Is the top 10 entirely wrong in the 90s?

That doesn't surprise me, budaniel. I stopped putting my faith in the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the early '90s when it didn't match what was on the radio. I'm not saying that airplay charts are perfect either; however, if a song is receiving massive airplay, I'd call it a hit. If it's receiving little to no airplay, but somehow makes it to the top of the Hot 100, I'm skeptical.

I think the bottom line here is that no single chart is going to be perfect. You've got to look at both airplay and sales from more than one chart publisher. I can honestly say that I've never watched ONE single episode of American Idol. I know who Taylor Hicks is, but I have never heard his song. If it was playing, I wouldn't recognize it. Unless you watched American Idol and/or bought the CD, you probably wouldn't know the song.

Every collector has different reasons for collecting certain songs. To me, hits are more than just sales figures, so I'll likely never have Taylor Hicks in my collection. Also, I have to like a song before I'll buy it. I'm not buying a CD just because it's number one.

I don't doubt that the radio charts are manipulated, too; however, a station generally isn't going to play a song for weeks and weeks in heavy rotation if the audience hates it. They don't want people turning off the station. And now that MediaBase is reporting actual spins by airplay monitoring, it's much like the SoundScan of radio. So that argument can be used here, too.

If a record sells half a million copies, is it a hit?

Maybe. Maybe not.

If the only people who know the song are the 500,000 who bought it, I'd say no. If a song is receiving massive airplay, and you can't escape it, and it also sells a half million copies, is it a hit? I'd say yes. Not everyone buys records. I have several friends that own fewer than a couple dozen CDs. Everyone LISTENS to records...on the radio, on TV, at the mall, in the grocery store, etc. That's just my opinion, though. The definition of a hit is at least somewhat subjective.

Edited by aaronk

Got off on a tangent there, but to answer the original question: Is the top 10 entirely wrong in the 90s? I think Brian's answer is the best you're going to get: The Hot 100 chart became more influenced by sales and become a more accurate representation of what was selling.

The next question is what exactly are you trying to collect?

budaniel wrote: I, like many on here, collect all the chart hits

I also collect the chart hits, but I generally follow the airplay chart post-1991. Why? Because I work in radio, and many of those "sales" hits on the Hot 100 are not important to me. I don't know them and I don't really care if I own a lot of them.

Anyone?