Billboard and Twitter team up for real time music chartsBillboard Twitter Chart Flashboi

Billboard and Twitter team up for real time music charts

As the digital revolution reaches its pinnacle, fans, artists and the industry alike struggle to rank music in a scene based almost entirely on social clout. To combat the uncertainty, Billboard and Twitter have partnered up to unveil the first ever Real-Time charts. The first two charts to be debuted are the Billboard Trending 140 and the Emerging Artists rankings, all dictated by fan interactions on Twitter. The Trending 140 will display the most shared tracks in the U.S. over the past 24 hours, as well as a weekly summary presented as the Billboard Twitter Top Tracks. Song shares are tracked through a variety of ways including links to Spotify, Vevo, and iTunes, hashtags like #nowplaying and #np, as well as various terms associated with the tracks playing such as “music,” “song,” “track,” and “listen.”

The Emerging Artists chart operates in a similar way, but only features up-and-coming artists ranked by hte number of times their music has been shared in the past 24 hours. What defines an artist as “Emerging” has yet to be defined.

Both Twitter charts were designed to visualize how users share and interact with music, the most talked about topic on the platform. To read more and view the charts yourself head over to Billboard now.

If you’re poking holes in the concept already, you wouldn’t be wrong — the metrics themselves seem open to interpretation and easily gamed to ensure top placement on the charts. While providing transparency and quantifiable relevance in a constantly evolving industry is a commendable effort, it’s only a matter of time before Billboard has their Beatport moment and someone cheats their way into global relevancy.

Via: Billboard

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