Why top 40

There are conflicting stories about the actual invention of top 40 radio, but it is clear that the idea for top 40 emerged out of awareness of music played on jukeboxes. The standard jukebox of the time held 40 singles. The pioneers of top 40 noted that these records were played in rotation by customers with the most popular songs sometimes played many times a day.

Radio pioneers Todd Storz, Bill Stewart, and Gordon McLendon all contributed to the development of a radio format that consisted of a local disc jockey playing the current hit records interspersed with news and promotion of the local station.

Within a few years the top 40 format spread across the U. I don't know, but I would guess that it had something to do with the constraints of some medium. It could be the number of songs that could be played comfortably in a 4 hour block with plenty of ads.

Those chosen 40 songs that fall at the top of the Hot chart -- and sometimes stay there for a while -- are compiled by Billboard Magazine and are based on some pretty amazing research. But what information does Billboard look at? How does music promotion affect what you hear on the radio? And, how does what you hear on the radio affect what music sells? In this article, we'll look at how radio stations decide what to play, and how Billboard comes up with the magical list of "the best" music.

We'll also see what happens when artists decide to buck the system and go for it on their own. Read on, and, as Casey always said, "Keep reaching for the stars! Each week, Billboard puts together a chart of the top most popular songs as well as several other charts based on a national sample of top 40 radio airplay, top 40 radio playlists, and music sales.

Since the Top 40 comes from the Hot chart, let's look at how the Hot is compiled. As you can imagine, this is quite an undertaking. First, there is airplay. What is actually being played on the radio and on music video channels on TV? Assuming program directors and disc jockeys have their finger on the pulse of popular music, this could be good measure of what people like. BDS uses digital pattern-recognition technology to identify songs that are played on radio stations and music video TV channels across the United States and Canada.

This is done 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and captures over million songs annually. BDS also provides "gross impressions," which is simply the number of people listening to a station multiplied by the number of times the record was played.

When new songs are recorded, a copy of the recording is sent to BDS so it can be encoded and tracked by its system on the stations it monitors. This data is used not only by Billboard in compiling the weekly charts, but also by record company executives, radio stations, publishing firms, performance rights organizations to calculate performance royalties , music retailers, independent promoters, film and TV producers, and artist managers.

Another measure of what music is hot is what people are buying. To find out what music is selling in record stores, Billboard goes to SoundScan. Nielsen SoundScan is an information system that tracks the sales of music and music videos throughout the United States and Canada. By scanning the bar codes , they can collect sales information from cash registers each week from over 14, retail, mass merchant, and non-traditional sources such as online stores, concert sales, etc.

The data is compiled and available for subscribers every Wednesday. Like BDS data, the data from SoundScan is also very valuable for record companies , artists, concert promoters, and retailers. Billboard's methodologies for compiling the charts have gone through several changes over the years.

Since switching to Nielsen's BDS and SoundScan see below for a little background , Billboard changed the weighting of airplay versus sales. Because tracking a single song through album sales isn't exactly accurate, singles sales have always been used to track the sales side of song popularity. But, if Billboard bases its charts on what is already being played on the radio and purchased in music stores, how do radio stations find out about new music?

On July 27, , Billboard Magazine published the first national charts to rank the top 10 songs by individual artists according to popularity. On November 12, , however, Tom Noonan, who was in charge of Billboard's chart department, came up with the idea of listing the overall top songs.

This list was called the Hot and was compiled based on: the top selling singles from all genres of music, the most played on the radio, the most played in juke boxes, and the most sales in sheet music. The sheet music sales were later dropped, though. Because the Hot only tracked sales of "singles," a separate chart was set up to track album sales. Then the name was changed to the Billboard Prior to , the Hot was compiled manually, by actual people.

Billboard staff spent countless hours on the telephone with record stores to find out what music was selling, and more hours on the telephone with radio stations to find out what songs were on their playlists and what songs had been added that week. You, the recording artist, have signed a recording contract with a major record label. The record label makes your album and ships it to a distributor that sells it to stores.

The record label then begins the massive promotion of your music. This promotional effort requires a lot of work by a lot of people. Here is a short list of what's involved. Ever since Clear Channel pledged to sever its connections with independent promoters, the world of music promotion has been exposed for all to view and judge. What the public doesn't realize is that, according to some, much of the music we hear on prominent rock and Top 40 radio stations is played because independent promoters pay the stations to add it to their playlists.

Because it is illegal for record companies to directly pay radio stations to play their music -- or for radio stations to play music someone paying them to play, at least without disclosing on the air that the time is paid for -- they bring in a middleman, the independent promoter, or "indie.

An indie approaches a radio station manager or group owner about becoming their exclusive representative. Because the "gifts" are to be used for promotions, the pay-for-play is side-stepped. The station's part of the deal is to add songs the indie recommends to their playlists. These are called "adds" in the business. Most stations have an average of three adds each week. Support our efforts, sign up to a full membership! Start for free Register or login with just your e-mail address.

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