Billboard Hot 100

The ''Billboard'' Hot 100 is the music industry standard record chart in the United States for songs, published weekly by ''Billboard'' magazine. Chart rankings are based on sales (physical and digital), radio play, and online streaming in the United States.

The weekly tracking period for sales was initially Monday to Sunday when Nielsen started tracking sales in 1991, but was changed to Friday to Thursday in July 2015. This tracking period also applies to compiling online streaming data. Radio airplay, which, unlike sales figures and streaming, is readily available on a real-time basis, is also tracked on a Friday to Thursday cycle effective with the chart dated July 17, 2021 (previously Monday to Sunday and before July 2015, Wednesday to Tuesday). A new chart is compiled and officially released to the public by ''Billboard'' on Tuesdays but post-dated to the following Saturday.

The first number-one song of the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 was "Poor Little Fool" by Ricky Nelson, on August 4, 1958. As of the issue for the week ending on December 24, 2022, the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 has had 1,144 different number-one entries. The chart's current number-one song is " All I Want for Christmas Is You" by Mariah Carey.

History

The first chart published by ''Billboard'' was "Last Week's Ten Best Sellers Among the Popular Songs", a list of best-selling sheet music, in July 1913. Other charts listed popular song performances in theatres and recitals. In 1928, "Popular Numbers Featured by Famous Singers and Leaders" appeared, which added radio performances to in-person performances. On January 4, 1936, Billboard magazine published "Ten Best Records for Week Ending", which recorded the 10 top selling records of three leading record companies as reported by the companies themselves. In October 1938, a review list "The Week's Best Records" was retitled "The Billboard Record Buying Guide" by incorporating airplay and sheet music sales, which would eventually become the first trade survey of record popularity. This, the full-page "Billboard Music Popularity Chart" for week ending July 20, 1940, and published in the July 27 issue, with lists covering jukebox play, retail sales, sheet music sales, and radio play. Listed were 10 songs of the National "Best Selling Retail Records", which is the fore-runner of today's pop chart, with " I'll Never Smile Again" by Tommy Dorsey its first number one.

Starting on March 24, 1945, ''Billboard''s lead popularity chart was the ''Honor Roll of Hits''. This chart ranked the most popular songs regardless of performer (it combined different versions of the same song by different artists) based on record and sheet sales, disk jockey, and jukebox performances as determined by ''Billboard''s weekly nationwide survey. At the start of the rock era in 1955, there were three charts that measured songs by individual metrics:

* ''Best Sellers in Stores'' was the best seller chart first established in July 1940. This chart ranked the biggest selling singles in retail stores, as reported by merchants surveyed throughout the country (20 to 50 positions).
* ''Most Played by Jockeys'' was ''Billboard''s original airplay chart. It ranked the most played songs on United States radio stations, as reported by radio DJs and radio stations (20 to 25 positions).
* ''Most Played in Jukeboxes'' ranked the most played songs in jukeboxes across the United States (20 positions). This was one of the main outlets of measuring song popularity with the younger generation of music listeners, as many radio stations resisted adding rock and roll music to their playlists for many years.

Although officially all three charts had equal "weight" in terms of their importance, ''Billboard'' retrospectively considers the ''Best Sellers in Stores'' chart when referencing a song's performance before the creation of the Hot 100. On the week ending November 12, 1955, ''Billboard'' published The Top 100 for the first time. ''The Top 100'' combined all aspects of a single's performance (sales, airplay and jukebox activity), based on a point system that typically gave sales (purchases) more weight than radio airplay. The first No. 1 in that chart was " Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing" by The Four Aces. The ''Best Sellers in Stores'', ''Most Played by Jockeys'' and ''Most Played in Jukeboxes'' charts continued to be published concurrently with the new ''Top 100'' chart.

On June 17, 1957, ''Billboard'' discontinued the ''Most Played in Jukeboxes'' chart, as the popularity of jukeboxes waned and radio stations incorporated more and more rock-oriented music into their playlists. The week of July 28, 1958, had the final ''Most Played by Jockeys'' and ''Top 100'' charts, both of which had Perez Prado's instrumental version of " Patricia" ascending to the top.

On August 4, 1958, ''Billboard'' premiered one main all-genre singles chart: the ''Hot 100'', with "Poor Little Fool" by Ricky Nelson its first No. 1. The Hot 100 quickly became the industry standard and ''Billboard'' discontinued the ''Best Sellers In Stores'' chart on October 13, 1958.

The Hot 100 was created by journalists Tom Noonan, Paul Ackerman, and Seymour Stein; Stein does not recall who chose the name.

The ''Billboard'' Hot 100 is still the standard by which a song's popularity is measured in the United States. The Hot 100 is ranked by radio airplay audience impressions as measured by Nielsen BDS, sales data compiled by Nielsen Soundscan (both at retail and digitally) and streaming activity provided by online music sources.

There are several component charts that contribute to the overall calculation of the Hot 100. The most significant ones are:

* '' Hot 100 Airplay'': ''(per Billboard)'' approximately 1,000 stations, "composed of adult contemporary, R&B, hip hop, country, rock, gospel, Latin and Christian formats, digitally monitored twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Charts are ranked by number of gross audience impressions, computed by cross-referencing exact times of radio airplay with Arbitron listener data."
* ''Hot Singles Sales'': ''(per Billboard)'' "the top selling singles compiled from a national sample of retail store, mass merchant and internet sales reports collected, compiled, and provided by Nielsen SoundScan." The chart is released weekly and measures sales of physical commercial singles. With the decline in sales of physical singles in the US, many songs that become number one on this chart often do not even chart on the Hot 100.
* ''Digital Songs'': Digital sales are tracked by Nielsen SoundScan and are included as part of a title's sales points.
* '' Streaming Songs'': a collaboration between ''Billboard'', Nielsen SoundScan and National Association of Recording Merchandisers which measures the top streamed radio songs, on-demand songs and videos on leading online music services.

Compilation

The tracking week for sales, streaming and airplay begins on Friday and ends on Thursday (airplay used to have a tracking week from Monday to Sunday, but effective with the chart dated July 17, 2021, the week was adjusted to align with the other two metrics). A new chart is compiled and officially released to the public by ''Billboard'' on Tuesday. Each chart is post-dated with the "week-ending" issue date four days after the charts are refreshed online (i.e., the following Saturday). For example:

* Friday, January 1 – tracking-week begins for sales, streaming and airplay
* Thursday, January 7 – tracking-week ends for sales, streaming and airplay
* Tuesday, January 12 – new chart released, with issue post-dated Saturday, January 16

Policy changes

The methods and policies by which this data is obtained and compiled have changed many times throughout the chart's history.

Although the advent of a singles music chart spawned chart historians and chart-watchers and greatly affected pop culture and produced countless bits of trivia, the main purpose of the Hot 100 is to aid those within the music industry: to reflect the popularity of the "product" (the singles, the albums, etc.) and to track the trends of the buying public. ''Billboard'' has (many times) changed its methodology and policies to give the most precise and accurate reflection of what is popular. A very basic example of this would be the ratio given to sales and airplay. During the Hot 100's early history, singles were the leading way by which people bought music. At times, when singles sales were robust, more weight was given to a song's retail points than to its radio airplay.

As the decades passed, the recording industry concentrated more on album sales than singles sales. Musicians eventually expressed their creative output in the form of full-length albums rather than singles, and by the 1990s many record companies stopped releasing singles altogether (see ''Album Cuts'', below). Eventually, a song's airplay points were weighted more so than its sales. ''Billboard'' has adjusted the sales/airplay ratio many times to more accurately reflect the true popularity of songs.

Double-sided singles

''Billboard'' has also changed its Hot 100 policy regarding "two-sided singles" several times. The pre-Hot 100 chart "Best Sellers in Stores" listed popular A- and-B-sides together, with the side that was played most often (based on its other charts) listed first. One of the most notable of these, but far from the only one, was Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel" / "Hound Dog". During the Presley single's chart run, top billing was switched back and forth between the two sides several times. But on the concurrent "Most Played in Juke Boxes", "Most Played by Jockeys" and the "Top 100", the two songs were listed separately, as was true of all songs. With the initiation of the Hot 100 in 1958, A- and-B-sides charted separately, as they had on the former Top 100.

Starting with the Hot 100 chart for the week ending November 29, 1969, this rule was altered; if both sides received significant airplay, they were listed together. This started to become a moot point by 1972, as most major record labels solidified a trend they had started in the 1960s by putting the same song on both sides of the singles provided to radio.

More complex issues began to arise as the typical A-and-B-side format of singles gave way to 12 inch singles and maxi-singles, many of which contained more than one B-side. Further problems arose when, in several cases, a B-side would eventually overtake the A-side in popularity, thus prompting record labels to release a new single, featuring the former B-side as the A-side, along with a "new" B-side.

The inclusion of album cuts on the Hot 100 put the double-sided hit issues to rest permanently.

Album cuts

As many Hot 100 chart policies have been modified over the years, one rule always remained constant: songs were not eligible to enter