RANK, DENSE_RANK, and Distribution Functions

ROW_NUMBER assigns a unique integer to every row, even when rows have identical values. That's useful for pagination and deduplication, but it doesn't reflect ties. If two artists have the same number of streams, they should share the same rank, not get arbitrarily different numbers.

RANK and DENSE_RANK handle ties explicitly, and distribution functions like NTILE, PERCENT_RANK, and CUME_DIST go further by placing rows into buckets and percentiles.