Chart News: Billboard to Alter Chart Tracking Week

For all sales-based charts (ranking both albums and tracks), Billboard and Nielsen will change the chart reporting period to cover the first seven days of an album’s release.

Streaming services will now also be tracked from Friday to Thursday for the charts that incorporate that data.

The final charts utilizing sales data from a Monday to Sunday cycle (June 29 through July 5) will post on Billboard.com on Thursday, July 9, and will be dated July 18. To account for sales in the in-between days during the transition week to a Friday to Thursday schedule, Nielsen Music will process data incorporating an 11-day cycle [Monday, June 29, through Thursday, July 9]. That 11-day period will inform the Billboard charts that will post on Billboard.com on Tuesday, July 14, and be dated July 25. The pure sales data from the 11-day stretch will be the only data stored historically when accounting for all-time sales according to Nielsen Music; thus, there will be no double-counting, per se, of sales in Nielsen Music’s tracking system for this period in its archived database.)

BILLBOARD 200 & ALL SALES, STREAMING CHARTS
All surveys ranking album sales, digital song sales and streams will run on a Friday to Thursday cycle. That covers the all-format Billboard 200 and Top Albums Sales album charts, genre-based album charts, Digital Songs and genre-based download charts and Streaming Songs and genre-focused streaming surveys.

BILLBOARD HOT 100 & GENRE HYBRID SONGS, AIRPLAY CHARTS
All radio charts, including the all-format Radio Songs chart and genre tallies, will run on a Monday to Sunday cycle. Notably, Radio Songs, which informs the Hot 100, will synch up to that Monday to Sunday period after formerly encompassing each Wednesday to Tuesday.

SALES: Friday to Thursday
STREAMS: Friday to Thursday
AIRPLAY: Monday to Sunday

Why is airplay on its own cycle apart from sales and streaming? Monitored radio data from Nielsen Music is readily available on a real-time basis, as opposed to sales and streaming data, which filters in from numerous data providers over multiple days. So, by incorporating the latest available airplay data, the Hot 100 will remain as up-to-date as possible each week.

Read more on: http://www.billboard.com/articles/co…l-release-date