Billboard magazine

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Image:Billboardart magexam.gifBillboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis. Its most famous chart, the "Billboard Hot 100", ranks the top 100 songs regardless of genre and is frequently used as the standard measure for ranking songs in the United States. The "Billboard 200" survey is the corresponding chart for album sales.

1 History
- 1.1 Radio countdown programs
2 Billboard today
3 Methodology of its charts
4 Corporate ownership
5 A variety of charts
6 At year's end
7 Billboard Charts
8 See also
9 External links

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History

When founded in 1894, Billboard magazine was originally concerned with carnival entertainment, but music coverage grew to the point that its earlier subjects were spun off into a separate journal in the 1950s.

On January 4, 1936 Billboard magazine published its first music hit parade and on July 20, 1940 the first Music Popularity Chart was calculated. Since 1958 the Hot 100 has been published, combining single sales and radio airplay.

To this day, the most successful acts on Billboard's charts are Mariah Carey, Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, and Michael Jackson.

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Radio countdown programs

For many years, the weekly syndicated radio program "American Top 40," hosted by Casey Kasem (1970 to August 1988 and the middle of 1998 to 2004) and Shadoe Stevens (August 1988 to Feb. 1994), played the top 40 songs on that Billboard chart in reverse order; in 2004, Kasem was replaced with American Idol host Ryan Seacrest.

A country music version of "American Top 40"called "American Country Countdown" and has been on the air since 1973. The show is hosted each week by Kix Brooks, half of the country superstar duo, Brooks & Dunn, who replaced radio legend Bob Kingsley in January 2006.

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Billboard today

Billboard magazine covers every aspect of the entertainment business, from DVDs to video cassette sales to internet music downloads. It features news stories and opinion articles. For the most part, Billboard is intended for music professionals, such as record label executives and DJs. It is generally not intended for the general public, although it can occasionally be found at bookstores. But despite their extensive coverage of the entertainment business, they are best known for their charts.

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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 Hot 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, Mariah Carey, 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.

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Corporate ownership

As of 2005, Billboard is owned by the Dutch conglomerate VNU.

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A variety of charts

Currently, Billboard has many different charts with the Hot 100 and Billboard 200 being the most famous. Billboard also has charts for the following music styles: rock, country, dance, bluegrass, jazz, classical, R&B, rap, electronic, pop, latin, christian music, comedy albums, and even for ringtones for cell phones.

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At year's end

At the end of each year, Billboard tallies the results of all of its charts, and the top single/album/artist(s) in each of those charts is awarded in the form of the annual Billboard Music Awards, held in December. The results are also published in Billboard's year-end issue, and heard on a year-end edition of its American Top 40 radio broadcasts. The year-end charts cover a period from roughly the first week of December of the previous year to the last week of November of the respective year.[1]

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