Questions for Paul Haney...

Scanner wrote: Paul, what was the rationale for not including all 101-150 hits in the Record World book? This is the only Record Research book I can think of that was published with such a condition that made the book an incomplete resource.

At the time, Joel was only interested in finding "new" titles, that never appeared in other Record Research books.
Eventually, I did the entire research and thus we were able to do the Comparison book.

I would love to see that book expanded with more years and the R&R numbers too. Maybe someday!

'baukew' at UKMix discovered a Billboard chart that compiled actual sales starting June-24-1957. I did some more poking around and found this:

Good find baukew !! To clarify for others, this now actual sales based chart was the Best Sellers chart. So up thru June-17-1957, the Best Sellers chart was not based on counting records, and starting the next week it was. The other charts were 'DJ airplay' and 'jukebox play'. These 3 were combined into the Top 100 (1955) / Hot 100 (1958). And combined with the sheet music charts into the Honor Roll Of Hits song chart.

There's an excellent article in the Oct-20-1958 issue of Billboard as well, explaining why they were ending the Best Sellers chart, and were now going to use that actual sales data in the Hot 100 chart going forward. As in, (a) the old Hot 100 had not been using actual sales (even though they had that data from the revised Best Seller charts since June-24-1957) + radio + jukebox, (b) but had been using some kind of 'approximation of sales' + radio + jukebox, and (c) was now going to switch over entirely to actual sales only, no more radio + jukebox !!

Billboard was continually changing the components of the Top 100 / Hot 100 over the years. Originally both were airplay + jukebox + sales, but they kept changing things, taking things out, putting them back in. Sometime after Oct-20-1958 when the Hot 100 went to actual sales only, they eventually added back in radio + jukebox. It's a zoo, but you can read all the changes by looking at the info box at the top of the charts Top 100 / Hot 100 over the years.

Here's the info box blurb on the Hot 100 chart for Oct-13-1958 (the last week of the Best Sellers chart):

"These 100 sides are listed in order of their national POPULARITY, as determined by weekly local studies prepared for The Billboard in markets representing a cross-section of the United States. These studies take into consideration such factors as disk jockey plays, juke box activity, and record sales."

Then the next week Oct-20-1958 when the Best Sellers chart was no more, the info box blurb on the Hot 100 gets changed to:

"These 100 sides are listed in order of their national POPULARITY, as determined by weekly local studies prepared for The Billboard in markets representing a cross-section of the United States. These studies reflect sales registered for each disk up to press time."

Fascinating, interesting...

How are the dates for a song's regin at #1 determined? For instance, Whitney Houston's "Saving All My Love For You" was #1 for the week ending
Saturday, October 26, 1985. So is this to say it was #1 from Sunday, October 20 to Saturday, October 26? Or does it go by the issue of Billboard
dated October 26, meaning it was #1 from Sat. 10/26/85 to Friday 11/1/85? In other words, is it Sunday to Saturday or Saturday to Friday? Casey
Kasem always referred to "Week Ending" dates at the end of his show, which made me think it was Sunday to Saturday.

Paul,

I am curious how this will play out:

Billboard's website has all of their charts online, including all the historical pre-
internet charts.
eg - If you want to see the Hot 100 from Jan 1, 1960, just click on the calendar
icon and voila.

Not often, but I have found some discrepancies between what they are
currently presenting and what was actually published back in the day.

A very small but recent example of one I found today is that they now show
Lionel Richie "My Destiny" at #75 on Hot 100 Airplay (Radio Songs) on 1/16/93,
when it never reached the chart (same with the Wynona song at #74)

At this point, if these discrepancies were brought to your attention, would you
alter the data in your books to reflect the 'new' chart info (assuming BB is
correcting data mistakes that they published years ago) - or ignore it
(assuming BB is just making mistakes)?

The digital world makes things so complicated!

What a crazy can of worms. I do know Billboard 'changed' their year-end charts, and were doing so back in the 70s. I bought several of those 'sold by Billboard' chart packages, such as Top 100 singles/albums of the year going back to the 50s and/or earlier. I observed that a few of the 70s charts in the package were different from what they had published in the Billboard year-end issues from just a few years prior.

We need some explanation from Billboard as to why and what they are doing here. Are they revising based on errors, or are they revising based on applying future formulas to past charts. I no likey. If Billboard is going to play this game, they will need 2 sets of charts, one as published back in the day, and one as corrected, subject to multiple future corrections, ugh.

I would agree with Paul, stick to what was originally published.