The "Billboard" Hot 100 is a list of the current most well-liked music made by "Billboard" magazine. Rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking week for sales is each Monday to Sunday, while for radio play it is Wednesday to Tuesday. A new chart is compiled and officially released to the public by "Billboard" on Thursday. Each chart is dated with the "week-ending" date of the Saturday two weeks after. Example:
The first number one song of the Hot 100 was "Poor Little Fool" by Ricky Nelson on August 4, 1958. As of the issue for the week ending July 21,2018,the Hot 100 has had 1,016 different number-one hits. Its current number one is "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus.
What has always been known as the Hot 100 existed for nearly 15 years as numerous charts, tracking and ranking the most popular singles of the day in several areas. During the 1940s and 1950s, popular singles were ranked in three significant charts:
Although officially all three charts had equal importance, many chart historians refer to the "Best Sellers In Stores" chart when referring to a song’s performance prior to the creation of the Hot 100. "Billboard" eventually created a fourth singles popularity chart that 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. On the week ending November 12, 1955, "Billboard" published The Top 100 for the first time. 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 play lists. The week ending July 28, 1958 was the final publication of the "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. Although similar to the "Top 100", the first Hot 100 chart reset all songs’ "weeks on chart" status to "1". The Hot 100 quickly became the industry standard and "Billboard" discontinued the "Best Sellers In Stores" chart on October 13, 1958.
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 shown below.
The methods and policies for obtaining and compiling data changed many times throughout the chart’s history.
The advent of a music single song 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 better reflect what is popular.
A basic example is the weight given to sales versus airplay. Initially, singles were the leading way by which people bought music. When singles sales were robust, more weight was given to a song’s retail points than to its radio airplay. In later decades, the recording industry concentrated more on album sales and musicians eventually released more full-length albums than singles, and by the 1990s many record companies stopped releasing singles (see "Album Cuts", below). Eventually a song’s airplay points were weighted more than its sales. "Billboard" adjusted the sales/airplay ratio many times to more accurately reflect the true popularity of songs.
"Billboard" 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 it serviced 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.
A longstanding policy of the Hot 100 chart was that songs must be sold as a single. However, during the 1990s major record labels claimed that singles reduced album sales, so they were phased out. They increasingly promoted songs to radio without releasing them as singles. Labels often held off a single from release until airplay peaked, thus prompting a high debut. Often, a label deleted a single from its catalog after only one week, thus allowing the song to enter the Hot 100, make a high debut and then decline in position as the one-time production of the retail single sold out. Accusations were made that these practices manipulated the charts.
Several popular hits were never listed on the Hot 100 chart, or charted well after their airplay declined. During the period when they were not released as singles, the songs were not eligible to chart. Many of these songs dominated the "Hot 100 Airplay" chart for long periods:
In response to debate, conflicts and requests by the music artists and insiders, "Billboard" included airplay-only singles (or "album cuts") in the Hot 100. On December 5, 1998, the Hot 100 changed from being a "singles" chart to a "songs" chart.
Extended play (EP) releases were listed by "Billboard" on the Hot 100 and in pre-Hot 100 charts ("Top 100") until the mid-to-late 1960s. With the growing popularity of albums, it was decided to move EPs (which typically contain four to six tracks) from the Hot 100 to the Billboard 200, where they are included to this day.
Since February 12, 2005, the "Billboard" Hot 100 tracks paid digital downloads from such internet services as iTunes, Napster, Musicmatch, and Rhapsody. With paid digital downloads added to the airplay/sales formula of the Hot 100, many songs benefited on the charts from the change. "Billboard" initially started tracking downloads in 2003 with the "Hot Digital Tracks" chart. However, these downloads did not count towards the Hot 100 and that chart (as opposed to "Hot Digital Songs") counted each version of a song separately (the chart still exists today along with "Hot Digital Songs"). This is the first major overhaul of the Hot 100's chart formula since December 1998.