Question: In which decade did Billboard magazine first publish and American hit chart?
Answer: 30s


The US Billboard song chart
The US Billboard song chart
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Song chart US Billboard
The Billboard magazine has published various music charts starting  (with sheet music) in 1894, the first "Music Hit Parade" was  published in 1936 , the first "Music Popularity Chart" was calculated in 1940 .  These charts became less  irregular until the weekly "Hot 100" was started in 1958 .  The current chart combines sales, airplay  and downloads.
A music collector that calls himself Bullfrog has been  consolidating the complete chart from 1894 to the present day.   he has published this information in a comprehenive spreadsheet  (which can be obtained at bullfrogspond.com/
).
The Bullfrog data assigns each song a unique identifier, something like "1968_076" (which just happens to be the Bee Gees song "I've Gotta Get A Message To You").  This "Whitburn Number" is provided to match with the books of Joel Whitburn and consists of the year and a  ranking within the year.  A song that first entered the charts in December and has a long run is  listed the following year.  This numbering scheme means that songs which are still in the  charts cannot be assigned a final id, because their ranking might change.  So the definitive  listing for a year cannot be final until about April.  In our listing we only  use songs with finalised IDs, this means that every year we have to wait until  last year's entries are finalised before using them.
(Source bullfrogspond.com/ , the original version used here was 20090808 with extra data from:
the 2009 data from 20091219
the 2010 data from 20110305
the 2011 data from 20120929
the 2012 data from 20130330
the 2013 data from 20150328
The 20150328 data was the last one produced before the Billboard company forced the data to be withdrawn. As far as we know there are no more recent data sets available.  This pattern of obtaining the  data for a particular year in the middle of the following one comes from the way that the  Bullfrog project generates the identifier for a song (what they call the "Prefix" in  the spreadsheet). Recent entries are identified with keys like "2015-008" while older ones have keys  like "2013_177".  In the second case the underscore is significant, it indicates that  this was the 177th biggest song released in 2013.  Now, of course, during the year no one knows  where a particular  song will rank, so the underscore names can't be assigned until every song from a particular  year has dropped out of the charts, so recent records are temporarily assigned a name with a  dash.  In about May of the following year the rankings are calculated and the final identifiers  are assigned.  That is why we at the Turret can only grab this data retrospectively.
Attributes
The original spreadsheet has a number of attributes, we have limited  our attention to just a few of them:
134
9
The songs with the most entries on the chart were White Christmas (with  33 versions and a total of 110 weeks) and Stardust (with 19 and a total of 106  weeks).
position
The peak position that songs reached in the charts should show an smooth curve  from number one down to the lowest position.  This chart has more songs in the  lower peak positions than one would expect.  Before 1991 the profile  of peak positions was exactly as you would expect, that year Billboard introduced  the concept of "Recurrent" tracks, that is they removed any track from the  chart which had spent more than twenty weeks in the chart and had fallen to the lower  positions.
weeks
The effect of the "Recurrent" process, by which tracks are removed if they have  spent at least twenty weeks in the chart and have fallen to the lower reaches, can clearly be seen  in the strange spike in this attribute.  This "adjustment" was intended to promote  newer songs and ensure the chart does not become "stale".  In  fact since it was introduced in 1991 the length of long chart runs has increased,  this might reflect the more conscious efforts of record companies to "game" the  charts by controlling release times and promotions, or it could be that the decline in  chart turnover reflects a reduced public interest in the singles charts.
When we plot the average length of a song's run for songs over the period  covered it is clear that the chart has changed in the last 100 years.   Except for a short period in the late 1960s and early 1970s the average length of chart run increased steadily from  the 1920s to the 1990s .
This contrasts with other charts, such as the UK one where the recent trend has been for runs to get shorter.  We have no good  idea why this is.
yearpos & bfid
A formula is applied to each entry to assign it a ranking within the year it was  released.  This allows followers of the Billboard chart to use a combination of the  year and position to uniquely identify every entry.  This formula takes into account the  total success of the song, so it cannot be finally calculated until every song released  in a given year has completed it's chart run (which might be well into the following  year of course).  As a result the final IDs for a particular year cannot be assigned until  the end of the following year.  This is one of the reasons why this site does not hold  much information for the current year.
No. 1 song on December 24 1936
Looking for the No. 1 song on the day I was born--December 24, 1936.
Thanks.
The charts didn't really exist in the 1930s, that's why our listing of  number one records starts in 1940
25 Sep 2011
Billboard info for songs listed from 1901 - 1929
Hi, again, this is my fifth time sending message to this site...What a  spectacular site. Love it!! First, the comprehensive info, then, the  nitty-gritty details on every songs. Thirdly (and most importantly) the forever  responsive reply. Irregardless its a meaningful questions, corrections or  downright simple questions.
Some sites don't reply at all..its annoying.
Anyway, my questions is during the period from 1901 to 1929, has billboard  exist yet? Do they have charts and radios doing the counting of the song  rotation? I thought billboard only start in the late 50's, wasn't it? I'm a  music aficionado, songs and info from the 30's is hard to find, and yet you  have the effort to go beyond the 20's.. May i know where in other sites i can  search for 20's music info (other than wiki)?
Arnaz
We're glad to see that you enjoy the site.  Your comments encourage us to  keep putting in the effort.
To answer your question:
Billboard magazine started publishing in 1894.  They published their first music "hit parade" in 1936 and their first "Hot 100" in 1958.  We understand  that from 1936 to 1958 the charts were irregular and didn't have a consistent  form.  In addition the focus was on "sheet music" sales so while the chart  will say, for example, that the song "Sentimental Journey" was a hit in  1945 it won't tell you if the version by the Merry Macs, Hal McIntyre or  Les Brown & Doris Day was the most popular.
A US music historian called Joel Whitburn has used the information from  the irregular charts, the Billboard magazine contents and other sources to  retrospectively calculate the charts from 1890 to 1958.  This is published  as a spreadsheet by a guy calling himself "Bullfrog" (the source is listed  in the chart entry).
That is the listing we base our information on.
© 2007-16, Steve Hawtin et  al.  Generated 15 Jan 2017 16:56 GMT. This data  may be freely copied provided that first the source is acknowledged, second a link to the tsort.info site is prominently incorporated and third the version number is attached (this data is  version 2.6.0013).  If you cannot, or do not wish to, follow these three restrictons  then you must licence the data (inquire via the contact form).

Old-Charts
History
UK
The  first British singles chart was published in the November 14, 1952 edition of  the New Musical Express. It was at first little more than a gimmick, a  tool in the circulation war against NME's much older (and more popular) rival Melody Maker. The chart, at first a top 12, was the creation of the paper's  advertising manager, Percy Dickins, who compiled it by telephoning around 20  major record stores and aggregating their sales reports. He would continue to  personally oversee the compilation of the chart well into the 1960s.
The  chart rapidly became one of the paper's most popular features. After only a few  weeks, it started being quoted in record company advertisements and press  releases. The chart also spawned imitators - Record Mirror launched its  own chart in 1955 and Melody Maker in 1958.
The  forerunner of today's official chart first appeared in the music trade  publication Record Retailer (now Music Week) in 1960 as a Top 50,  but was not immediately recognised as the definitive chart in the country.  Arguably, the NME chart was still the most recognised chart, and had the  advantage of widespread exposure due to its use by Radio Luxembourg. Throughout  the sixties, the various different charts vied for public recognition, leading  to some historical anomalies ï¿½ for example, The Beatles' second single "Please  Please Me" was a number one on most charts, but not in Record Retailer.  To add to the confusion, the chart used by the BBC on their popular shows Pick of the Pops and Top Of The Pops was actually calculated by  averaging out all the others, and so didn't agree with any of them, and was  prone to tied positions.
It  wasn't until 1969 that a truly reliable, official chart emerged, from an  alliance between the BBC and Record Retailer. For the first time a professional  polling organisation, BMRB, was commissioned to oversee the chart, and a pool of  500 record shops was used - more than twice as many as had been used for any  previous chart. The new Official Top 50 was inaugurated in the week ending 12  February 1969.
In  1978, the singles chart was extended from a Top 50 to a Top 75.
In  1982, BMRB lost their contract to Gallup, who arranged for electronic data  gathering to replace the old sales diary method of compilation. The first chart  terminals appeared in record shops in 1984. As a result, in October 1987, it was  now possible for the chart, incorporating sales up to close of business on  Saturday, to be announced on Sunday afternoon, rather than being delayed until  Tuesday as was previously the case.
In  1990, the chart came under the auspices of CIN (Chart Information Network), a  syndicate including the BBC, Spotlight (publishers of Music Week), the  BPI and BARD (British Association of Record Distributors). This was basically a  formalisation of the previously-existing informal arrangement, and did not  significantly affect compilation.
 
USA
The  earliest charts probably came in late 1929.
In the  30's there were Downbeat and Metronome Charts and maybe there were others. The  Billboard Charts started in 1940, Cashbox in 1944.
 
The Billboard charts tabulate the relative weekly popularity of songs or albums in the United States. The results are published in Billboard magazine. The two primary charts - the Hot 100 (top 100 singles) and the Top 200 (top 200 albums) factor in airplay, as well as music sales in all relevant formats. Billboard is considered the foremost worldwide authority worldwide in music charts, and the rankings have gained a following among the general public.
On January 4, 1936, Billboard magazine published its first music hitparade. The first Music Popularity Chart was calculated in July, 1940. A variety of song charts followed, which were eventually consolidated into the Hot 100 by mid-1958.
 
Methodology of its charts
Currently, Billboard utilizes a    system called Nielsen SoundScan to track sales of singles, albums,    videos and DVDs. Essentially, it's a system that registers sales when    products are purchased from SoundScan-enabled stores. Billboard    also uses a system called Broadcast Data Systems, or BDS, which they own    as a subsidiary, to track radio airplay. Each song has an "acoustic    fingerprint" which, when played on a radio station that is contracted to    use BDS, is detected. These detections are added up every week among all    radio stations to determine airplay points. Arbitron statistics are also factored in to give "weight" to airplay    based on audience size and time-of-day.
All of Billboard's charts use this    basic formula. What separates the charts is which stations and stores    are used ï¿½ each musical genre having a core audience or retail group.    Each genre's department at Billboard is headed up by a chart    manager, who makes these determinations.
For many years, a song had to be    commercially available as a single to be considered for any of   Billboard's charts. At the time, instead of using SoundScan or BDS,    Billboard obtained its data from manual reports filled out by radio    stations and stores. According to the 50th Anniversary issue of   Billboard, prior to the official implementation of Nielsen SoundScan    tracking in November 1991, many radio stations and retail stores removed    songs from their manual reports after the associated record labels    stopped promoting a particular single. Thus songs fell quickly after    peaking and had shorter chart lives. In 1990, the country singles chart    was the first chart to use SoundScan and BDS. They were followed by the    Hot 100 and the   R&B chart in 1991. Today, all of Billboard's charts use this    technology.
Before September 1995, singles were    allowed to chart in the week they first went on sale based on airplay    points alone. The policy was changed in September 1995 to only allow a    single to debut after a full week of sales on combined sales and airplay    points. This allowed several tracks to debut at number one.
In December 1998, the policy was further    modified to allow tracks to chart on the basis of airplay alone without    a commercial release. This change was made to reflect the changing    realities of the music business. Previous to this, several substantial    radio and MTV hits had not appeared on the Billboard chart at    all, because many   major labels chose not to release them as standalone singles, hoping    their unavailability would spur greater album sales. Not offering a    popular song to the public as a single was unheard of before the 1970s.    The genres that suffered most at the time were those that increasingly    impacted   pop culture, including new genres such as trip    hop and    grunge.
Starting in 2005, Billboard changed    its methodology to allow paid   digital downloads from digital music stores such as   iTunes to chart with or without the help of radio airplay.
 
A variety of charts
Originally, Billboard had separate    charts for different measures of popularity, including disk jockey    playings,   juke box song selection, and best selling records in retail stores.    There was also a composite standing chart compiled by combining those,    which gradually grew to become a top 100, the ancestor of the current    Hot 100 chart. The juke box chart ceased publication after the June 17,    1957 issue, the disk jockey chart, after the July 28, 1958 issue, and    the best seller chart, after the October 13, 1958 issue. The July 28,    1958 issue was also the last issue in which the composite chart was    called the Top 100; the following week was the start of the Hot 100    titles.
Currently, Billboard publishes many    different charts, with the Hot 100 and Billboard 200 being the most    famous. In 2009 Billboard partnered with   MetroLyrics to offer top 10 lyrics for each of the charts.
 
At year's end
At the end of each year, Billboard    tallies the results of all of its charts, and the results are published    in a year-end issue and heard on year-end editions of its   American Top 40 and    American Country Countdown radio broadcasts, in addition to    being announced in the press. Between 1991 and 2006, the top    single/album/artist(s) in each of those charts was/were awarded in the    form of the annual   Billboard Music Awards, which were annually held in December until    the awards went dormant in 2007 (plans for a new version of the awards    in 2008 fell through, and no awards have been held since 2007). The    year-end charts cover a period from the first week of December of the    previous year to the last week of November of the respective year.
 
AT OLD-CHARTS YEAR-END TOP 150 CHARTS BASED ON THE CHARTS FROM JANUARY - DECEMBER!! (POINT-SYSTEM NR. 1: 100    POINTS etc.)