Rules of the board
Methodology
Artist Versus Matchup Career Score uses verified, sourced metrics. Commercial Success is RIAA certified units (millions) derived from Gold/Platinum/Multi/Diamond rows — not Diamond count alone. Streaming and touring stay inactive until legitimate sources exist. Missing data is never scored as zero — those metrics drop out and remaining category weights renormalize. Community votes never feed Career Score.
How to read a matchup
- Matchup Career Score
- Weighted total from verified category scores (Commercial, Albums, Singles, Awards, Longevity). Commercial uses RIAA certified units (millions) derived from Gold/Platinum/Multi/Diamond rows — Diamond count alone is display context. The big number on each side of the board.
- Category wins
- How many active categories each artist won in this matchup (shown under VS as e.g. 2–2). Separate from Career Score — you can win fewer categories but still lead on the weighted total.
- Career context
- Short label under the artist name for when their career rose — not scored. Examples: Streaming era (mainly rose after streams took over); CD into streaming (started in the CD/radio era and carried into streaming); CD peak into streaming (biggest peak on CDs, still active in streaming).
- Confidence
- How solid the verified inputs are for this matchup overall (High / Medium / Low). Low confidence can suppress declaring an overall winner.
- Coverage
- How complete the verified category data is (High / Good / Limited). Gaps mean some categories drop out of scoring rather than counting as zero.
- Community vote
- Fan “Who you got?” poll. Opinion only — never feeds Career Score.
Category weights
- Commercial SuccesscertifiedUnitsMillions20%
- Albumsbillboard200NumberOnes, studioAlbums25%
- Singleshot100NumberOnes25%
- AwardsgrammyWins15%
- LongevityyearsActive15%
- Streaming — inactive0%
- Touring — inactive0%
Scored metrics
- RIAA certified units (millions) — Derived from structured RIAA rows: highest tier per work → Gold 0.5M / Platinum 1M / Multi ×1M / Diamond 10M → sum.
- Billboard 200 #1 albums — Manual cite from Billboard artist chart history or equivalent official Billboard milestone reporting. Not Luminate live API.
- Studio albums — Count primary solo studio albums (MusicBrainz release-group type Album where applicable). Exclude mixtapes, compilations, live, and collaborative albums unless notes say otherwise.
- Hot 100 #1 singles — Manual cite from Billboard artist page / Hot 100 history. State lead vs featured scope.
- Grammy wins — Official grammy.com artist awards pages / Recording Academy archive.
- Years active — yearsActive = asOfYear - careerStartYear (inclusive span as documented). For short careers (e.g. Tupac), use active window notes.
Non-negotiables
- Missing data is never scored as zero — the metric is excluded and weights renormalize.
- Spotify stream totals are not supported by the Web API and never enter Career Score.
- YouTube career-view totals and Luminate live calls are out of scope for now.
- Wikipedia alone is not a scorable primary source.
- Overall winner is suppressed when confidence is low or Career Score margin < 3.
- Community votes are fan opinion only — they never feed Career Score.
- Scores reconstruct from verified canonical metrics.