A sneaky YouTube scheme helped Post Malone snatch #1 on the charts

Rapper Post Malone is having a  charmed year, having just taken his single ‘Rockstar’ to the peak of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. But did he make it to the top based on the song alone, or a cheeky YouTube tactic?

As The Fader reports, an unverified account on YouTube that appears to be run by Post Malone’s label Republic Records and has 100,000 subscribers had been tweeting the music video out – so far, nothing at all unusual.

But as it turns out, while the video being tweeted is titled the same and is the same length as the actual song, it’s really just the hook being looped over and over, before directing people to the full song in the video description. (Editor’s note: the video has since been deleted)

With 42 million views, and a significant portion of those most likely clicking that link to stream the song elsewhere like Spotify or Apple Music, those extra plays on streaming services would have certainly added up, especially with streams potentially accounting for almost a third of the plays that will push a song up the charts (alongside radio play and actual sales).

Most importantly, while YouTube views do count as streams of sorts, they’re less heavily-weighted than the dedicated audio streams on Spotify or Apple Music, so it’s in the label’s best interest to be shunting people from the former to the latter wherever possible.

And if they double up and get both a YouTube stream and a Spotify stream from it? Even better.

Watch Post Malone – ‘rockstar’ below:

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.