Source Song Charts

Each of the entries in the site provides a list of the positions in the various source charts. This page describes the charts that have been used for songs. So for example an entry of "US BB 1 - Oct 1965, US CashBox 68 of 1965, Germany 373 of the 1960s, Belgium 53 of all time, RYM 11 of 1965, RIAA 56, Scrobulate 39 of classic rock" would indicate that the song:

• Was number one in the US Billboard charts, entering the chart in Oct 1965
• Was number 68 in the US CashBox chart of the year 1965
• Was the 373rd song in Germany for the decade of the 1960s
• Was the 53rd best selling song of all time in Belgium
• Was number 11 in the "RateYourMusic" chart for 1965
• Was 56 in the Record Industry Association of America's all time list
• Was number 39 in the "classic rock" tag at Scrobulate

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 song is derived from the individual chart entries is described on the site generation page. This result set was created 13 Mar 2010 09:57 GMT and is version 1.9.0031. The 84 source charts that contributed to the song positions were:

The chart above shows how the 260,910 entries in the input charts is distributed over the years. The profiles of each of the 84 song charts is shown below.

Templates for entries

• position in 2FM list
• Acclaim Year position of year
• Acclaimed position (year)
• AFI position
• Australia position for months months - date
• Australia Goset position - date (weeks weeks)
• Australia position for weeks weeks - date
• OzNet position
• Australia position of year
• Austria position - date (weeks weeks)
• Belgium position of all time
• Belgium position - date (weeks weeks)
• Brazil position of year
• Canada position - date (weeks weeks)
• Canada RPM position for weeks weeks - date
• Ceylon position of year
• DDD position of year
• DMDB position (year)
• Eire position for weeks weeks - date
• Europe position of the decade (year)
• Europe position for weeks weeks - date
• France position - month (weeks weeks)
• France (50s) position of year
• France level (certified by SNEP in date)
• France (Historical) position of the decade (year)
• France (InfoDisc) position of the decade (peak peak, weeks weeks, sales sales estimated, year)
• France position for weeks weeks - date
• Germany position - month (duration months)
• Germany level (certified by BMieV in date)
• Germany position of the decade (peak peak weeks weeks)
• Germany position for weeks weeks - date
• Global position (claimed M sold) - year
• Golden Globe in year (film 'film') (level)
• Grammy in year (level)
• Grammy Hall of Fame in awarded (year)
• Holland position - date (weeks weeks)
• Italy position of year
• Japan position of all time (international songs) (sales sales)
• Japan position for weeks weeks - date
• Japan (Osaku) position of year (peak peak weeks weeks)
• Japan (Tokyo) position - date (weeks weeks)
• KROQ position of year
• Latin Grammy Hall of Fame in awarded (year)
• MTV Video of the year year (level)
• New Zealand position for weeks weeks - date
• NZ Lever position - date (weeks weeks)
• NZ Listner position - date (weeks weeks)
• Norway position - month (weeks weeks)
• Oscar in year (film 'film')
• Party position of year
• Peel list position of year
• Poland position - date (weeks weeks)
• Poland position of all time
• POP position of year
• RIAA position
• RIANZ position - date (weeks weeks)
• Rolling Stone position
• RYM position of year
• Scrobulate position of tag
• South Africa position of year
• Spain position for weeks weeks - date
• Sweden position - date (weeks weeks)
• Sweden (alt) position - month (weeks weeks)
• Switzerland position - month (weeks weeks)
• Switzerland position of year
• TheQ position
• TOTP position
• UK position - date (weeks weeks)
• UK level (certified by BPI in date)
• UK sales position of the decade (sales k in year)
• UKMIX position
• US 1940s position - date (weeks weeks)
• ARC position of year (peak peak weeks weeks)
• US BB position of year
• US Billboard position - month (weeks weeks)
• US CashBox position of year
• US CashBox position - date (weeks weeks)
• US position for weeks weeks - date
• US Radio position of year (peak peak weeks weeks)
• Record World position - year
• US level (certified by RIAA in date)
• WABC NY position of year
• Virgin position
• WXPN position

Back to Introduction

Previous Comments

9 Sep 2009

Very nice site!

Thank You

(Oh and by the way your link to sites selling perscription drugs was automatically removed)

8 Nov 2009

Latin Grammy

I would like to ask two questions:

1. Do you follow the Latin Grammy and Latin Grammy Hall of Fame lists? 2. Why do you have the Grammy Hall of Fame chart till 2005?

thank you.

At the moment the "Latin Grammy" and "Latin Grammy Hall of Fame" lists are not included.

We try to focus on charts and lists that are fairly general, for example we would never add a chart of "Seatle based garage hits of the 1990s" because it would overemphasise a tiny segment of the music world. So, we ignore lists like the "Country Music Awards", "Billboard Hip-Hop Awards" and the "Billboard Christian Album Charts".

However, one could argue that "Latin Music" is a broad enough category that including it would not distort the chart, and that by adding the Grammy lists only the absolute top entries would be noted anyway. On balance that sounds like a reasonable suggestion, so we have looked at the source charts.

Unfortunately the "Latin Grammy" awards only started in 2000. So they don't really add much to the information we already have.

The "Latin Grammy Hall of Fame" list looks at recordings that are at least 25 years old, a perfect match to our existing charts. Unfortunately the entries listed at the Grammy web site were all awarded in 2001, it looks like that was the only year that the award was run. However we have added those entries to our listings, thanks for the suggestion.

Your comment about the "Grammy Hall of Fame" only having entries up to 2005 is not quite right, we have some entries up to 2008. However while we were checking we noticed that a number of the entries that are listed on the official site are missing from the Wikipedia page (which was our original source). Our guess is that checking on one of these missing entries led you to the reasonable conclusion that we only had a limited coverage.

We have now identified all the missing entries and added them into our list. Thank you for pointing out this issue with our original source, the careful checking of users like yourself helps ensure that our data remains accurate.

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.

11 Jan 2010

Maybe this can help

Hi there, I always check this for actual and some archive charts in Europe. They also have Mexico but i never checked it. Maybe this is a good tool for 2009 chart and future charts. Give it a try

http://uk-charts.com/

Have fun

The web site you suggest links to a number of country's charts, some of which are already used here. Unfortunately the Mexico data you mention only starts in 2007, so it is too recent for this site.

But thanks for the suggestion

12 Jan 2010

Decade

Hi there!

Here's a thought: Would also be interesting if you present charts by decade... I guess.

I'm your fan!

The songs and albums of each decade are already listed. If you go to any year page there is a list of "associated pages" at the top. This provides links to a few years before and after the one you are looking at. In addition there are links to pages that give the top songs (or albums) of each decade (they are listed as 1900s, 1910s, 1920s and so on).

There are a number of sets of pages that are only accessed indirectly, the decades, the "Europe v North America" pages and so on.

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).