The Oricon Singles Chart is the Japanese music industry-standard

singles Singles are people not in a committed relationship. Singles may also refer to: Film and television * ''Singles'' (miniseries), a 1984 Australian television series * ''Singles'' (1992 film), written and directed by Cameron Crowe * ''Singles'' ...

popularity chart A record chart, in the music industry, also called a music chart, is a ranking of recorded music according to certain criteria during a given period. Many different criteria are used in worldwide charts, often in combination. These include rec ...

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 ...

. 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 , formerly is one of the largest dairy companies in Japan. In 2000, more than 14,000 people got sick from old milk sold by Snow Brand contaminated with the staphylococcus aureus bacteria, the worst case of food poisoning in Japan. A criminal ...

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 News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different media: word of mouth, printing, postal systems, broadcasting, electronic communication, or through the testimony of observers and witnesses to events. N ...

, a pop group, was released only through 7-Eleven 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 Jackey Yoshikawa and His Blue Comets ( ) is a Japanese J-pop-rock band, active from 1957. History of the band The band formed in 1957 just as The Blue Comets. In 1963 they renamed "Jackie Yoshikawa and the Blue Comets" with Jackie Yoshikawa s ...

Best-selling physical singles of all time

See also

References

External links