Harry Styles Debuts in Top Five of Social 50 Chart
Upon the release of Harry Styles' debut solo single "Sign of the Times," the artist debuts at No. 3 on Billboard's Social 50 chart dated April 22, becoming the fifth and final member -- past or…
Upon the release of Harry Styles’ debut solo single “Sign of the Times,” the artist debuts at No. 3 on Billboard’s Social 50 chart dated April 22, becoming the fifth and final member — past or present — from One Direction to appear on the ranking.
The Social 50 is powered by data tracked by music analytics company Next Big Sound and ranks the most popular artists on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Wikipedia, Instagram and Tumblr. The chart’s methodology blends weekly additions of friends/fans/followers along with artist page views and engagement. The chart’s latest tracking week ended April 6.
Styles’ No. 3 start is in line with most of his One Direction peers. Former member Zayn, upon the release of his post-One Direction solo single “Pillowtalk,” bowed at No. 3 (chart dated Feb. 13, 2016), while Louis Tomlinson did the same (No. 3, Dec. 31, 2016) after his single “Just Hold On” with Steve Aoki debuted. Liam Payne debuted at No. 17 (Nov. 12, 2016) after teasing new material on his Instagram.
All, however, were bested by Niall Horan, who bowed at No. 1 (Oct. 15, 2016) once his single “This Town” was released to the public. Horan remains the only member of the group to reach No. 1.
In the tracking week ending April 6, Styles accumulated 2.1 million Instagram reactions and 652,000 Twitter mentions, according to Next Big Sound. Given that much of the activity surrounded the pre-release period of his new single, which dropped April 7, it’s likely Styles will see further metric gains for the charts dated April 29.
Meanwhile, the Social 50’s highest re-entry belongs to Beyoncé, who returns to the chart at No. 7 after falling off for a week. Bey returns in time for her ninth wedding anniversary with Jay Z on April 4, which she celebrated with three Instagram posts.
One of the posts contained a clip of the singer’s “Die With You,” originally released for the couple’s seventh anniversary in 2015 but re-released April 4 with an accompanying new music video on Tidal, while the other two were photos with accompanying lyrics from the song.
Beyoncé earned 9.8 million Instagram reactions in the tracking week, along with 29,000 Twitter mentions — the latter despite not posting to the service — while also garnering 62,000 Wikipedia views.