Billboard is an American music and entertainment magazine published weekly and provides music charts, news, video, opinion, reviews, and more music-related information. Its music charts include the Billboard Hot 100, Billboard 200, and Global 200, which track the most popular songs and albums in different genres of music. The Billboard charts are the most important music charts in the world and feature the biggest artists in the world
Billboard has this week launched a new weekly chart titled Hits of the World, which ranks the top 25 songs in more than 40 countries. These include countries in Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific, and only one in Africa. The ranking is based on streaming and digital sales. Each new ranking will be based on song consumption and combine streams and sales that are unique for each country.
The weekly Hits of the World chart will sort the Top 25 songs in the selected countries, based on tracking method which blends streams and sales for a local spin on charts. The new global lists will be updated each Tuesday morning, U.S. Eastern Time, and will appear on Billboard.com and be visible for all visitors.
As of writing the only African country that is part of the charts is South Africa, with the chart focusing on the top 25 songs in the country based on streaming and digital sales data, powered by MRC Data. It is unclear at the moment whether there will be more African countries added to the list of countries. The charts present an opportunity for even more African acts to leverage their music and break out onto the world stage, with increased visibility to an international audience and also seeing the growth of African music within various different markets. The country-based rankings will be used as a measure of the success of localized music on a global scale.
“We’ve seen great success in the expansion of our global chart offering with the Billboard Global 200 charts in 2020, and this underscores our commitment to representing what’s happening in worldwide music consumption,” said Billboard President Julian Holguin in a statement.
Image courtesy of Forbes Africa