RE: Billboard charts

["Bloom, Dan" <dbloom@genesys-soft.com>]

One or more post-ers have indicated that the charts are less important to
radio programmers than they were once-upon-a-time.  But isn't the very
*meaning* of the present-day charts still unclear?

<FMradio1@aol.com> said:
> > Today, "singles" are either in the form of cassettes, often called
> "cass-
> > singles" or CD singles.  <snip>
> > Billboard uses the sales of these formats in
> > tabulating their singles charts.  As we've mentioned earlier, they also
> use
> > monitored airplay as part of the equation, but the sales figures are the
> most
> > heavily weighted.
> 
and <sven@lily.org> added:
>  LEt us not forget the ubiquitous "12-inchers", which are the analog
> versions of CD singles. These 33 1/3 RPM (and in some instances 45 RPM)
>  disks <snip>
> You can usually find these at outlets 

So, to arrive at the charts, Billboard (e.g.) has some "equation" that uses
(unknown?) weightings of cass-single sales, CD-single sales, and tallied
airplay (and maybe even 12-incher sales too)?  Do they disclose their
formula?  (Clues aren't obvious, to my uneducated eye, on their website.)
If the charts are to mean anything at all -- either to radio people or to
the listening public -- shouldn't there be wider knowledge of what the
formula is?

To belabor the point:  digested hit-single charts get printed in the Boston
Globe (not so long ago a corporate sibling of Billboard, yes?).  As noted
previously, readers used to understand that such charts were simply based on
numbers of 45s sold.  Do today's readers unquestioningly accept the rankings
as reflecting consumers' actual preferences? ... without wondering how the
heck they're derived?  (By way of comparison:  Under the bestseller rankings
- -- for fiction/nonfiction in hardcover/paperback -- in its Sunday Books
section, the Globe usually prints a small explanatory footnote.  This
doesn't elucidate completely, but it's a whole lot better than nothing.)

- -- db

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