Julie Glassberg for The New York Times Baauer performing in September.“Harlem Shake†still has plenty of shake left in it.
Baauer’s song “Harlem Shake†has nothing to do with the actual dance of that name, but has inspired thousands of people to upload videos to YouTube of themselves flailing about to the track. And it holds at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100, the magazine’s standard pop singles chart.
The song benefits from a recent change in Billboard’s chart methodology that incorporates YouTube views along with sales, airplay and other fors of audio streaming. The song â€" or qualified excerpts of it â€" had 98 million streams in the United States last week including thousands of videos on YouTube, a drop of just 5 percent from the 103 million it drew the week before, the first time that Billboard and its partner, Nielsen SoundScan, counted those views.
But YouTube wasn’t the only place where “Harlem Shake†was a hit. It went to the top of iTunes’s rankings as well, and SoundScan counted 297,000 downloads of the song last week, enough to make it the second-most downloaded song of the week.
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’s “Thrift Shop†has exactly the opposite standings on Billboard’s song charts this week: It is the top digital track, with 300,000 downloads, but was held at No. 2 on the Hot 100 by the “Harlem Shake†phenomenon.
Also on the chart this week, Mumford & Sons’ “Babel†(Glassnote) remains the top-selling album. This is the album’s fifth week at No. 1, but! with 63,000 sales, it is a 66 percent drop from the week before â€" when it enjoyed a post-Grammy Award boost â€" and the lowest sales for a No. 1 album since August, when Zac Brown Band’s “Uncaged†had 48,000, according to Billboard.
Another “shake†had a notable showing on the chart this week, in an otherwise slow week of music sales. The band Alabama Shakes, jumped 14 spots to No. 6 with 33,000 sales of its album “Boys & Girls†(ATO), following recent performances at the Grammys and on “Saturday Night Live.â€
