The Smiley Smile Message Board

Is there a reliable up to date list of the most downloaded BB tracks of all time?

Would be quite interesting to see, that's for sure. One wonders if having a Billboard membership allows one to look up that data. Afterall, it would be a LOT of data to say the least. I mean, if you think about it, Soundscan is likely keeping track of every time a track is legally downloaded. Granted, it doesn't take a very well-programmed bit of software to do that, but it's pretty mind-boggling to think that they've got sales records for millions of tracks for the last ten years all sitting in one place.

To be honest, if you go look at iTunes, you can probably figure out what the best sellers are. In the Beach Boys' case, whatever are their top ten sellers now where probably the same ten back in 2003. The only real exception to take account of are new releases (obviously, the Smile tracks are going to be selling better than they normally would until that album's sales fully level off).

Other thing to remember is that iTunes doesn't amalgamate the results for a song. So "California Girls" being on like six studio releases in their library would mean its sales are spread across the board and if you were to scroll through the list, you'd notice the bigger hits popping up multiple times.


Top Five on Spotify:

1. Wouldn't It Be Nice
2. Good Vibrations
3. God Only Knows
4. Don't Worry Baby
5. Sloop John B


That's pretty believable to be honest. The top four were The Beach Boys' selections on Pitchfork's greatest songs of the 60's list (there was a maximum of five songs allowed per artist, Brian Wilson's solo demo of Surf's Up rounded out their selections. God Only Knows finished #1 overall). And the fifth choice is the third part of the trifecta of  hits from their biggest selling studio album.

i know its not what you're looking for but as of now the top downloaded songs on itunes are as follows:

Wouldn't It Be Nice
Good Vibrations
Kokomo (-_-)
Surfin' USA
California Girls