Billboard Hot 100 facts for kids
The Billboard Hot 100, often called just the Hot 100, is a very important record chart in the United States. It lists the most popular songs each week. The magazine Billboard publishes this chart.
The Hot 100 ranks songs based on how many times they are sold (both physical CDs and digital downloads), how many times they are played online (streaming), and how often they are played on the radio in the U.S.
A new chart comes out online every Tuesday. It's dated for the following Saturday, which is when the printed magazine comes out. For sales and streaming, Billboard counts everything from Friday to Thursday. For radio play, it also counts from Friday to Thursday, which started in July 2021.
The very first song to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100 was "Poor Little Fool" by Ricky Nelson. This happened on August 4, 1958. As of April 2025, there have been 1,179 different songs that reached number one. The current number-one song is "Luther" by Kendrick Lamar and SZA.
Contents
History of the Hot 100
Billboard magazine started publishing music charts a long time ago. In July 1913, they had a list of the "Ten Best Sellers Among the Popular Songs." This chart showed which sheet music was selling the most. Over time, they added lists for songs played in theaters and on the radio.
By 1940, Billboard had a full-page "Music Popularity Chart." This chart included how much music was played on jukeboxes, how many records were sold in stores, how much sheet music was sold, and how much music was played on the radio. The first song to hit number one on the "Best Selling Retail Records" chart (which was like today's pop chart) was "I'll Never Smile Again" by Tommy Dorsey.
In 1945, Billboard started the Honor Roll of Hits. This chart ranked the most popular songs, no matter who sang them. It combined sales, radio play, and jukebox plays.
When rock and roll music became popular in 1955, Billboard had three main charts for songs:
- Best Sellers in Stores: This chart showed the top-selling records in music stores.
- Most Played by Jockeys: This chart listed the songs played most often on U.S. radio stations.
- Most Played in Jukeboxes: This chart showed the most played songs in jukeboxes. Jukeboxes were a big way for young people to hear music, especially since many radio stations didn't play rock and roll at first.
In November 1955, Billboard launched The Top 100. This new chart combined sales, radio play, and jukebox activity into one list. Sales were usually given more importance than radio play. The first number one on The Top 100 was "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing" by The Four Aces. The other three charts continued to be published alongside this new one.
Over time, jukeboxes became less popular. So, in June 1957, Billboard stopped the Most Played in Jukeboxes chart. Then, in July 1958, they stopped the Most Played by Jockeys and Top 100 charts.
Finally, on August 4, 1958, Billboard started one main chart for all types of songs: the Hot 100. "Poor Little Fool" by Ricky Nelson was its first number one. The Hot 100 quickly became the most important chart in the music industry.
Journalists Tom Noonan, Paul Ackerman, and Seymour Stein created the Hot 100.
How Songs Are Ranked
The Billboard Hot 100 still measures how popular a song is in the United States. It uses data from radio airplay, sales (both in stores and online), and streaming from online music services.
Several smaller charts help create the Hot 100:
- Radio Songs: This counts how many times a song is played on about 1,000 radio stations across the U.S. These stations play different types of music like pop, R&B, hip hop, country, rock, gospel, Latin, and Christian. The chart ranks songs by how many people hear them on the radio.
- Digital Song Sales: This tracks how many times songs are bought as digital downloads from online stores like iTunes.
- Streaming Songs: This measures how many times songs are streamed on popular online music services like Spotify and also counts views on YouTube.
In the past, the Hot 100 also included:
- Hot Singles Sales (from 1984 to 2017): This tracked how many physical singles (like CDs or vinyl records) were sold.
How the Chart Is Put Together
The counting week for sales, streaming, and radio play starts on Friday and ends on Thursday. Billboard then puts together the new chart and releases it online on Tuesday. The chart is always dated for the Saturday after it's released.
For example:
- If a new counting week starts on Friday, January 1.
- It ends on Thursday, January 7.
- The new chart is released on Tuesday, January 12, but it's dated for Saturday, January 16.
Changes to the Rules
The way Billboard collects and uses data for the Hot 100 has changed many times. This is because the music industry changes. The main goal of the Hot 100 is to show what music is truly popular.
In the early days of the Hot 100, people bought a lot of singles (songs released on their own). So, sales were very important for a song's ranking. But over the years, people started buying more full albums instead of just singles. Also, many record companies stopped releasing singles for some songs. Because of this, radio play became more important than sales for a while. Billboard has often adjusted how much sales and radio play count to make sure the chart is accurate.
Double-sided Singles
In the past, some singles had two popular songs, one on the "A-side" and one on the "B-side." For a while, Billboard listed both songs together if they were both popular. For example, Elvis Presley's "Don't Be Cruel" and "Hound Dog" were listed together. But later, they started listing A-sides and B-sides separately. This rule became less important when record companies started putting the same song on both sides of a single, or when songs from albums became popular without being released as singles.
Album Songs
For a long time, a song could only be on the Hot 100 if it was released as a single you could buy. But in the 1990s, many popular songs were played a lot on the radio but were never released as singles. This meant they couldn't be on the Hot 100, even if everyone loved them.
Some examples of popular songs that couldn't chart because they weren't singles include:
- 1995 The Rembrandts: "I'll Be There for You" (the theme song from the TV show Friends)
- 1996 No Doubt: "Don't Speak"
- 1998 Goo Goo Dolls: "Iris"
Because of this, Billboard changed the rules on December 5, 1998. The Hot 100 became a "songs" chart instead of just a "singles" chart. This meant that songs played only on the radio (called "album cuts") could now be on the Hot 100.
EPs
Extended play (EP) releases are like mini-albums, usually with four to six songs. In the past, EPs were listed on the Hot 100. But by the mid-1960s, full albums became much more popular. So, Billboard decided to move EPs to the Billboard 200 chart, which is for albums. They are still listed there today.
Digital Downloads, Online Streaming, and Bundles
Since February 2005, the Billboard Hot 100 has included paid digital downloads from online music stores like iTunes. This was a big change and made songs jump up the chart very quickly if they sold a lot online.
In August 2007, Billboard started adding data from streaming media services like AOL Music and Yahoo! Music. Later, in March 2012, they added streams from services like Spotify. In February 2013, even U.S. views for a song on YouTube were added to the Hot 100 formula. "Harlem Shake" was the first song to reach number one after YouTube views were included.
In July 2020, Billboard made another change. They stopped counting sales of "physical/digital bundles" as digital sales. These bundles are when you buy a song along with other items, like merchandise, from an artist's website. Billboard said this was sometimes used to unfairly boost chart positions. Now, physical items in these bundles only count when they are actually shipped to the customer.
Remixes
Sometimes, a song's "remix" is so different from the original that it's almost a new song. For example, Jennifer Lopez's "I'm Real" had a popular remix with rapper Ja Rule. This remix helped the song reach number one.
To handle this, Billboard now separates the radio play points for an original song and its remix if the remix is very different. This means some songs might appear on the chart twice, once for the original and once for the remix.
Older Songs (Recurrents)
To keep the chart fresh and make space for new artists, Billboard has rules about removing older songs. Since 1991, a song is usually moved to "recurrent status" (meaning it's no longer on the main Hot 100) if it has been on the chart for 20 weeks and falls below position number 50. Also, songs that fall below number 25 after 52 weeks are removed.
However, there are exceptions. If an older song becomes very popular again, or if it's re-released, it can re-enter the Hot 100 if it charts higher than number 50. For example, Christmas songs often appear on the Hot 100 every December, like Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You" which reached No. 1 in December 2019.
Changing the Counting Week
In July 2015, Billboard changed its counting week for sales, streaming, and radio play. This was done to match a new "Global Release Date," which means new music is now released on Fridays in many countries around the world.
Year-End Charts
Billboard's "chart year" runs from the first week of December to the last week of November. This allows them to calculate the year-end charts and publish them in their final magazine issue of the year.
Before they used data from Nielsen SoundScan, year-end charts were calculated by giving points based on a song's position each week. For example, a song at number one got 100 points, and a song at number 100 got 1 point.
Now, after Billboard started using sales, streaming, and radio play data from Nielsen SoundScan, the year-end charts are calculated by simply adding up all the points a song earned throughout the year. This gives a more accurate picture of the most popular songs of the year.
Other Similar Charts
Billboard has created other charts similar to the Hot 100:
- The Pop 100 was created in 2005 but was stopped in 2009 because it became too similar to the Hot 100.
- The Canadian Hot 100 started in June 2007 and tracks songs in Canada.
- The Billboard Japan Hot 100 started in May 2008 for songs in Japan.
- The Billboard Vietnam Hot 100 started in January 2022 for songs in Vietnam.
See also
In Spanish: Billboard Hot 100 para niños
