Petteri Pyyny
3 Jul 2003 13:39
One of the best-known music institutions, the Billboard magazine, has started tracking Net music downloads alongside traditional music charts. Yesterday the magazine introduced "Hot on the Web" charts to its publications.
The music charts include virtually all the major legal music services: AOLMusic, Radio@AOL, GraceNote, Launch (of Yahoo!), Liquid Audio, LoudEye, Lycos, mp3.com, Muze, NextRadio, UBL.com and WindowsMedia.com (of Microsoft). The data is supplied to Billboard by Nielsen SoundScan which is also the source for the traditional music charts available on Billboard.
The system will only report permanent (or, well, semi-permanent DRM-enabled ones as well), paid downloads, not streamed tracks. Only noticeable gap seems to be the fact that Apple's iTunes is not included in the list of sources.
More information:
Billboard.com
News.com