charts discussion A Guide to the Hot 100 and the UK Songs Chart

[Samson]

 

A Brief Guide to the Billboard Hot 100 and the OCC UK Singles Chart

First posted the 15th of December, 2018

 

 

Hi! Inspired by fellow ATRL user alexanderao’s airplay guide (which can be found on old ATRL) and the constant confusion on ATRL when it comes to charts, I decided to create a double-guide explaining the Billboard Hot 100 (H100) and the Official Charts Company’s (OCC) UK Singles Chart.

 

These two charts have both been going through multiple changes as of late, and due to this, many people have been left behind in the dust, being confused without knowing where exactly to refer to. With this guide, I hope to answer many questions that ATRLers (and non-ATRLers, too) may have involving the Billboard Hot 100 and OCC UK Singles Chart, and help solve any misunderstandings.

 

If you’re not interested in learning the history of these charts and why some things are the way they are when it comes to these charts, then just skip to the “Recapitulation” sections (CTRL+F “Recapitulation”). The section dedicated to the OCC UK Singles Chart will be in its own post.

 

First, we’ll start with the Holy Bible of the music industry, the Billboard Hot 100.

 

What is the Billboard Hot 100? (And more!)

A brief history

The Billboard Hot 100 (H100 or BBH100) is a record chart published weekly by the trade magazine Billboard ranking the most popular singles in the United States. The H100 was premiered as the first major all-encompassing singles popularity chart on the 4th of August 1958. The chart was originally made using a formula that combined retail sales, DJ plays (then called “disk jockey plays”), and jukebox activity. This was collected through surveys of retailers, radio station DJs, and jukebox operators.

 

Throughout many years, the formula for the H100 has changed to represent new forms of consumption by the general public and industry changes. Eventually, jukebox activity was no longer tracked by the H100 as jukeboxes fell out of public favour. The Hot 100 ended up being made up of merely two components: sales and airplay audience impressions (“AI”, also will be referred to as “airplay” as they are used interchangeably in Hot 100 lingo).

The Hot 100 continued to be compiled by national surveys of retailers and DJs until the Billboard issue dated 30th November 1991. This was when Nielsen SoundScan officially replaced the use of surveys to collect data to create the Hot 100. With the combination of accurate sales figures (instead of ranked lists, which is what retailers had sent for the decades prior) and electronically-monitored AI data (compiled by Nielsen BDS), the Hot 100 transformed from using surveys of radio airplay and retail sales to using actual, precise data.

 

A history of streaming and the Hot 100

Despite all of the major changes that the Hot 100 had gone through for years, the main components had stayed the same: sales and airplay.

But for the Hot 100 chart dated the 4th of August 2007, this had begun to change; on-demand streaming (ODS) was included into the charts for the first time ever. The ODS services that were first included were AOL Music and Yahoo! Music. Despite this, ODS never truly made up a notable part of the Hot 100 formula. Streaming figures weren’t anything to write home about back in 2007; typical on-demand streaming #1’s didn’t exceed more than a couple million streams per month.

 

The Hot 100’s general composition of points at the time of this change was 55% airplay, 40% digital sales, and 5% streaming, with physical sales making up less than 1% of the composition.

 

This all changed when the chart for the week ending the 3rd of March 2013 was released. Billboard had decided to include YouTube streams (granted one streams a song for at least 30 seconds), including audio from user-generated clips, granted that the clips are at least 30 seconds in length. For the first time, streaming had constituted a noticeable portion of the Hot 100.

 

With these changes, more songs that appealed to younger demographics as well as hits fuelled by memes started to appear on the charts.

 

Fast forward a few years later, or rather the present, we find ourselves in what has been dubbed the Streaming Era (not to be confused with the earlier phrase “Digital Era”, which referred to the advent of digital sales), with streaming making up 75% of the revenue of the American music industry (as per the Recording Industry of America Association). The Hot 100, as it is today, is mostly impacted by streaming; radio has the second-highest impact, with sales having the lowest impact.

 

So how is the Hot 100 actually composed, and what is the formula?

The Hot 100 is composed using a formula that is mostly kept as a trade secret. Streams, airplay, and sales are divided by certain numbers. The resulting quotients are then added up to create the charts. The resulting figures from these calculations are referred to as points or point value. The “certain numbers” in question are figures we never actually see or hear about: they are determined by industry trends and the general public’s music consumption. For example: as of late, sales have been weighed more to reflect the fact that they have been sharply declining, while streaming has lost some weight to reflect the fact that it has been sharply rising. However, whether or not a format loses or gains weight in the formula does not necessarily change the format-by-format composition of the Hot 100; the Hot 100’s points continue to still be mostly allocated to streaming.

 

I keep hearing about streaming weights. What exactly is it?

“Streaming weights” refers to the decision first made in October 2017 and finalised in May 2018 by Billboard to change streaming’s impact towards the Hot 100.

 

In October 2017, Billboard announced that streaming on the Hot 100 would be going through some changes. They announced that they would split streams based on whether they were:

• paid/ “premium” streams (i.e. streams made by users on subscription services like Spotify Premium and Apple Music. This includes streaming from trial accounts on paid services.)
• ad-supported/ “free” streams (i.e. streams made by users on free ad-supported services like Spotify Free and YouTube), or
• programmed streams (i.e. streams made by users on programmed radio-esque services such as Pandora).

 

Premium streams would keep the original weight (one point value per play), while free streams would represent two-thirds of the original point value per play, with programmed streams representing just one half of the original point value per play.

 

These reweights did not have much of an actual impact on the chart, as most Americans stream through premium accounts anyway.

 

What types of sales count?

Every mainstream physical format ever still counts for the Hot 100, although they obviously have no impact in today’s climate. Cassettes, vinyl singles, CD singles, 8-track, digital download… you name it, it most likely technically still counts for the Hot 100.

 

The latest example of physical sales having notable impact on the Hot 100 is for the chart dated the 2nd of April 2011. Lady Gaga’s single “Born This Way” managed to beat Katy Perry and Kanye West’s “E.T.” in a very close race, thanks to CD singles. The CD single sold 24k copies in its first week.

 

What streaming services count?

This is best explained in a table, especially given that they’re now weighed.

 

 

Streams from iHeartRadio’s programmed streaming service and listens to iHeartRadio’s live audio streams of terrestrial radio stations do not count towards the Hot 100. Streams directly from Vevo’s website do not count.

 

What the hell is recurrence, and why is it so goddamn complicated?

Okay, I understand where you’re coming from. You’re trying to get a basic grasp on the charts, and then you learn of recurrence. What is it, and why is it so confusing?

 

Recurrence is a chart policy implemented in 1991 with the advent of SoundScan in the Hot 100, where older songs charting for a certain amount of time are automatically kicked out the chart should they chart below or at a certain position. The logic behind this new rule coming in with the SoundScan policy changes is that because SoundScan accurately reflects how long a song lingers around in the market (during the survey era, DJs and retailers filling out surveys were more inclined to entirely remove songs that were deemed to be “on their way out”, causing songs to fall fast off the charts), Billboard wanted to keep the Hot 100 fresh and constantly representing new, breakout talent. With this came the first Hot 100 recurrence rule: should a song be at least 20 weeks old and chart below #50, it will be removed from the charts. This rule was strict, and no exceptions were made. It would be referred to as “the 50/20 rule”.

 

Fast forward about two decades later to 2011. The first week of the 2012 Billboard chart year (more on what exactly is a chart year later) comes with a major change to recurrence: any song, regardless of age or recurrence status, is allowed to chart only if it experiences a significant gain in points to a level where it could chart at #50 or anywhere higher.

 

The first notable result of this change comes with a shocking event: legendary singer Whitney Houston unfortunately passes away. The market’s response? Digital sales of her classic single “I Will Always Love You” skyrocket 6723% to 195k during the week of her death. The Hot 100’s response? “I Will Always Love You” re-enters at #7.

 

Fast forward to the 29th of November that same year. Mariah Carey’s Christmas classic anthem “All I Want for Christmas Is You” experiences a boom in points but is shy of the #50 threshold, according to Billboard.

 

These are just two of the first notable results.

 

Fast forward again to the 23rd of November 2015. Billboard implements a new recurrence policy: as well as the 50/20 rule, there is now the 25/52 rule: any song charting for at least 52 weeks that manages to go below #25 on an upcoming chart will be deemed recurrent. This is in response to streaming, which allows tracks to linger even longer on the charts.

 

But wait!, you say. This song and this other song re-entered even though they were recurrent, and they surely did not meet the #50 threshold! Well yes, even though recurrent songs are recurrent, in special cases, (such as an artist’s death, a song that took a while to reach mainstream popularity, or a newfound mainstream interest) Billboard’s chart team decides on a case-by-case basis if a recurrent song shall be allowed to chart.

 

What’s the tracking week?

The Billboard Hot 100’s tracking week depends on the format. I’ll sum it up in a simple example:

• Friday, the 1st of January: the sales and streaming tracking week begins.
• Monday, the 4th of January: the airplay tracking week begins.
• Thursday, the 7th of January: the sales and tracking week ends.
• Sunday, the 10th of January: the airplay tracking week ends.
• Monday, the 11th of January: the Hot 100 top 10 preview is released.
• Tuesday, the 12th of January: the Hot 100 in full is released, with the chart being dated the Saturday of that week (the 16th).

 

The Hot 100 top 10 preview is always released on a Monday unless that Monday is a federal holiday or if there’s an issue. The same goes for the release of the Hot 100 in its entirety. An infamous recent example of a chart-related/data-related issue delaying the Hot 100 is the “High by the Beach” fiasco. To make a long story short, the Hot 100 top ten preview came out on Monday claiming Lana Del Rey’s new single “High by the Beach” had debuted top 10. The chart, meant to come out on Tuesday, didn’t come out on time. Billboard had then released an article that day saying that, due to data errors, the Hot 100 had to be recalculated and “High by the Beach” had actually debuted at #51. The full chart came out on Wednesday.

 

The Hot 100 runs on this tracking week to align with Global Release Date, where every major market decided to release new music on Fridays and not the original Tuesdays.

 

What is the “Billboard chart year”? How is the year-end compiled?

If you thought that the Year-End Hot 100 (YEH100) and Billboard’s other year-end charts were based on the calendar, you’re wrong.

 

The Billboard chart year (CY) runs from the first week of December to the last week of November. For example, the 2019 Billboard chart year runs from chart dated the 1st of December 2018 to the chart dated the 30th of November 2019. This offset “year” allows for Billboard to compile the charts and release them to print on time.

 

All year-end charts published by Billboard use this calendar.

 

The YEH100 is compiled by simply calculating all the chart points throughout the chart year. Pre-SoundScan, the YEH100 was compiled by inverse points (with being #1 giving you 100 points, and #100 1 point), with the song’s peak and number of weeks also factoring into a song’s year-end position.

 

Why didn’t songs like Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” and No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak” chart in their initial runs? Weren’t those songs huge?

Indeed these songs were huge, they never charted on the Hot 100. To totally understand why, you need to do some brushing up on the history of the music industry.

 

From its inception until the chart dated the 5th of December 1998 (the start of the 1999 CY), the Hot 100 had one glaring rule that stayed consistent; no availability to purchase, no chart. If a song were not available to be purchased as a single, it was not allowed to chart, even if it were on airplay.

Starting in the 1990’s, major labels did not release singles for sale, as they claimed that singles cannibalised album sales. As this belief began to take hold, singles slowly were beginning to be phased out. Instead, labels would release singles for airplay. This caused controversy within the industry as many called shenanigans on this practise.

 

Labels would first have a single peak at airplay, and while peaking, they would put it up for sale. This allowed for an artificially high debut. Another related phenomenon would be the combination of this while the label would delete the single from their catalogue after a week, allowing it to have a high debut with a slow descent as one-time production would sell out.

 

Notable singles that followed this industry trend include Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You”, No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak”, Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris”, Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn”, and the Rembrandts’ “I’ll Be There for You” (aka the Friends theme song). Other songs that were released in this manner (but weren’t part of this 90’s industry trend) include Led Zeppelin’s “Highway to Heaven” and Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely”.

 

What was up with the charts in the 2000’s? Like, it was mostly just radio with next to no sales.

I put this after the question about radio-only singles missing the chart, because these topics tie into each other.

 

After the industry began to phase out physical singles in favour of album sales and radio airplay performance, singles sales began to naturally die. This was further compounded in the early 2000’s with the rise of piracy and internet in America, thanks to popular websites like Napster that offered free downloads of songs that most people wanted.

 

Eventually, this resulted in the near-death of physical sales in America. Starting from 1998, the Hot 100 was, on average, 75% airplay and 25% physical/ “retail” sales. This continued to drop even further as piracy increased (thanks to the the availability of internet in America increasing), and airplay became the only “licenced” and legal method of consuming music.

 

Given all of this, the genres that eventually represented the forefront of the Hot 100 were R&B and hip-hop. Why R&B and hip-hop took the spotlight (and not pop) is up to speculation; is it just because of cultural whim? Is it because of R&B’s and hip-hop’s culture of DIY, making its audience more likely to consume such music through airplay as physicals died out? Did pop really just fall out of public favour?

 

There is no definite answer to that question.

 

Okay, so what was the Pop 100? How was it composed? Why did it come into existence?

The Pop 100 was a chart that ran from the 12th of February, 2005 to the 10th of June, 2009. Due to the rise of R&B and hip-hop in terms of popularity and chart presence, pop songs frequently found themselves taking the backseat on the charts. In response to this, Billboard created the Pop 100.

The same issue the Pop 100 debuted is also the same week the Hot 100 first incorporated digital sales. (This change to the Hot 100 gave sales as a format a notable presence once again, changing the composition to an average 67% radio, 33% sales.)

 

The exact formula of the Hot 100 with the inclusion of digital sales was airplay divided by 10,000 + digital and retail sales divided by 10. The Pop 100’s was airplay divided by 1000 + digital and retail sales factored in at 100% (meaning no actual division, just the straight raw number added in).

 

The Pop 100’s composition was almost the same as the Hot 100’s, except that for airplay, it only tracked airplay figures from Mainstream Top 40 stations (aka “pop radio” or “Top 40”). This was specifically done to, in then-chart director Geoff Mayfield’s words, to display “the songs with the greatest mainstream appeal.” The first song to lead the chart was Ciara and Missy Elliott’s “1, 2 Step”.

 

Eventually, as digital sales fell into favour with the general public, pop music and other related genres began to take the forefront of the Hot 100 once more. This resulted in the closing down of the Pop 100 on the 10th of June, 2009, with Billboard explaining that the Hot 100’s genre composition rendered the Pop 100 redundant.

 

Recapitulation of the Billboard Hot 100

I get that you may be lost after reading all this information, which is why I decided to create a recap.

 

How the Hot 100 is composed

• Airplay, sales, and streaming are weighted together in a formula.
• Airplay and sales don’t face any special treatment outside of simply being weighted, however, streaming does.
• Streaming
  • A paid stream represents 1 point value per play.
  • A free stream represents 2/3 point value per play.
  • A programmed stream represents ½ point value per play.

 

The Hot 100 today is mostly fuelled by streaming, with airplay taking second most influence, and sales taking third most influence.

 

The tracking week (given that there’s no federal holiday nor any chart issues)

• Friday, the 1st of January: the sales and streaming tracking week begins.
• Monday, the 4th of January: the airplay tracking week begins.
• Thursday, the 7th of January: the sales and streaming tracking week ends.
• Sunday, the 10th of January: the airplay tracking week ends.
• Monday, the 11th of January: the Hot 100 top 10 preview is released.
• Tuesday, the 12th of January: the Hot 100 in full is released, with the chart being dated the Saturday of that week (the 16th).

 

The airplay tracking week is different from the streaming and sales tracking week because airplay data comes in the day that it is cut off. Billboard is only able to get tabulated streaming and sales data a few days after it is collected.

 

Streaming services that are tracked

 

Recurrence rules

• If a song has charted for at least 20 weeks and charts below #50, it will be deemed recurrent and will leave the chart. This is known as the 50/25 rule.
• If a song has charted for at least 52 weeks and charts below #25, it will be deemed recurrent and will leave the chart. This is known as the 25/52 rule.
• Should a recurrent song 1) gain a significant amount of points with an identifiable reason behind said gain and/or 2) have enough points to chart at #50 or anywhere higher, it will re-enter the chart.

 

The Billboard chart year and the Year-End Hot 100

• The Billboard chart year runs from the first week of December to the last week of November, meaning, for example, that the period starting the 1st of December 2018 and ending the 30th of November 2019 will be considered the 2019 CY.
• The Year-End Hot 100 is compiled based off yearlong performance of songs during the chart year.

Edited December 16, 2018 by Yndda

[Samson]

What is the OCC UK Singles Chart? (And more!)

A brief history

The United Kingdom has had a particularly turbulent chart history.

 

Prior to 1969, there was no “official” songs chart or a definitive and universally accepted chart in the United Kingdom. There were about three magazines running their own charts against each other in the same time period; New Music Express, Record Mirror, and Record Retailer. All used the same “formula”: simply survey retailers and compile the sales. Eventually, New Music Express’s chart ended up becoming the most widely-circulated and most publicised chart source. This chart is also considered to be the first in the lineage of UK charts by chart historians. (The second chart in the UK charts lineage is considered to be the Record Retailer chart.)

 

This changed on the 15th of February in 1969, where the BBC and Record Retailer formed the British Market Research Bureau (BMRB) and had it produce the first chart. The BMRB compiled the first chart by surveying 250 record shops.

 

Fast forward to the 4th of January 1983. The charts are now compiled by Gallup with financing courtesy of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), Music Week (a trade magazine), and the BBC. This date was also the first time a major market used computerised data compiling methods (making Billboard’s use of SoundScan the second time). This allowed for more accurate data.

 

Fast forward again to 1990, the BPI start to back out because they claim that they can no longer afford the cost to compile these charts. In response, Spotlight Publications (the publisher of Music Week) creates the Chart Information Network (CIN), which was created in cooperation with the BBC and the British Association of Record Dealers (BARD). Later that year, the BPI joined in with the CIN. The CIN would continue to carry on the chart as usual while still using Gallup to produce it.

 

Fast forward again to 1993, Millward Brown, a market research company, takes over the production of the charts. Nothing much happens after this except for the fact that the CIN changes its name to the Official UK Charts Company (OCC).

 

Another brief history on how the chart materialised in the digital age (or, the gradual inclusion of digital sales and streaming into the chart)

The OCC has a very long history of being stubborn towards anything and everything digital.

 

Before digital sales were deemed as equals to physical sales, they had to be released in physical form in order to chart. After more industry pressure developed, the OCC created a compromise wherein a song could chart on its downloads alone the week before its physical release. As a part of this compromise, a single would be removed from the charts two weeks after the deletion of its physical release from the label’s catalogue. This caused songs such as Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” to drop off the chart 11 weeks after hitting #5.

 

On the 1st of January 2007, digital sales were completely integrated in the charts. There were no special rules against them, no compromises: they were counted one on one with the physical singles.

 

The next major change in the charts came about seven years later, on the 29th of June 2014. Streaming figures from Deezer, Napster, O2 Tracks, Rara, Sony Unlimited, Xbox Music (later Groove Music), and Spotify were incorporated into the charts with the formula of 100 streams being one streaming-equivalent track (SET). This conversion rate would go through some changes, but we’ll get into that later.

 

Christ, that’s a lot of history. OK, so, what’s this ACR stuff? How are streams weighed?

Oh. You want to talk about that.

 

Accelerated Chart Ratio (ACR) is the OCC’s response to streaming causing songs to spend more time on the charts. But before we get into that, we should do a little history.

 

From the chart week of (from now on referred to as W/C) the 29th of June 2014 to W/C the 29th of December 2016, the SET ratio was 100:1. This changed for W/C the 5th of January 2017, where the SET ratio was changed to 150:1 to reflect the growth of streaming.

 

It seemed like things were smooth sailing from here… until Stormzy and Ed Sheeran happened. Especially Ed Sheeran.

 

Basically, when Ed Sheeran dropped his album Divide, it occupied 9/10 positions of the top 10 that week. This caused a massive frenzy in the British music industry where people left and right were declaring the charts dead thanks to streaming allowing massive chart domination in what is called “album bombs”, where albums with heavy streaming are able to chart a notable portion of their tracks onto the charts, pushing down other songs. The OCC’s response to this was in two parallel changes:

• Artists could only have a maximum of three songs (that they’re the lead on) chart at the same time.
• Accelerated chart ratio was introduced.

 

ACR declared that for any single that’s charted for at least nine weeks and has been on an overall decline for three consecutive weeks will have its SET ratio changed from 150:1 to 300:1. This caused songs to, quite easily, crash out the top 10. A song could be placed back on standard chart ratio (SCR) should it experience an increase 50% greater than the market change week-on-week. It seemed like things were smooth sailing from here…

 

… until W/C the 6th of July 2018.

 

The OCC then decided, after this whole time of only counting audio streams, that they wanted to count video streams. This change also came with a Billboard-esque streaming reweight. I’ll summarise it:

• Video streams from Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, and YouTube will all count.
• And ONLY streams from official uploads, meaning user-generated clips do not count at all.

While this change happened, these parallel changes came in:

• Streams will be weighed between free and paid.
• 100 paid streams will be equal to one track, while 600 free streams will be equal to one track.

ACR-wise:

• For ACR, 200 paid streams are equal to one track, while 1200 free streams are equal to one track.
• Songs that are at least three years old and over are permanently placed on ACR.

 

What’s the tracking week?

• Friday, the 1st of January: the sales and streaming tracking week begins.
• Thursday, the 7th of January: the sales and streaming tracking week ends.
• Friday, the 8th of January: the OCC UK Singles Chart is published, with the chart dated the 14th of January. Note: This does not change for any holiday. Theoretically, this would only ever change should there be a data issue.

 

All streams on Thursdays are estimated using a tweaked form of the Duckworth-Lewis formula (which is traditionally used in cricket) based on the general trend of the streams for the week. For example, Song A by Artist is increasing for the first six days of the week, the OCC will use that formula and estimate an increase for Thursday.

 

How about year-end charts?

Unlike Billboard, the OCC takes a more practical approach to this: they take the first week dated January of that year and take the last week dated December of that year. Then, they compile the songs’ performance throughout that period, and release the year-end chart within a few weeks. These year-end charts do not take into account ACR and use the original 100:1 SET ratio.

 

Recapitulation of the OCC UK Singles Chart

How the OCC UK Singles Chart is composed

• The OCC UK Singles Chart is composed with a combination of sales and streaming-equivalent tracks (SET), which are altogether referred to as units or “chart sales” (sometimes simply “sales”¹) by the OCC.
• Digital sales and physical sales are counted together at the same rate, with no special alterations.
• Like Billboard, there are special rules for streaming.
• All streams on Thursdays are estimated using a tweaked version of the Duckworth-Lewis formula, which is traditionally used in cricket.
• Despite what the name implies, the chart isn’t strictly for singles. Album cuts can chart. In other words, it’s a songs chart.
• An artist can only have three songs where they’re the lead artist charting at once. This does not apply if an artist is in a group or if an artist is featured.

 

¹The OCC sometimes refers to these resulting figures as “chart sales” or “sales”. When specifying what types of traditional “sales”, they will typically say either “digital”, “physical”, or both. They usually refer to streaming-equivalent tracks as “streaming-equivalent sales” (SES).

 

How streaming is counted towards the OCC UK Singles Chart

 

• Akin to Billboard, streams are weighed between whether they were paid or free. Paid streams are weighed at 100:1 (as in, 100 streams are one SET). Free streams are weighed at 600:1. These are referred to as standard chart ratio (SCR).
• ACR
  • If a song that’s charted for at least nine weeks has experienced three consecutive weeks of decline, it will be placed on Accelerated Chart Ratio (ACR). Note: This can happen to a song on its ninth week, meaning if a song has been charting for nine weeks but has experienced decreases in the previous three weeks, it will be put on ACR on its ninth week.
    • “Decline” is defined as negative week on week variance of total units and negative variance lower than the market rate of change week on week.
  • A song placed on ACR will have its SET ratios changed to 200:1 and 1200:1 for paid streams and free streams, respectively.
  • A song can only be put back on SCR if it experiences an increase 50% greater than the week-over-week market change. An example is if a song experiences a 39% increase while the market has a 11% decrease, it will be put back on SCR. Note that:
    • this can only happen to songs that are less than three years old and are on the UK Singles Chart on ACR. Songs that are three years old and up are permanently placed on ACR.
    • should this happen to a song, it will be applied to the song the week after it experiences said increase.
  • A song can also be put back on SCR in a manual reset, wherein a label sends a request to the OCC to place a song back on SCR. This only happens in “exceptional circumstances” such as when a song is scheduled for promotional purposes. This can only happen to a maximum of two tracks per album.
• One person can only have 10 streams counted per day per service, one person can only make 70 streams a week on one service. For example: if I were to stream New Order’s “Blue Monday” 10 times on Spotify and then 10 times on Apple Music the same day, that would be counted as 20 streams for “Blue Monday”. If I streamed “Blue Monday” 238 times on Spotify and then 154 times on Apple Music on the same day, that would still be counted as 20 streams for “Blue Monday”.
  • However, if I were to stream Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow” 10 times on Spotify, and then stream the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Maps” 10 times on Deezer the same day, all 20 of those streams would be counted.

 

The tracking week (given that there is no chart issue impeding chart release)

• Friday, the 1st of January: the sales and streaming tracking week begins.
• Thursday, the 7th of January: the sales and streaming tracking week ends.
• Friday, the 8th of January: the OCC UK Singles Chart is published, with the chart dated the 14th of January.

 

All streams on Thursdays are estimated using a tweaked version of the Duckworth-Lewis formula (which is traditionally used in cricket) based on the general trend of the streams for the week. For example, if Song A by Artist is increasing for the first six days of the week, the OCC will use that formula and estimate an increase for Thursday.

 

Streaming services that are tracked

 

The year-end chart

The year-end chart is based on the calendar year, from the first week dated January of that year to the last week dated December of that year. The songs’ yearlong chart performances are then compiled together to make a chart representing the UK Singles Chart for the year.

 

However, the year-end chart does not account for ACR nor does it use the weighted SET ratios. The year-end chart uses the original 100:1 SET formula.

 

Ending

I hope that with this guide, most of your basic questions about the Billboard Hot 100 and the OCC UK Singles Chart have been answered. ❤️

Edited December 16, 2018 by Yndda

[naughty]

You did a great job. Congrats

[Ger]

Amazing, thank you very much for this really useful work.  

[Element]

this is amazing

[DancingShoes]

44 minutes ago, Yndda said:

The tracking week (given that there’s no federal holiday nor any chart issues)

• Friday, the 1st of January: the sales and streaming tracking week begins.
• Monday, the 4th of January: the airplay tracking week begins.
• Thursday, the 7th of January: the sales and streaming tracking week ends.
• Sunday, the 10th of January: the airplay tracking week ends.
• Monday, the 11th of January: the Hot 100 top 10 preview is released.
• Tuesday, the 12th of January: the Hot 100 in full is released, with the chart being dated the Saturday of that week (the 16th).

Ohhhh I understand this now  thanks, sis

[LesFleur]

Quote

on the 29th of June 2014. Streaming figures from Deezer, Napster, O2 Tracks, Rara, Sony Unlimited, Xbox Music (later Groove Music), and Spotify were incorporated into the charts

Omfg

 

Say Yes came out June 2. If it had its first week Spotify streams it probably could have been top 40

[Samson]

20 hours ago, naughty said:

You did a great job. Congrats

 

19 hours ago, Ger-55 said:

Amazing, thank you very much for this really useful work.  

 

19 hours ago, Element said:

this is amazing

 

19 hours ago, DancingShoes said:

Ohhhh I understand this now  thanks, sis

 yw

[Hallucinogen]

this was a good read

[Genius1111]

This thread needs to be pinned at the top.