This week’s most popular songs across all genres, ranked by radio airplay audience impressions, as measured by Nielsen Music, sales data as compiled by Nielsen Music, and streaming activity data provided by online music sources. Jump to navigation European hot 100 singles 2002 to search “Hot 100” redirects here. This article needs additional citations for verification. The Billboard Hot 100 is the music industry standard record chart in the United States for songs, published weekly by Billboard magazine.
The weekly tracking period for sales was initially Monday to Sunday when Nielsen started tracking sales in 1991, but was changed to Friday to Thursday in July 2015. This tracking period also applies to compiling online streaming data. The first number one song of the Hot 100 was “Poor Little Fool” by Ricky Nelson, on August 4, 1958. As of the issue for the week ending on March 30, 2019, the Hot 100 has had 1,085 different number one hits.
The chart’s current number-one song is “7 Rings” by Ariana Grande. Best Sellers in Stores was the first Billboard chart, established in 1940. Most Played by Jockeys was Billboard’s original airplay chart. This was one of the main outlets of measuring song popularity with the younger generation of music listeners, as many radio stations resisted adding rock and roll music to their playlists for many years. Although officially all three charts had equal “weight” in terms of their importance, Billboard Magazine considers the Best Sellers in Stores chart when referencing a song’s performance prior to the creation of the Hot 100.
On the week ending November 12, 1955, Billboard published The Top 100 for the first time. On June 17, 1957, Billboard discontinued the Most Played in Jukeboxes chart, as the popularity of jukeboxes waned and radio stations incorporated more and more rock-oriented music into their playlists. On August 4, 1958, Billboard premiered one main all-genre singles chart: the Hot 100. The Hot 100 quickly became the industry standard and Billboard discontinued the Best Sellers In Stores chart on October 13, 1958. The Billboard Hot 100 is still the standard by which a song’s popularity is measured in the United States. There are several component charts that contribute to the overall calculation of the Hot 100. The chart is released weekly and measures sales of physical commercial singles.
The tracking week for sales and streaming begins on Friday and ends on Thursday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Monday to Sunday. A new chart is compiled and officially released to the public by Billboard on Tuesday. The methods and policies by which this data is obtained and compiled have changed many times throughout the chart’s history. As the decades passed, the recording industry concentrated more on album sales than singles sales. Eventually, a song’s airplay points were weighted more so than its sales. Billboard has also changed its Hot 100 policy regarding “two-sided singles” several times. This started to become a moot point by 1972, as most major record labels solidified a trend they had started in the 1960s by putting the same song on both sides of the singles it serviced to radio.
