Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Season 16 runner-up Chris Kroeze performs on The Voice. (NBC Photo)

And anyone who doesn’t think it can make a big difference should think back to Season 15.

For years, The Voice awarded bonus votes to its top performers on iTunes.

Generally, anyone who finished in the Top 10 on iTunes’ overall singles chart when voting ended had their downloads multiplied by 5 or 10.

Which, of course, meant that multiple singers could earn the bonus. And which made the iTunes charts fascinating to watch.

All that changed in Season 15, when The Voice decided the bonus should be based on Apple Music streaming. And that it should go to just one artist.

Each week’s most streamed artist had their streaming votes multiplied by five, which made the bonus more potent than ever.

Remember, fans could only download a song once per iTunes account for voting purposes. But under the Season 15 rules, fans could stream a song up to 10 times per account and have each stream count as a vote.

So a bonus that used to be worth 10 points suddenly turned into 50. And, again, went to only one singer.

Think that didn’t have an impact? Consider this.

Reagan Strange won the streaming bonus the first two weeks of the Season 15 finals. Each week, she breezed into the next round.

Then Chris Kroeze’s avid Wisconsin fan base caught on to what was happening. They made Chris the streaming champ on week three and four of the finals.

Suddenly, Reagan was vying for an instant save — note I didn’t type ‘singing’ — each week. And it was Chris who breezed into the finals.

What happened in the finale remains a mystery. After announcing the streaming champ each week of the finals, Carson Daly never mentioned the streaming bonus the night the Season 15 winner was announced.

The day after Chevel Shepherd was named the winner, I asked Voice p.r. about the previous night’s streaming champ. I was told the info wasn’t available because it wasn’t announced on the show.

Huh? That makes absolutely no sense. And it’s downright suspicious when the show’s rules “reserve the right to modify any of the show’s contest or voting rules, the official voting rules, the voting windows, and the terms and conditions of this voting process at any time in their sole discretion.”

So a little suggestion to The Voice: If Carson Daly is going to announce the streaming champ every week leading up to the finale, he might want to announce the piece of information on the most important show of the season too.

And this reminder to fans: The Apple Music bonus is back in Season 16. And it can make a difference if your favorite winds up receiving it, especially with the mass eliminations planned for the next two weeks on The Voice.

Editor’s Note: This is a revision of an earlier post that indicated the bonus multiplier had changed from Season 15. It has not.