Chart Information: Mediabase Research

Many of the hits to my blog are to those articles where I reference Mediabase chart information. Here is a summary of that information:

Mediabase Research monitors radio stations and counts the number of times a song is played on those radio stations in a variety of formats. The weekly charts become official on Sunday evenings.  In the early to mid 2000s, one could visit a website where you could see the latest daily updates to the charts they produced. In 2008 Mediabase limited access to these charts. Daily updates are still available, but usually on the top 40 of a format are posted. Once a week, Mediabase updates a website with their official charts, and this chart shows the top 50 songs for each format.

To get the daily updates of chart data, one can sign up with All Access. It is free to join. Daily updates are also available via a site related to Inside Radio. Links to these charts are available on the Pulse Music Board website. (Visit the forum of the format you’re interested in to find the link). Official weekly charts are available on Mediabase’s America’s Music Charts website. That website is updated every Tuesday.

As far as archived data, not a lot of options exist. For CHR/Pop chart data archives (organized by artist) from Radio & Records (before August 2006) / Mediabase (after August 2006), you can visit http://www2.uta.edu/hunt/charts/chart.html For Radio and Records’ Hot AC chart data prior to their takeover in August 2006, there is a limited archive available at: Pop Radio Top 20 Website. This site shows you the top 20 of each chart from April 1994-Aug 2006. From August 2006 to the present, the site has the top 20 of the Mediabase 24/7 chart.  For Billboard’s Adult Top 40 chart, which is the same as the current Radio and Records’ Hot AC chart, there is the wonderful Joel Whitburn book “Top Adult Songs, 1961-2006″. This covers both AC and Hot AC. It’s pricey though, and you can find more about it at recordresearch.com

As always, all chart data on my blog is ©  Mediabase Research. I do not have any relationship with them and do not claim any ownership of the data. I thank them for making the charts available to the public.