30-699: The Official Audio Streaming Chart (previously the Official Streaming Chart ) is a music chart based on plays of songs through audio streaming services (including Spotify , Deezer , Google Play Music , Apple Music and Tidal ) in the United Kingdom . It features data from both premium and ad-supported services. It is compiled weekly by the Official Charts Company (OCC), and was initially published both on their official website OfficialCharts.com (Top 100), and in
60-479: A Hot 100 is decided in 2013. Sales data from cash registers is collected from 14,000 retail, mass merchant, and non-traditional (on-line stores, venues, digital music services, etc.) outlets in the United States, Canada, UK and Japan. The requirements for reporting sales to Nielsen Music are that the store has Internet access and a point of sale (POS) inventory system. Submission of sales data must be in
90-424: A climber, as if releases ahead of it decline in sales sufficiently, they may slip below it. By the same metric, not all week-to-week sales increases result in a climber, if other releases improve by a sufficient amount to keep it from climbing. The term highest climber is used to denote the release making the biggest leap upwards in the chart that week. There is generally not an equivalent phrase for tracks going down
120-517: A long-term basis through the RIAA certification system; it has never used either Nielsen SoundScan or the store-calling method. The first Billboard Hot 100 number-one song via Nielsen SoundScan was " Set Adrift on Memory Bliss " by P.M. Dawn . Other changes would also largely impact the Hot 100 in the future, consisting of radio-only songs being able to chart in 1998, and YouTube views playing part of how
150-471: A music/entertainment chart or the performance of a release thereon. A new entry is a title which is making its début in that chart. It is applied to all charts, for instance a track which is outside the Top 40 but which later climbs into that level of the chart is considered to be a 'new entry' to the Top 40 that week. In most official charts, tracks have to have been on sale for a period of time in order to enter
180-454: A runaway seller. Most charts that are used to determine extant mainstream popularity rely on measurable data. Record chart performance is inherently relative, as they rank songs, albums, and records in comparison to each other at the same time, as opposed to music recording sales certification methods, which are measured in absolute numbers. Comparing the chart positions of songs at different times thus does not provide an accurate comparison of
210-402: A song's overall impact. The nature of most charts, particularly weekly charts, also favors songs that sell very well for a brief period; thus, a song that is only briefly popular may chart higher than a song that sells more copies in the long range, but more slowly. As a result, a band's biggest hit single may not be its best-selling single. There are several commonly used terms when referring to
240-424: Is a materially different recording or is significantly repackaged (such as Michael Jackson's "Thriller 25"), where the release would normally be considered separate and thus a "new" entry. A climber is a release which is going higher in the chart week-on-week. Because chart positions are generally relative to each other on a week-to-week basis, a release does not necessarily have to increase sales week-to-week to be
270-579: Is the source of sales information for the Billboard music charts . The company operates the analytics platform Music Connect, Music 360 and Broadcast Data Systems (which tracks airplay of music), the latter of which was shut down in September 2022. Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales data for Nielsen on March 1, 1991. The May 25 issue of Billboard published Billboard 200 and Country Album charts based on SoundScan "piece count data", and
300-502: The Billboard charts than before, and their chart success helped increase the genre's popularity. In addition, SoundScan sales data quickly found use in the promotion departments at major record labels, to persuade radio station music directors to play tracks by high-selling alternative artists such as Nirvana . Alpha Data (formerly, but commonly known as BuzzAngle Music ) was a music analytics firm which provided statistics for
330-400: The Hot 100). A "Top 40" is used by radio to shorten playlists. A re-entry is a track which has previously entered a chart and fallen off of that chart, and then later re-appears in it; it may come about if a release is reissued or if there is a re-surge of interest in the track. Generally, any repeat entry of a track into a chart is considered a re-entry, unless the later version of the track
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#1732776791409360-805: The NME chart, including Melody Maker and Record Retailer . According to Joel Whitburn , the American trade publication Billboard introduced the Hot 100 on August 4, 1958. It was the first chart in the US to "fully integrate the hottest-selling and most-played pop singles." From 1958 until 1991, Billboard compiled the chart from playlists reported by radio stations, and surveys of retail sales outlets. Before 1958, several charts were published, including "Best Sellers in Stores", "Most Played by Jockeys" (later revived under
390-488: The amount of radio airplay , the number of downloads , and the amount of streaming activity. Some charts are specific to a particular musical genre and most to a particular geographical location. The most common period covered by a chart is one week with the chart being printed or broadcast at the end of this time. Summary charts for years and decades are then calculated from their component weekly charts. Component charts have become an increasingly important way to measure
420-430: The calling system) often did not match (for instance Paula Abdul 's " Promise of a New Day " and Roxette 's " Fading Like a Flower " reached much higher Hot 100 peaks than their actual sales and airplay would have allowed them to). Although most record company executives conceded that the new method was far more accurate than the old, the chart's volatility and its geographical balance initially caused deep concern, before
450-643: The change and the market shifts it brought about were accepted across the industry. Tower Records , the country's second-largest retail chain, was originally not included in the sample because its stores were equipped with different technology to measure sales. At first, some industry executives complained that the new system—which relied on high-tech sales measurement rather than store employee estimates—was based on an inadequate sample, one that favored established and mainstream acts over newcomers. The Recording Industry Association of America also tracks sales (or more specifically, shipments minus potential returns) on
480-632: The chart ever. If an act appears in some other form (for example, a solo act that appears with a band or with other act), then they are taken separately. Nielsen SoundScan Luminate Data, LLC (formerly MRC Data and P-MRC Data ) is a provider of music and entertainment data . Established as a joint-venture in 2020, it brought together Nielsen Music, Alpha Data (formerly BuzzAngle Music) and Variety Business Intelligence (formerly TVtracker). In December 2019, Eldridge Industries ' Valence Media , then parent company of Billboard , acquired Nielsen's music data business, reuniting it with Billboard for
510-545: The chart had to be physically available as a single . A chart hit is a recording, identified by its inclusion in a chart that uses sales or other criteria to rank popular releases, that ranks highly in popularity compared to other songs in the same timeframe. Chart-topper and related terms (like number one , No. 1 hit , top of the charts , chart hit , and so forth) are widely used in common conversation and in marketing, and are loosely defined. Because of its value in promoting recording artists and releases, both directly to
540-515: The chart; however, in some retailers' charts, new releases are included in charts as 'new entries' without a sales history in order to make them more visible to purchasers. In the UK, the official published chart is a Top 100, although a new entry can take place between positions 101–200 (also true of the Billboard Hot 100, which has a " Bubbling Under " addendum for new songs that have not yet made
570-549: The chart; the term "faller" is occasionally used, but not as widely as 'climber'. A one-hit wonder is an act that appears on the chart just once, or has one song that peaks exceptionally higher, or charts for exceptionally longer than other chart entries by the act. The term true one-hit wonder was the term given by the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles & Albums (and also the Billboard book Top Pop Singles ) for an act that has one top 40 hit and nothing else on
600-479: The collected data using a statistical calculation called " weighting ". This assigns a multiplier to each category of stores, to compensate for the number of similar stores not covered by the sampling program. Sales in each category are multiplied accordingly. Such a system is vulnerable to exploitation if it is known which stores are included in the sampling program. To inflate their reported chart sales, some indie labels were reported to purposefully target stores in
630-409: The commercial success of individual songs. A common format of radio and television programs is to run down a music chart. The first record chart was founded in 1952 by Percy Dickins, who was working at New Musical Express at the time. Dickins would telephone roughly twenty UK record stores and ask what their best-selling records were that week. Several similar charts followed after the success of
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#1732776791409660-413: The consumer, and by encouraging exposure on radio, TV, and other media, chart positioning has long been a subject of scrutiny and controversy. Chart compilation methodology and data sources vary, ranging from "buzz charts" (based on opinions of various experts and tastemakers ), to charts that reflect empirical data such as retail sales. Therefore, a chart-topper may be anything from an "insiders' pick" to
690-409: The first Hot 100 chart to debut with the system was released on November 30, 1991. Previously, Billboard tracked sales by calling stores across the U.S. and asking about sales—a method that was inherently error-prone and open to outright fraud. Indeed, while transitioning from the calling to tracking methods, the airplay and sales charts (already monitored by Nielsen) and the Hot 100 (then still using
720-994: The first time since its spin-off to E5 Global Media from Nielsen Business Media. It was renamed MRC Data in 2020 after Eldridge Industries merged Valence with the film and television studio MRC . and was then brought under its PMRC joint venture with Penske Media Corporation as P-MRC Data . It was renamed once more to Luminate Data in March 2022. In August 2022, the MRC merger was unwound, with Eldridge Industries taking sole ownership of its stake in PMRC. Nielsen Music, originally established by Mike Fine and Mike Shalett in 1991, collects music consumption and sales weekly and makes this available every Sunday (for album sales) and every Monday (for song sales) to subscribers, which include record companies, publishing firms, music retailers, independent promoters, film and TV companies, and artist managers. It
750-550: The form of a text file consisting of all the UPCs sold and the quantities per UPC on a weekly basis. Sales collected from Monday–Sunday or Sunday–Saturday are reported every Monday and made available to subscribers every Wednesday. Anyone selling a music product with its own UPC or ISRC may register that product to be tracked by Luminate. Not all retailers participate in the SoundScan program, so total CD sales are projected from
780-689: The magazine Music Week (Top 75). As of the chart dated 12 July 2014 —the date of inclusion of streaming data into the UK Singles Chart — the Official Streaming Chart was relaunched as the Official Audio Streaming Chart. The Top 100 is published on the OCC website. The first song to top the rebranded chart was " Sing " by Ed Sheeran . The chart was first launched on 14 May 2012. Its first number one
810-583: The name Hot 100 Airplay ), and "Most Played in Juke Boxes", and, in later collations of chart hits, the record's highest placing in any of those charts was usually reported. On November 30, 1991, Billboard introduced a new method of determining the Hot 100: "by a combination of actual radio airplay monitored electronically by Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems (BDS), additional playlists from small-market stations, and actual point-of-sale information provided by Nielsen SoundScan ." Until 1998, any songs placed on
840-550: The program for on-site sales promotions. Also, other labels were found shipping boxes of their CDs to be scanned by complicit retailers in the program. The incorporation of SoundScan tracking by the Billboard charting system was cited by the industry as a possible cause of the early '90s popularization of alternative music in the United States. An explanation floated was that the previous call system under-represented marginal genres. Under SoundScan, more accurate data on alternative music sales allowed these acts to appear higher in
870-490: Was " Call Me Maybe " by Carly Rae Jepsen . At the time of the chart's launch, the most streamed artist of the year was Ed Sheeran. Sheeran remarked that streaming services had "always been an important way for [him] to get music out to [his] fans". Martin Talbot, managing director of the OCC, stated that the chart represented "a true coming-of-age moment for music streaming in the UK". In 2015, an Official Albums Streaming Chart
900-441: Was launched. This uses the same streaming sources as the Official Audio Streaming Chart to measure how many times albums have been streamed each week. Music chart A record chart , in the music industry , also called a music chart , is a ranking of recorded music according to certain criteria during a given period. Many different criteria are used in worldwide charts, often in combination. These include record sales ,
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