The Oricon Singles Chart is the Japanese music industry-standard
singles popularity chart issued daily, weekly, monthly and yearly by
Oricon
, established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics and information on music and the music industry in Japan and Western music. It started as, which was founded by Sōkō Koike in N ...
. Chart rankings are based on physical singles' sales. Until 2017, Oricon did not track download sales. In Japan, physical sales decreased sharply in the 2000s, while download sales hit three to four times the amount of single sales. In November 2017, Oricon introduced its first digital songs chart, separate from its main physical singles chart. In November 2018, Oricon launched a streaming chart, and introduced a combined singles chart that utilizes physical single sales, downloads, and streams.
Original Confidence Inc., the original Oricon company, was founded by the former
Snow Brand Milk Products promoter Sōkō Koike in 1967. That November, the company began publishing a singles chart on an experimental basis.
Entitled . The chart became official on January 4, 1968.
Charts are published every Tuesday in Oricon Style and on Oricon's official website. Every Monday, Oricon receives data from outlets, but data on merchandise sold through certain channels does not make it into the charts. For example, the debut single of
NEWS, a pop group, was released only through
7-Eleven
7-Eleven, Inc., stylized as 7-ELEVE, is a multinational chain of retail convenience stores, headquartered in Dallas, Texas. The chain was founded in 1927 as an ice house storefront in Dallas. It was named Tote'm Stores between 1928 and 1946. ...
stores, which are not covered by Oricon, and its sales were not reflected in the Oricon charts. Oricon's rankings of
record sales
Record sales or music sales are activities related to selling music recordings (albums, singles, or music videos) through physical record shops or digital music store. Record sales reached the peak in 1999, when 600 million people spent an averag ...
are therefore not completely accurate. Before data was collected electronically, the charts were compiled on the basis of faxes that were sent from record shops.
The first number-one song on the Oricon Singles Chart was "
Kitaguni no Futari (In a Lonesome City)" by
Jackey Yoshikawa and His Blue Comets on November 2, 1967.
Best-selling physical singles of all time
See also
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List of Oricon number-one singles
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Oricon Albums Chart
The Oricon Albums Chart is the Japanese music industry standard albums popularity chart issued daily, weekly, monthly and yearly by Oricon. Oricon originally published LP, CT, Cartridge and CD charts prior to the establishment of the Oricon ...
*
List of best-selling singles in Japan
*
List of best-selling albums in Japan
References
External links
Oricon website
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*
{{Number-one singles in Japan
Japanese record charts
Oricon