Billboard magazine: Encyclopedia II - Billboard magazine - Methodology of its charts

Billboard magazine - Methodology of its charts

Currently, Billboard uses a system called Nielsen Soundscan to track sales of singles as well as different genres of albums. Essentially, it's a system that registers sales when the album or single is purchased at the cash register of SoundScan-enabled stores. Billboard also uses a system called Broadcast Data Systems or BDS, which they own as a subsidiary, to track radio airplay. Essentially, each song has something like a fingerprint. When it is played on a radio station that is contracted to use BDS, a detection is made. These detections are added up every week among all radio stations to determine airplay points.

Each of Billboard's many charts use this basic formula. What separates the charts is what stations or stores each chart uses. Each genre's department at Billboard is headed up by chart managers, who makes these determinations. Sometimes, what's acceptable on one chart is not acceptable on another chart. The most famous example of this was the song "Into the Groove" by Madonna. It was initially only available as a 12 inch single. At the time, this was not acceptable to the managers of the Hot 100 chart. So even though the song got extensive airplay, it was not allowed to chart on the Hot 100. However, the R&B singles chart did not have this restriction, so "Into the Groove" actually charted on the R&B singles chart.

For many years, a song had to be commercially available as a single to be considered for any of Billboard's charts. At the time, instead of using SoundScan or BDS, Billboard obtained its data from manual reports filled out by radio stations and stores. In 1990, the country singles chart was the first chart to use SoundScan and BDS. They were followed by the Hot 100 and the R&B chart in 1991. Today, all of Billboard's charts use this technology.

Before September 1995, singles were allowed to chart in the week they first went on sale based on airplay points alone. The policy was changed in September 1995 to only allow a single to debut after a full week of sales on combined sales and airplay points. This allowed several tracks to debut at #1.

In December 1998, the policy was further modified to allow tracks to chart on the basis of airplay alone without a commercial release. This change was made to reflect the changing realities of the music business. Previous to this, several substantial radio and MTV hits had not appeared on the Billboard chart at all, because companies chose not to release them as standalone singles, in hopes that their unavailability would spur greater album sales. Not offering a popular song to the public as a single was unheard of before the 1970s. Among the many pre-1999 songs that had ended up in this Top 100 limbo were Nirvana's "All Apologies," the Cardigans' "Lovefool," Smash Mouth's "Walking on the Sun," OMC's "How Bizarre," the Cowboy Junkies' "Sweet Jane," Harvey Danger's "Flagpole Sitta," Jamiroquai's "Virtual Insanity" Everclear's "Santa Monica," Stone Temple Pilots' "Interstate Love Song," Fastball's "The Way," the Smashing Pumpkins' "Disarm," Veruca Salt's "Seether," and the Cranberries' "Zombie," as well as numerous Green Day, Live, Offspring, No Doubt, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Alanis Morissette and Foo Fighters tracks.

Starting in 2005, Billboard changed its methodology to allow paid digital downloads from digital music stores such as iTunes to chart with or without the help of radio airplay.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Methodology of its charts", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki