Even the concept of a hit song has changed in the streaming era. In July 2019, Rolling Stone launched its own set of charts to challenge the industry standard set by Billboard. The RS chart is updated daily, meant to better capture the rapidly changing music ecosystem, and notably does not factor “passive listening” (in essence, radio plays) into its numbers. The streaming services operate their own charts, as well. The Spotify Viral Top 50, in particular, is closely followed by labels and media because of its history of forecasting mainstream hits.

The Billboard charts will likely remain the primary measure used for the foreseeable future, but even those are facing existential questions in the streaming era. Since creating the streaming-equivalent album, a unit that counts a certain number of streams as an outright album sale, Billboard has tweaked the algorithm regularly, and as recently as June 2018. That update gave more weight to paid streaming, minimizing the impact of YouTube and the free edition of Spotify while empowering subscription-only DSPs like Apple Music and Tidal. For reference, the aforementioned A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie record actually moved 58,000 equivalent album units, buoyed by roughly 83 million streams.

A decade ago, making a radio hit was the biggest goal for many mainstream rappers. By 2019, the all-important “streaming hit” is a slightly different breed. A streaming hit is prized for its uniformity and its ability to transcend genre lines and blend into any playlist seamlessly. This music is rarely jarring, and accomplishes the main goal of streaming services: keeping listeners engaged on platforms without stopping. With some obvious exceptions, hit songs of previous decades have been uptempo, percussive, and hook-driven, but streaming hits are often slower, woozier, and far less cheery in their outlook. When the sheen of mainstream pop is mixed with the narcotized production and somber subject matter of today’s genre-agnostic artists, we get acts like Juice WRLD, Billie Eilish, and Post Malone.

In 2019, getting a song placed on an influential playlist can make a young artist’s career.

Atlas refers to playlisting as “the equivalent of a radio show or video outlet” in an earlier era. “Playlisting upon the initial launch of a record is fundamental,” he explains. “Then, after the initial launch, it’s about whether you can maintain that level of playlisting, enter into more playlists, and into genre- and region-specific playlists. Hopefully, from there, you can build organic playlisting, and when you get organic playlisting, that’s when you know you’ve got a record that’s really working.”

One key side product of streaming is data. A&Rs and talent buyers frequently use data to forecast trends. Rolling Loud founders Matt Zingler and Tariq Cherif have long been using streaming data to help select talent for the festival, which began as a standalone event in Miami but has since expanded to cities like New York and Los Angeles, with intentions to go global.

“I would say we saw numbers for people like XXXTentacion, Ski Mask the Slump God, and Lil Pump on SoundCloud first, and that was before anybody else was really looking at that,” Zingler says. “A&Rs were definitely on SoundCloud, but as far as people booking shows, whether it was booking agents or promoters, they weren’t really up on it yet.”

Everyone Complex spoke with cautioned against focusing solely on data, however. “I think the A&R role is becoming more important than ever, because it’s still a gut thing,” says Martin. “I think that there’s a lot of smoke and mirrors with these numbers and things like that, so I think it’s an even bigger responsibility for us to be able to identify true talent and make sure that the people that are true and big stars have a real shot.”

“It’s about assessing who is taking the time and putting in the effort to craft a fan base,” adds Cherif, citing Wiz Khalifa as an example of someone who worked hard to build an invested audience. “The greatest artists with the biggest fan bases, they have an ability to connect with their fans and unite them and make them feel like they’re part of the movement. Streaming numbers are cool, but there’s way more to it.”

Though the optics of streaming and the digital download era are similar, the best practices are not. Atlas cites Wale, who achieved significant commercial success in the late 2000s and early 2010s, as an example of someone who needed some strategy adjustments to thrive in the streaming ecosystem. First, they focused on getting some of his earlier mixtapes onto streaming platforms, a move that has also been done by artists like Wiz Khalifa, Drake, and Future. Wale also found success by collaborating with streaming-friendly artists and releasing music in a more timely fashion. In 2019, Wale’s Jeremih collaboration “On Chill” became his highest-charting solo single since 2013, and his album Wow… That’s Crazy debuted in the top 10, with 38,000 album-equivalent units moved (against just 5,000 pure sales), a marked increase over his 2017 LP, Shine.

“As we were releasing these records, we were building his streaming and consumption engagement, and putting new music out in a way that’s timely for how his fans were consuming it, while also picking up new fans at the same time,” Atlas says. “If you use streaming the right way, you’re appealing to your current base but picking up new fans, which led to ‘On Chill.’”

Having an overarching development plan is important for new acts who skyrocket to success in today’s more chaotic landscape. A song becoming a meme on Twitter or through the video-sharing app TikTok can lead directly to it leaping onto the mainstream charts, as shown by records like Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road,” Y2K and bbno$’s “Lalala,” and Blanco Brown’s “The Git Up.” But a successful out-of-nowhere hit isn’t a surefire path to a stable career, something that industry veterans like Atlas emphasize: “We’ve seen a lot of huge artists that exploded off of streaming. But once the trend moved or the sound changed and that development didn’t happen, they’re gone.”