How We Chart The Year
By Geoff Mayfield
Please note that the information below pertains to all of Billboard's Year In Music charts, only a fraction of which appear in this special Billboard.com section. The full breadth of charts appear in the pages of Billboard's special double issue dated Dec. 23, 2006, and on Billboard.biz, where subscribers have full access to all of the year-end tallies.
It was her performance on Billboard's weekly charts that enabled hip-hop soul queen Mary J. Blige to lead nine Year In Music charts, more than any other artist during the 2006 chart year.
This annual scorecard of artist and record company success aggregates the numbers that determine Billboard's weekly charts.
Most of those numbers are based on data from Nielsen Music, with sales of physical and digital product compiled by Nielsen SoundScan, and radio airplay measured by Nielsen BDS. The ringtones category is based on sales tracked by Nielsen RingScan.
Billboard has compiled 356 year-end lists for 2006, all available at Billboard.biz, with 242 appearing in this report.
As in recent years, the rankings for BDS- and SoundScan-based charts reflect airplay or sales during the weeks titles appeared on a relevant chart from the 2005 chart year -- which began with the Dec. 3, 2005, issue and ended with the Nov. 25, 2006, issue (including, for charts that are published biweekly, sales from the unpublished weeks).
Sales or airplay registered before or after a title's chart run are not considered in these standings. That nuance, and the December-November time period, account for some of the differences between these lists and annual recaps that are compiled independently by either SoundScan or BDS.
Artist, imprint, label and distributor categories for all genres reflect accumulated chart performance for all titles on the pertinent chart.
The umbrella "label" categories refer to the distributing labels and/or promotion labels listed on our weekly charts. If only one label appears on a chart listing, that company counts as both "imprint" and "label" for that title.
Rankings for modern rock, adult contemporary and adult top 40 and mainstream rock categories are based on accumulated BDS-monitored plays for each week a title appeared on the chart.
Similarly, the Hot 100 Airplay, Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay, Hot Country Songs and Hot Latin Songs (and the three related Latin-format airplay charts) are determined by adding up the total number of gross impressions, as determined by BDS, for each week a track charted.
The Billboard Hot 100, Pop 100 and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs categories reflect accumulated radio and sales points, based specifically on BDS and SoundScan, respectively.
Hot Soundtrack Singles are the top ranked Hot 100 songs in cases when the song's success can be directly traced to its inclusion on the soundtrack to a movie or TV show.
For the pop, country and R&B/hip-hop categories that combine data from album charts and singles charts, formulas have been weighted so that the sales units tallied on The Billboard 200, Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and Top Country Albums, respectively, have parity with the specific chart points that construct each week's Billboard Hot 100, Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and Hot Country Songs.
The Dance Club Play rankings are based on an inverse point system, with titles collecting points based on rank for each week they were on the chart.
The publishing categories show accumulated points for all charted songs on the applicable weekly charts. If a song is held by more than one publisher, points are divided equally between those companies.
In the Publishing Corporation category, parent companies receive 100% of the points from publishers in which they own at least 50% equity and 25% of the points compiled by publishers that they administer but do not own.
Added to this year's Year In Music and Touring report for the first time are categories for Top Digital Albums, Hot Latin Rhythm Songs, Top Latin Rhythm Albums, Hot Videoclips and Top Tastemaker Albums -- all charts that joined Billboard's pages during midway through the 2005 chart year.
The last-mentioned, Top Tastemaker Albums, is a core-panel chart, driven by sales from about 300 stories, including independent coalitions and small chains that are actively involved with artist-development programs.
Joining the recaps at Billboard.biz are categories from Top Christian & Gospel Albums, Top Rock Albums, Top Cast Albums, Contemporary Jazz Songs and Gospel Songs. The last one is determined by number of BDS-monitored plays, while the album lists are based on SoundScan data.
The weekly Jazz Songs chart, as well as Hot Christian Songs and Hot Christian AC Songs lists, changed from audience to spins when Radio & Records joined the Billboard family in August. Thus, for this year only, those categories were determined by the same inverse point system that drives the Dance Club standings.
Other changes in the 2006 year-end charts:
-- Categories related to Top New Age Albums, which is exclusive to our web sites, moves from this spotlight to Billboard.biz.
-- On the radio charts, Universal Motown and Universal Republic have been separated to reflect the restructuring of that label group, but continue to be combined under Universal Motown Records Group on the sales charts.
-- The sales categories see the old RCA Label Group and Sony Nashville entities combined under Sony BMG Nashville, while Blue Note Label Group includes titles from Blue Note, Angel, Narada, Back Porch, Real World and Higher Octave.
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