Singles Chart Query

[fiction-factory]

I've always listened to music and even in my late 50s I still follow current music via Radio 1/Radio 1x and TV music channels as well as the oldies and I can recognise most current top 30 singles. However it seems to me that something odd is going on:

Drake has been number 1 for about 6 weeks with One Dance but I have never seen it on the music channels and have only heard it once on the radio (Radio 1x) whereas I've heard other current chart hits dozens of times.

Same with Beyonce's Hold Up- I have only ever heard it once even though it's been in the charts for over a month. It sounded really good (although it nicked the riff off Can't get Used to Losing You by Andy Williams!).

I have tried looking on youtube for both but it seems the record companies make sure they are removed as soon as they appear. All that's left is home made cover versions.

I wonder if record companies have changed their approach from seeking loads of airplay to generate sales, to making tracks difficult to hear so people pay to stream them, maybe out of curiosity.

I suppose another explanation could be the lyrics where words such as Bixxh and Fxxx are used regularly and there are regular drug references- maybe when these are blanked out there is not enough left for radio/TV.

Anyone else noticed this? Can anyone here sing One Dance ?

[Baldric]

"You hum it son, I'll play it"

[ABerrant]

By shear coincidence, yesterday I had a brief trawl across the satellite music channels to gauge how dire is the current crop of hit singles and alighted upon MTV just as they were listing a top ten chart run down. The presenter/announcer confirmed that Drake - One Dance remained at #1 (for the seventh? week) but was unable to play the video because "an official video for the track has yet to be released: so here is a video for his previous hit..."

At that point I wondered why do music video channels pander to an artist who is not providing video content to them; why not just announce the lack of a video and move on instead of playing an older one for which he will receive some (minimal) payment.

[fiction-factory]

Yes, I also watched the Top 20 videos on a Music Channel today and they played 3 minutes of every song apart from Drake where we got 10 seconds because there was no official video.
I also heard Beyonce's Hold up on radio 1's chart rundown and they played 5 seconds of it.
I have listened to various music stations today such as Radio 1 Extra, Capital One Extra, Kiss etc - and heard some chart songs like Rihanna, and some other Drake and Beyonce tracks several times, but never heard their current chart hits.
I wondered if Andy knew what was going on.
I suspect the record company is restricting the playing of some songs and aiming to get people to repeatedly stream or download the songs

[Zacs-Master]

Very interesting FF. Googling 'how does a record get to No1' results in some very ambiguous results. The closest to 'evidence' I can find is this:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_recording_sales_certification

I remain, however, suspicious of music industry manipulation.