Record chart
ranking of recorded music during a particular time period
A record chart, in the music industry, also called a music chart, is a ranking of recorded music according to certain criteria during a given period. Many different criteria are used in worldwide charts, often in combination. These include record sales, the amount of radio airplay, the number of downloads, and the amount of streaming activity.
Some charts are specific to a particular musical genre and most to a particular geographical location. The most common period covered by a chart is one week with the chart being printed or broadcast at the end of this time. Summary charts for years and decades are then calculated from their component weekly charts. Component charts have become an increasingly important way to measure the commercial success of individual songs.
A common format of radio and television programs is to run down a music chart.
History
The first record chart was founded in 1952 by Percy Dickins, who was working at New Musical Express at the time. Dickins would telephone roughly twenty UK record stores and ask what their best-selling records were that week.
The public source identifies “Record chart” as ranking of recorded music during a particular time period. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around chart, ranking and recorded.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q373899. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1952.
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This entry incorporates text from “Record chart” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.