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. 22, 2007, and on Billboard.biz, where subscribers have full access to all of the year-end tallies.
By Geoff Mayfield
Never before has Billboard's Year in Music & Touring report represented this many year-end recaps, with 251 appearing in these pages and 378 lists available at billboard.biz.
Joining the printed lineup in 2007 are the lists based on our new ringtones chart, Hot RingMasters, topped this year by T-Pain's "Buy U a Drank (Shawty Snappin')." The original Hot Ringtones list moves to our online menu.
The year-end video charts, which previously appeared in the first issue of each year, have also joined this issue's printed and Web menus.
As before, each of these year-end music tallies represent aggregated numbers from the pertinent weekly chart that were compiled by each artist, title and music company.
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, and this summer, streamed music and music video as tracked by Nielsen BDS also became part of The Billboard Hot 100's weekly recipe.
The entire Billboard charts department has a hand in compiling the Year in Music lists. At the center of this effort is 20-year chart manager Anthony Colombo, who handles special feature recaps throughout the year, with key roles played by charts production manager Michael Cusson, associate production manager Alex Vitoulis, chart manager Keith Caulfield and Silvio Pietroluongo, Billboard associate director of charts and director of charts for sister magazine Radio & Records. Billboard Boxscore chart manager Bob Allen compiles the Year in Touring charts.
As has been the case for more than a decade, the rankings for BDS- and
SoundScan-based music charts reflect airplay or sales during the weeks that titles appeared on a relevant chart during the tracking period. This includes activity during unpublished weeks for those lists that print every other week.
The 2007 chart year began with last year's Dec. 2 issue and ended with the Nov. 24, 2007, issue. Sales or airplay registered before or after a title's chart run are not considered in these standings. That detail, and the December-November time period, account for some of the differences between these lists and the calendar-year 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, Adult Top 40, Hot Christian Songs, Hot Christian AC Songs, Gospel Songs, Mainstream Rock and Contemporary Jazz Songs categories are based on accumulated BDS-monitored plays for each week a title appeared on the chart.
Similarly, 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 Nielsen SoundScan, respectively. For the Hot 100, points from streamed music on AOL and Yahoo tracked during the last four months of the chart year also shape the standings.
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 in 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 are weighted so that 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 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 reflect 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 among 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.
Changes to note in the 2007 recaps:
+ We now use Interscope-Geffen-A&M/Octone, rather than Interscope, to
identify the distribution and promotion labels for that family of
imprints on our sales charts.
+ The co-mingling of Capitol and Virgin within Capitol Records Group
makes Capitol the promotion label for Virgin titles on the R&B/hip-hop radio charts.
+Roadrunner has shifted distribution from Universal Music Group to WEA,
with Atlantic's Lava team handling promotion at some radio formats.
+The recaps for Hot Dance Singles Sales move from this spotlight to
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