how long will it take Billboard to start adding the online single sales from places like Itunes & Rhapsody etc into a larger portion of their total count on the charts? ..i mean its crazy right now that the hot 100 singles chart is made up of such a very small portion of single sales and a large amount of radio airplay..for example Duran Duran's latest single "Sunrise" was #3 in single sales and not even in the overall top 100 on the hot 100 chart..so that shows you what a small effect actual sales have on the charts and thats not right..right now radio stations have ALL the control over the charts and the people have no say....thats why i believe popular music is in the sad state that its in...if you look at the top 20 billboard chart and compare it with what people are actually buying its an amazing difference...they say people are downloading singles at a rapid rate on the online services so why not start counting them so we have a say like we did in the 80's and early 90's! ..

Because downloadable sales aren't high enough yet (unless you want 20000 people determining the #1 song this week). If they grow enough to merit a policy change, they'll do it.

Billboard implemented its first Digital Downloads chart in 2003. Online sales are already reflected in the mainstream Hot 100 charts. Every time someone purchases music via Apple's iTunes, MusicNet, Listen.com, Liquid Audio, Roxio's Pressplay, Napster or AOL, SoundScan will tally the songs.

However, if a song is illegally downloaded from file-sharing services like KaZaa, Grokster, Morpheus, DC+, Limewire or other non-subscription based services, it will not count on Billboard's charts.

Like Voices said, digi-downloading is still in its infancy so sales are rather low. It's not impacting the charts as much as traditional music sales (through record stores), but it's getting more popular each year.

VoicesCarry said:

i still think even 20,000 in sales is still better than radio programmers deciding on what the #1 song is