The World's Music Charts

Songs	Song Years	Song Artists	Song Titles
Albums	Album Years	Album Artists

This is the most comprehensive collection of music chart information anywhere (that we are aware of). These lists bring together 359,583 individual chart entries about the most popular 130,506 songs and 49,693 albums released since the year 1900. This site combines 141 different source charts, 84 song charts and 57 album charts from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Eire, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the US as well as some global and internet based charts to give a list of the songs and albums that have topped the charts around the world for the last 110 years.

The site lists the top 100 songs and albums from most years, as well as every song or album that has been a hit for the top 1000 artists (including their collaborations). Every entry includes a complete list of the charts that it featured in, and a complete list of original sources is provided. The site also supplies an answer to the question of who were the world's greatest song and album chart acts of all time, some informed guesses about the 300 biggest selling albums of all time and a whole host of other analysis.

Frequent Questions

There are also a number of pages here that discuss related topics such as the way that the entries are scored, the source charts, how the artist's profiles work and other frequently asked questions, such as:

• Who was the world's biggest music act of all time?
• What was the greatest chart song of all time?
• What was the greatest chart album of all time?
• What source charts were used for songs?
• What source charts were used for albums?
• How do I read Artist Profile pictures?
• Which artists had the most hits?
• Which artists had the longest careers?
• What were the greatest international "One Hit Wonders"?
• Which acts had just a single hit album?
• Which song chart act placed highest over the years?
• Which albums chart act placed highest over the years?
• Who was the greatest song chart act of all time?
• How do I read the region profile pictures?
• Which albums had the highest number of worldwide sales?
• Who had the most number 1s?
• Which songs, albums and artists have the most chart entries?
• How the site is generated?
• Why are there so many/ so few USA based charts?
• Why are the names of songs and artists changed in these list?
• I've found a comment that is inconsistent, wrong or outdated
• Is there a way I can help with the site?
• There is a mistake in one of the entries
• You should add the chart at http://***.com/
• Why don't you have any of the VHS top 100 Charts?
• Where can I get the mp3 files?
• What's with the version numbers?
• Why do songs move in the charts when new versions are released?
• Where can I vote for my favourite?
• Surely XXX is too high/low, can't you fix that?
• Can I spider the site?
• Why is the year for XXX listed as 19XX?
• Can the charts here tell us anything about long term trends
• Who were the most successful artists of each decade?
• Why do you include charts that are not notable?
• I am looking for a particular song, how can I find it?
• Why can't I find the entry for artist XXX or song XXX?
• Sometimes I am asked for a password, are there restrictions on who can use the site?
• Which song titles have the most versions in the charts?
• What song was number 1 on the day I was born?
• What were the biggest hit songs of each decade?
• What were the biggest hit albums of each decade?

Previous Comments

16 Aug 2008

A couple missing

Hi. Great site. Just started looking at the csv file. I noticed "Oh Lonesome Me" by Don Gibson is missing. It reached 7 on the US BB charts, and may have charted on others. Also two songs by Adam Wade from 1961: "The Writing on the Wall" (US BB 5) and "Take Good Care of Her" (US BB 7).

Roger

According to my list Don Gibson's "Oh Lonesome Me" entered the Billboard chart in Mar 1958 peaked at number 8, and was there for 21 weeks.

Adam Wade had 11 hits from Nov 1960 ("Gloria's Theme") to Jan 1965 ("Crying in the Chapel").

But neither artist did well enough internationally to be in the world's top 1000 artists. This site only lists the most highly placed acts (all the hits of the top 1000 artists, the top 1000 song titles and the top 100 songs of each year)

If you look under the title "I Can't Stop Loving You" you will see that Don Gibson's version was number two in Norway in 1960. Adam Wade is listed as having the least successful version of a song titled "Crying in the Chapel".

16 Apr 2009

Other

Cool site

Thank You

8 May 2009

A Tisket A Tasket

Thanks for this great site that I must have overlooked for a considerable time. There are some mistakes of course, e.g. Ella Fitzgerald's "A-Tisket A-Tasket" (#8 in the 1938 chart) is the same record as Chick Webb's (#26 in the year chart) because she was the band's singer at the time and Joel Whitburn is always listing the bandleader and the featured singer. Here you can see the label of the original 78 rpm record with both names on it: http://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/chick_webb__and_his_orchestra_/a_tisket_a_tasket___liza__all_the_cloudsll_roll_away_/

Best wishes from Germany Cornelius

Thanks for the correction, the data has been fixed. That type of issue is the most difficult one to spot.

19 May 2009

A-Tisket A-Tasket Again

Thanks for fixing the "A-Tisket A-Tasket" entry. I'd say however that the correct artist specification for this record would be "Chick Webb & Ella Fitzgerald" (with a link to Ella, the same way as you did with some other collaborations, e), not just Ella Fitzgerald.

Regards Cornelius

You make a valid point, there certainly is a good case for listing it under "Chick Webb & Ella Fitzgerald". However, many sources list the song under just "Ella Fitzgerald" (possibly because she co-wrote it), there is no separate page for Chick Webb on the site and the "Chick Webb Orchestra" was renamed in 1939 as "Ella Fitzgerald and her Famous Orchestra" (after Chick Webb died) so we decided to assign this song to "Ella Fitzgerald".

The goal of this site is to consolidate the range of input charts, this often means that we have to "standardise" names. For example some artists have different names in different countries (like "Yazoo" or "The Detroit Spinners"), some artists change names from one year to the next (like "Prince"), or for a particular song (for "(Meet) the Flintstones" "The B52s" became "The BC52s"). Mapping the actual names on the record labels or printed charts to a "most common form" makes it easier for users to find connections between charts, if they then use that information to track to the original chart data they will find the original information and can decide if our consolidations are valid for their purposes.

A note has been added to Ella Fitzgerald's page to explain the situation, this also means that anyone looking up Chick Webb in the index will be directed to the right place as well.

Thanks for the input

23 May 2009

Sugestion

Hi! Great great job! Thanks!!!

It would be very nice if you could do it with separate continents. It would be very interesting to see how the order of the songs would vary on different sides of the planet! Different Cultures = Different Music "taste".

Just an idea...

p.s. - pardon my english! :) (by the way, i'm from Portugal)

Interesting idea.

For that to work we would have to have more than one input chart in each region, with enough entries to "smooth out" the peculiarities of any one chart. The bad news is that we don't meet those criteria for most of the World, or for any data from before 1950.

However we have had a go at adding such pages, if you look at any of the year pages for 1950 to 2005 you should find a link that will show you the results.

Thanks for the idea

PS. Your English is much better than our Portuguese

PPS - Your idea has now led to the "region charts" that show regional success for many of the pages

26 May 2009

Thanks for clarifying that, although I'm not quite convinced when I look at the already existing Bing Crosby collaborations for example. Anyway it's okay for me with the newly added comments on the Ella Fitzgerald page.

I got another one: #34 ("Hold Tight, Hold Tight", 1939) and #35 ("Hold Tight, Hold Tight (Want Some Sea Food, Mama?)", 1938) on the Andrews Sisters' page and is the same song and the same record, released at the end of 1938 and charted in the beginning of 1939, see the record label on http://rateyourmusic.com/release/single/andrews_sisters/hold_tight__hold_tight__want_some_sea_food__mama_____billy_boy/ (which also shows that it was a collaboration of the Andrews Sisters with Jimmy Dorsey and His Orchestra).

Corrected, thanks again for the info

2 Jun 2009

Andrews Sisters

Corrected? I still see them both (now #35 and #36).

What we meant was that the data was corrected in the source data set, it obviously takes some time to "publish" from the source to the web pages. The processing alone takes about 16 hours.

In addition for the last couple of days the result has failed some of our quality tests, so we have had to correct some elements and resubmit the job (which adds another day).

The data should now show the correct values.

4 Jul 2009

Server Error

I keep trying to send you a message but the web site complains about a "server error"

Yes, one of us made a mistake while blocking spam messages from Russia 10 days ago. It has now been fixed.

And yes it was me

Steve

28 Oct 2009

search engines

When you are looking for a song, or an artist to listen to their songs, why not have a clip or the whole song.

We don't host any actual music here at all, obviously hosting complete songs would be illegal and we don't need that hassle. We don't host clips because we don't have the time to collect them, we don't have the bandwidth to deliver them and we don't think it would add much to the site.

If anyone would like to collect, manage and host a set of music clips we would be interested to discuss how we could collaborate.

1 Jan 2010

who sang this song?

Hi I'm looking for this song I heard it around 1993 and it goes like this, you said you had to leave yeah cause things won't work out so what does that have to with me if i was to much then daddy you should have a child it life responiabity to me you desert us , why daddy did you leave me oh we cried every other day tell me why daddy did you leave me but daddy it over now we'll see brighter day

No idea, never heard of it

© 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).