Old Town Road! What version?

Streaming services and social media have changed how music is being tracked and how people are listening to it. It wasn’t that long ago that songs would be tracked by sales and radio play. Now with the popularity of streaming services the Hot 100 now updated their formula to incorporate streaming and YouTube views as 20-30% of the formula. The reason why I chose these articles and this song is how and why it became number 1.
Billboard decided to remove this song from their Country songs chart earlier this year. This became a controversy of how artists are put in certain or specific genres due to their race. They felt this song wasn’t a country song due to the singer, Lil Nas X, is black and felt the song was part of the Trap genre, so they removed it from the country charts.
Lil Nas X knew that Billboard counts all the different versions as one song, so Lil Nas X decided to create multiple versions of the song with different artists including one with Billy Ray Cyrus. The Cyrus remix set a record with the most downloads in streaming in April with the release of this remix. Two weeks ago Lil Nas X tweeted “EVERBODY STREAM ALL 79 VERSIONS OF OLD TOWN ROAD!! LETS BREAK THE RECORD!!”
Old Town Road is now the longest-running No.1 song on Billboard, thanks to social media and streaming, beating out Despacito and One Sweet Day. As social media and streaming become a bigger part of everyday life and the advancement of technology, it will be interesting to see how Billboard will incorporate these changes and how artists will use this to influence the outcome.
Below is the video and a couple of articles about Billboard and Black Cowboy Culture in our society.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/07/30/lil-nas-xs-old-town-road-became-longest-running-no-thanks-memeing-streaming/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7cb9de500180

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/07/30/lil-nas-x-old-town-road-black-cowboy-culture/1801170001/