in my opinion i think the Itunes singles chart has become more relevant than the official billboard hot 100 singles chart these days...with the nonsense of letting Airplay only singles reach the chart now Billboard has become a joke...i think it's time billboard starts including the sales from itunes and other online music services into their hot 100 singles chart to make it more accurate

Mazerati said:

They are. I believe points are awarded 75% based on airplay, 25% based on sales (digital downloads + commercial singles) by current policy. Of course the number of paid downloads (even for a hit song) is so small that it doesn't have much (if any) impact on chart positions.

You can still debut on the Hot 100 based on sales alone - Clay Aiken, for example, netted a No. 4 hit recently without any airplay support. Of course it fell like a stone.

VoicesCarry said:

The Clay Aiken sell through single debuted at number one (with Ruben Studdard at number 2), I thought, unless your talking about another single. I'm refferring to their debuts, which I think where covers.

VinnyM27 said:

Nope, he recently released another single, which debuted at 4, tumbled to 27 the next week, and now appears to be absent from the Hot 100. Forgive me for not remembering the title, lol. This was a several weeks ago. The debut managed two weeks at #1.

Edit: The title was "Solitaire/The Way", a double A-side. However, it charted as "Solitaire", because that was the side that was receiving the most airplay. And yes, that IS the Neil Sedaka song.

It is worth noting that the I-Tunes chart isn't really representative of consumer tastes, since so few people actually use the service relative to listen to the radio. It is not practical to have the tastes of 10000 people determine chart standings. What do we really need? The return of the commercial single. And I don't just want a radio edit and a remix. I mean a single with 12 or 13 mixes on it, similar to a promo. That's what they do in Japan. I want them readily available here. But no, I'm not shelling out $3.99 for 1 song. Ridiculous. And I'm certainly not going to pay $0.99 for a DRM-protected song that isn't in my preferred electronic format (320kbps MP3).
[This message was edited Thu Apr 29 14:35:02 2004 by VoicesCarry]

the iTunes store sells 2.7 million songs/week and the number climbing. How many singles/week are sold in the US outside of that from all other sources combined?

alandail said:

Improper comparison, since many of those 2.7 million are bought as full albums, and more still are from artists' back catalogues. Which brings up the issue, what do we count as a single? If an album track receives enough downloads, do we now consider that eligible to chart?
[This message was edited Thu Apr 29 17:36:31 2004 by VoicesCarry]

VoicesCarry said:

about half of the tracks are full albums, that leaves about 1.35 million single downloads.

WHy shouldn't older songs count - anything that's being bought should count. If something happens to make a song popular again, it should count.

How can they base it on airplay when Stations are "sponsored" to play certain songs by labels.