'Total Popular Music' Makes Major Charts Change

In a major change, TotalPopularMusic.com begins listing full airplay data on its exclusive Total Popular Music Charts, including the weekly Top 20 Airplay listing (billboarded as "RadioActive") and the Daily Dozen featuring the Top 12 Songs of the Day (based on daily updates to our weekly Super Sixty listing). The change is effective immediately on the Daily Dozen for Friday, Dec. 7, 2012. "In the near future, the weekly Top 20 Airplay listing will be expanded to the full 60 song listing of our main chart, effectively changing the layout and appearance of the Super Sixty for the first time in several years," says Charts Director Mark Harris, whose MHBC (Mark Harris Broadcast Consulting) publishes both TotalPopularMusic.com and TPMedia News (Radio and Media News). The change in listing airplay stats replaces the current system of listing somewhat more vague numbers with decimal places. Until now, a song with total plays across the components of Total Popular Music of, for example, 17,321 has been listed as "17.32" with a notation to multiply such numbers by 1,000. In the future, the actual 17,321 will be shown wherever airplay stats are offered. The change has been requested by both broadcasters and the music industry and has been under consideration for several months as a new methodology for obtaining airplay data was incoporated by TPMonitoring, which replaced Chart Watch Data Services (CWDS), and has now abandoned the CWDS technology in favor of an improved system. This now enables the latest series of changes which ensue. "Combining the format of the 'RadioActive' Top 20 TPM Airplay and the Super Sixty has been planned for a long time," says Harris. "The time has now come to also redesign the Super Sixty chart published each week for more than five years to make it a 'one stop' listing of TPM Hit Music. For more than three years, we have based our exclusive TPM charts on airplay totals, which in 2009 replaced an original points-based system. The change to full airplay data begins with the Daily Dozen immediately and the next weekly Top 20 airplay listing. The new Super Sixty format will follow soon." He adds that further announcements regarding these changes will be forthcoming.