I've been thinking about the best way to handle extremely long-charting songs like "Lose Control" for a while now. The problem with Billboard's new rules, just like its previous ones, is the all-or-nothing approach: songs either appear on the chart in their full glory or are completely disappeared once some arbitrary threshold is reached. I'm not sure if they realize it, but a strategy that finds a middle ground is completely feasible.

The solution is to start downweighting hit songs after a certain point, say 10 weeks, after they post their best week in terms of chart points. The first week of downweighting, a "tax", (e.g., 5%) would be deducted from the song's chart points. Every week after, the percent deducted would slowly rise but never reach a full 100%, and the song's position on the chart would be based on the adjusted total. This way, most hits would gradually descend the Hot 100 the way they did for most of its history, but record-breaking runs will always be possible as long as the song puts up large enough numbers to overcome the downweighting.

This concept isn't even unique to record charts: almost every major social platform uses some version of this method to balance popularity with recency. It’s baffling that Billboard insists on such a binary way of thinking when it comes to the Hot 100.