back around 20ish years ago.

  10. So the charts mean nothing? by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

    They're counting plays when the song happens to be in a random YouTube video?
    But they only count a subset of all the songs? Otherwise there would be TV theme songs in the charts too. and random songs played in some kids youtube channel.

    1. Re:So the charts mean nothing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      no different than counting radio plays, if the entire track is played in the video.. tv themes, on the other hand, are very rarely the whole thing (regardless of whether a full track is ever released or sold).

    2. Re:So the charts mean nothing? by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      Presumably for a song to be counted it has to actually be identified. I would guess that youtube is using the same or a similar content ID system for these charts as the one they use to redirect advertising royalties.

      Most legit youtubers with large followings are careful to avoid anything that will hit a youtube content ID match because a content-id means at best losing the ad-revenue for the video and possibly strikes against the channel. For TV theme songs if the copyright holder of a TV show cares enough to put the theme song in a content-ID database I suspect they also care enough to remove pirate copies of their TV show from youtube.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    3. Re: So the charts mean nothing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Strikes do not come from content ID. If you trip that they tell you upon uploading and will not let you publish or watch it.

    4. Re:So the charts mean nothing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've noticed something strange. There is a particular song I uploaded to Youtube by a semi-obscure British band from the 60s. It looks like they do have an official channel, or "topic", (whatever that means - YouTube is using that nomenclature now) that contains the same song. When I try to go to the "official" video -- "This video is not available in your country." But my own upload - of the same song - plays just fine.

      So it seems, even with a content ID match, that YouTube will selectively ignore the publisher's will, if a random low-profile Youtube user uploads it. Been uploaded for 4 years now, couple thousand views. (More than the official upload, imagine that!) I never got any messages about strikes, or deleted videos.

    5. Re:So the charts mean nothing? by sysrammer · · Score: 1

      ...a semi-obscure British band from the 60s...

      Oh come on now, The Beatles weren't *that* obscure. Had a few hits.

      --
      His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
    6. Re: So the charts mean nothing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My roommate listened to over your shoulder repeatedly for weeks just to irritate me. The Tyenol took days to work and kill the headache

    7. Re:So the charts mean nothing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's as much a comment about how utterly shit 7 Rings is, as it's a comment about how they chart stuff in the first place.

  11. GIGO ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Garbage In Garbage Out

    The system in working entirely as designed.

  12. It's a fad, just like Trump by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    will be deleted from youtube and twitter

    1. Re:It's a fad, just like Trump by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Da, is good post, Ivan Ivanovich.

  13. "Binged" it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How much did M$ pay for that plug?

  14. Kinda like Plastic Love by dannycim · · Score: 1

    Reminds me of Plastic Love: http://www.openculture.com/201...

  15. Because by ThurstonMoore · · Score: 2

    Dinosaur Jr is fucking awesome!

  16. Hard of hearing Japanese by WindowsStar · · Score: 1

    There must be a lot of hard of hearing Japanese. Wow chalk that up to worst song ever or should I say chart that down to worst song ever.

    1. Re:Hard of hearing Japanese by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You obviously haven't heard 7 Rings.

  17. The charts never meant anything. Because... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... they used to be the number of CDs(/cassettes/vinyls) that were sold to the *shops*!
    Not those actually bought by clients.
    Some intentionally bought a lot, so the song would end up in the charts, and people would buy them to feel like they are in with the cool people*. Same scam as stock market "experts".
    Which is especially bad, if it was just the record company's subsidiary buying them. They did not even have to ship them. Just show some sales numbers. Everybody knew it, and nobody said anything because everybody was in it. Just like doping at the Tour de France.

    I used to work in the industry. (Europe, 1980s-2000s.)

    (*It's really quite easy to make people think they like something. Otherwise far fewer people would drink beer with its horrible bitter taste.)

  18. Copyright infringement is not piracy. by xororand · · Score: 1

    I doubt anyone actually pirated the TV show.
    It's far more likely they merely copied it without authorization, i.e. they committed copyright infringement.
    https://www.gnu.org/philosophy...

  19. art forever by globaljustin · · Score: 1

    Six years ago, Billboard started counting YouTube plays

    Interesting. Sure we can surmise they are just looking to boost Billboards own conglomerate usage stats, but it seems like in this case a rising tide raises all boats.

    I'm happy to see artists getting credit for things like this. Somewhere, sometime, someone in Japan thought their song was good and used it in their art. That deserves recognition if technically possible.

    --
    Thank you Dave Raggett