Billboard music charts
Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Billboard music charts
Billboard is famous for covering music, movies and ringtones. It was in 1884 that Billboard magazine was launched. By 1914 the magazine built-in the first chart – the count down of popular songs that were heard in Vaudevil theaters was included in it. In 1930 when jukebox was invented, Billboard began by charting popular music. In the year 1936 Billboards came up with a new feature in their magazine “Chart Line”. Song that were played the most on radio networks were listed here. Gradually, by 1940 it also began including the Best Selling Record Charts. Thus began Billboard’s journey in charting music. Billboard continues to maintain its presence felt in the music industry even today. Billboard.com is accessed by 4.1 million people every month. Their radio programs, American Country Countdown and American Top 40 broadcast the result of both national and international music charts. Billboard also has a number of Country Music charts, some of which includes Hot country songs – the popularity on this music chart is calculated on the basis of weekly airplay and sales made. Top country recurrents – it plays those songs that have continuously remained for 20 weeks on the Hot Country songs chart and subsequently slipped down to No. 50. Billboard music chart has succeeded in establishing many artists, albums and songs. George Jones has the maximum number of hits. Late singer Eddy Arnold has the credit of holding the most top 10 singles. The following three songs – Hank Snow’s ‘I’m moving on’ , Eddy Arnold’s ‘I’ll hold you in my heart and Webb Pierce ‘In the Jailhouse’ have remained at the No. 1 spot for the longest period of time i.e. for 21 weeks. Currently, to track the sales of albums, DVD’s videos and singles, Billboard uses the Nielsen Soundscan system. This system notifies when purchases are made at registered Soundscan stores. Another system known as Broadcast Data systems is used by Billboard to follow radio airplay. These detections are totaled up every week which in turn helps in determining airplay points. This formula is used by all Billboard music charts. The chart is separated on the basis of station and stores used by each chart – as every musical genre has a retail group or core audience. At Billboard there is a chart manager for every department who makes necessary decisions after all verifications. Of all Billboards’ music charts Billboard 200 and Hot 100 are very popular. Billboard also has music charts that cover different styles of music; country, bluegrass, R&B, electronic, pop, rock, dance, Latin, jazz, classical comedy albums, Christian albums and ringtones are some of them.










