new billboard hot 100 chart timings

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edtop40

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Topic: new billboard hot 100 chart timings
Posted: 28 December 2017 at 6:51am

As most of you are aware Billboard is changing it's
timing of when they compose the hot 100 charts. The
question i have is what is everyone doing regarding
the mid-week chart dated January 3 that was posted to
their website yesterday. It was calculated to bring
the info inline with the actual issuance of the
physical paper magazine. The next chart will be for
the January 6 magazine. I have attached the link to
the press release. My thoughts is that the January 3
chart shouldn't be included in the calculating of
chart data and just the January 6 chart should. What
is everyone's thoughts?

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.billboard.com/amp/art
icles/columns/chart-beat/8071011/billboard-chart-
magazine-dates-release-week-change

edtop40

aaronk

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Posted: 28 December 2017 at 9:26am

If I'm reading the article correctly, the date change does not affect the chart data calculation or the time period that the chart reflects. The key paragraphs are:

As of the first magazine published in 2018, issues and all charts within will be dated to the Saturday of the week that that the magazine is shipped. Currently, Billboard issues are dated to the Saturday in the week following shipment.

For Billboard.com, the adjustment will result in charts being dated to the Saturday following their posting, or four days after the Tuesday refresh of all rankings on the website. Currently, charts are dated 11 days after first posting online (or, to the second Saturday after charts post).

Therefore, if you skipped the mid-week chart date of January 3rd, you'd be skipping an entire week's worth of charts. January 3rd is merely an odd mid-week printed date, because they can't issue two different weeks with the same date of January 6. I could be reading this wrong, though, so please correct me if so.

It appears that this change is a good thing, because for decades the printed dates of the charts are a couple weeks ahead of the data they reflect. For instance, a peak date of 7/9/1983 for "Every Breath You Take" (the week it hit #1) is reflecting information from the last week of June 1983. Historically, magazines always pushed their printed dates into the future to make it appear that they weren't outdated by the time they hit newsstands.

Edited by aaronk

Aaron Kannowski
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Brian W.

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Posted: 28 December 2017 at 3:03pm

It is really confusing, but there's no overlap, Ed.

The current chart is actually 13 days behind the chart data-gathering week. For example, the Hot 100 dated December 30th is what the hits were for the week ending December 17th. It's been that way for years.

What they're doing is moving back the magazine issue date by one week to more closely correspond with the data-gathering week. So, starting with the January 6th issue, the magazine issue date will now be only six days ahead of the data-gathering week.

In order to do this without skipping a week of chart information, they had to create a fake middle-of-the-week issue date of January 3rd to use for the chart data-gathering week ending December 24th.

So...

-December 30th issue and prior - Data gathering ends 12/17
-Fake January 3rd date - Data gathering ends 12/24
-January 6th issue and forward - Data gathering ends 12/31

See? The fake 1/3/18 date is there to allow them to not skip a chart... there's no overlap.

Paul Haney View Drop Down

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