Source Album Charts

The "Chart Entries" listing for each album documents which charts it appeared in. So for example an entry of "UK 1 - Jun 1967, US CashBox 5 of 1967, Global 19 - 24 M claimed, Internet 9 - 32 M claimed 1967, US Gold (cerified by RIAA in Oct 1978), Rolling Stone 1" would indicate that the album:

• Was number one in the UK album charts, entering the chart in Jun 1967
• Was number 5 for the year 1967 in the Cashbox charts
• Is number 19 on the "Global" album list which claims sales of 24 million
• Is 9th on the internet album list
• Was cerified by the RIAA to have reached Gold status
• Was in the top slot of "Rolling Stone" magazine's 2004 list

A complete set of the strings used (and which charts generated them) can be found at the end of this page.

The way that a total score for each album is derived from the chart entries is the same as that described for songs. This set of results was generated 13 Mar 2010 09:57 GMT and is version 1.9.0031. The 57 album source charts that contributed were:

The chart above shows how the 98,673 entries in the album charts varies with the declared year. The profiles of each of the 57 album charts is shown below.

Templates for entries

• Acclaim Year position of year
• Acclaimed position (year)
• Australia Goset position - date (weeks weeks)
• Australia num position for weeks weeks - date
• Austria position - date (months months)
• Belgium position of all time (year)
• Canada level (certified in date)
• Canada position for weeks weeks - year
• Channel4 position
• Defin200 position (year)
• DMDB position
• Europe level (certified by IFIP in year)
• Europe num position for weeks weeks - date
• Finland position of all time (claimed sales) (year)
• Fox101 position
• France Best position of year
• France level (certified by SNEP date)
• France (InfoDisc) position of year (peak peak, weeks weeks)
• Germany position for weeks weeks - date
• German RS100 position
• Germany level (certified by BMieV in date)
• Global position - sales M claimed
• Grammy in year (level)
• Grammy Hall of Fame in awarded (year)
• Guiness position
• Holland free40 position of year
• Internet position - sales M claimed (year)
• Italy position of year
• Japan position for weeks weeks - date
• Juno Award in year
• Latin Grammy Hall of Fame in awarded (year)
• Melody Maker position of year
• Mercury prize year (level)
• NARM position
• Norway position - month (weeks weeks)
• UK Radio2 position
• Radio Caroline position (year)
• Rolling Stone position
• RS100 position
• RS Reader's position
• RYM position of year
• Sweden position - month (weeks weeks)
• Switzerland position - month (weeks weeks)
• Taiwan position of all time (claimed sales sales)
• UK position - date (weeks weeks)
• UK position of all time (claimed M claimed) (year)
• UK level (certified by BPI in date)
• UK EP position - date
• US position of year
• US BB position of year
• US CashBox position of year
• US num position for weeks weeks - date
• US level (certified by RIAA in date)
• US sales level M (according to RIAA)
• Virgin position
• WTMD position
• WXPN position (year)

Back to Introduction

Previous Comments

27 Oct 2009

Duplicate entry: Italy

The paragraph on Italy is listed twice... BTW, great site!

You are right, the description of the Italian album chart was included twice. The error has now been fixed.

Thank you for your input

24 Dec 2009

Euro Chart

Hi again :)

Just a doubt... if you consider "euro chart" you have to consider that it already considers charts from most of european countries. If you prefer country by country in europe you should not include Euro Chart.

Or try to find out which european countries are contributing for "Euro Chart" and stop counting them in your tables.

If not, european results are not very correct... For example, Holland counts in Euro Chart, songs that feature on both gets better performance here because they are in both charts.

I would like to get you more information but i'm not sure so it's not official... (i THINK) UK charts are also included in euro-chart and this chart began in the early 90's (NOT SURE)

Have fun... keep up this great hard work!

Merry Xmas!

Your concern is a completely valid one. We share your doubt that the European Charts are "official" (or at least not systematically biased).

However the European Decade chart starts in 1930, where there are very few other charts. The other European charts start much later of course.

The site follows the ideas in the book "The Wisdom of Crowds", this claims that combining many different, unreliable, sources will lead to result that is more reliable than any of the originals. Provided that there is no systematic bias built into the selection of the sources.

You suggest that adding the European charts gives additional weight to results from the contributing countries. That is clearly correct. When we were considering adding these charts we asked ourselves if this was necessarily a bad thing. After all the very fact that so many charts are available for the countries of Europe does demonstrate that there is an interest in conveying that information.

So, yes, we agree that including the "European" charts does exaggerate an already existing over emphasis on European success, but we felt that this continued to reflect the data that is available and so is, just about, OK.

Of course we are aware that the current data includes slightly too much input from Europe, but this is a balance between getting the ratio's correct and the data that is available. We continue to try and redress this, for example we will be reluctant to add any new European charts, but historic charts from South America or Asia would be added immediately, if only we could find them.

Thanks for the input, this is an interesting subject that continues to provoke discussion

2 Jan 2010

Euro Chart

In my opinion i would only count Euro Chart and drop all european charts that contributes for euro chart. However i'd keep all results untill the 1st Euro Chart. If so, i also think you would have to increase the importance of the songs featured in euro chart like the US... These ones are surely the most important.

I guess it would be important too if you find any data for South Africa.

If by any chance you would think you could have any help, just let me know... Have a great new year!

Note: May I insist on you publishing the results you have for 2009? Like I said before, it would be very interesting how your chart improves... it would be more "dynamic".You can protect yourselves by puting a note like: "Chart not defenitive. Data still incoming. Return and check our upgrades"

As we have already discussed the European charts were included only after some discussion. The country charts are more extensive so if anything was to be removed it would have to be the less reliable Euro charts rather than the country ones.

Keeping the Euro charts does distort the results, but removing them would also distort them. We suspect that keeping them is the lesser of these two evils.

We, of course, already have one chart from South Africa, any additional data (for example album success in South Africa, charts from Mexico, China, India or Russia) is always welcome.

We will indeed continue to publish the 2009 results as we gather the data, but as we mentioned the volume of source charts won't be enough to give good results for a few years yet. The 2009 page already has a message that explains why its data is not reliable.

8 Feb 2010

music lists

With this site's focus on music lists, you should also check out Dave's Music Database.

Website: DavesMusicDatabase.com Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Daves-Music-Database/300371661944

Indeed, the site not only provides a good description of the most popular albums but its rankings also appear to be an objective combination of the most important source charts. Well worth checking out.

We have added his top 100 albums and top 100 songs lists as new charts

Thanks for the suggestion

© 2007-10, Steve Hawtin et al. Generated 13 Mar 2010 09:57 GMT. This data may be freely copied provided that the source is acknowledged, a link to the tsort.info site is prominently incorporated and the version number is attached (this data is version 1.9.0031).