David Lawrence Net Music Countdown HAC 5/25/07

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1 2- Carrie Underwood: Before He Cheats
2 1- Avril Lavigne: Girlfriend
3 3- Justin Timberlake: What Goes Around Comes Around
4 9- Daughtry: It's Not Over
5 6- Gwen Stefani f/Akon: The Sweet Escape
6 7- John Mayer: Gravity
7 8- Nickelback: If Everyone Cared
8 4- The Fray: How To Save A Life
9 11- Mika: Grace Kelly
10 5- Fergie: Glamorous
11 13- Nelly Furtado: Say It Right
12 10- Fall Out Boy: This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race
13 14- Akon: Don't Matter
14 17- The Killers: Read My Mind
15 15- Snow Patrol: Chasing Cars
16 12- Pink: U + Ur Hand
17 16- Lily Allen: Smile
18 -- Hinder: Better Than Me
19 20- Red Jumpsuit Apparatus: Face Down
20 -- Maroon 5: Makes Me Wonder

Droppers-
#19 My Chemical Romance: Welcome To The Black Parade
#18 Beyonce: Irreplaceable

[Kid Pulse]

What is this countdown based on? Internet radio?

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NMC eTracks Methodology
The Net Music Countdown is a project that has three sets of output:

* A set of weekly ranking charts of the most popular music on the Internet, called the eTracks
* A nationally syndicated radio show, based on the Hot AC and CHR eTracks
* A package of web content, also available for your station, that includes the eTracks, the radio show audio, and all of the news and articles that go into creating the scripts for the show

Creating the eTracks
Central to all the content is the eTracks. Tracked in six formats, the eTracks are published each week on AllAccess.com, and are used to form the countdown aspect of the Net Music Countdown radio shows.

We've contacted every major digital music oriented site and asked them to tell us each week what their top selling or streaming music is. We then take that information and, using a formula that changes with the landscape of the digital music space, compile a summary chart of the most popular music for each week. If you'd like to become a reporter to the Net Music Countdown, and your site plays or sells music on the Internet, we'd love to hear from you. Please visit our Become a Reporter page to contact us.

The six eTracks we produce each week are:

* Alt Rock: Alternative and active rock
* CHR/Pop: Pop and Top 40 hits
* Hot AC: Hot Adult Contemporary
* Country: Current Country hit artists
* Urban: Hip Hop and R & B
* Sales: Based entirely on the sales only rankings of our sales reporters

How We Rank the Music
The breakdown of the equation that allows our chart team to create the most accurate representation of the popularity of music on the Internet changes from time to time. Currently, here is our ranking equation:

* Raw sales rank x traffic weighting = sales rank
* Raw streaming rank x traffic weighting = streaming rank
* Sales rank x .25 + streaming rank x .50 + CDDB rank x .25 = final rank

Let's explain this further. In order to arrive at a realistic view of what music is being heard and sold most often, we ask our reporters to give us either the top 25 streaming cuts for the week, or the top 125 selling CDs or digital files for the week.

We then take those rankings, assign them descending amounts based on rank, and then weight those rankings based on the traffic and time spent listening of the site whose ranking list we are examining. As an example, Amazon.com has higher traffic and higher overall sales than does some of our other sales reporters. We total up the traffic for all of our reporters, and then look at the percentage of overall traffic each reporter has. That becomes their weighting. This weighting occurs with both sales reporters and streaming reporters.

Gracenote/CDDB: A Unique Metric
The third component of our equation is from Gracenote/CDDB, which tracks a third key metric: the ranking of CDs being placed in CD-ROM drives and being ripped into MP3s, or played back on computer-based audio players. Gracenote receives the highest weighting of any of our reporters as they are trafficked over 28 million times per day. You can tell when you are becoming a part of their database when you put a CD in your PC or Mac and all of the cuts' titles appear in the player. That's because you're hooked up to the Net, and your player is CDDB-aware.
We take these lists and track each format of music individually, and finally arrive at our final eTracks for the week. We also break out our sales only reporters and arrive at our Sales eChart, in which our streaming reporters and CDDB play no role.

The Future: Agility of the eTracks
As other statistically meaningful data options present themselves, we'll take advantage of them and alter our equation and philosophy to match the current state of the art in digital music tracking. As an example, we welcomed the day when individual files could be purchased on the Internet from stores like iTunes, and subscriptions were also available, and we then changed our equation to handle that. The day will come when one can purchase pretty much anything they want, and whenever that happens, we'll add that to our tracking criteria. Watch this page for updates.

Special Year End Charts: The Best of The Net
In addition to the weekly charts, the Net Music Countdown eTracks for the calendar year are also calculated. The methodology is simple: we take each week's eTracks rankings and assign a score inversely related to the ranking of a particular song. If a song ranks #1, we assign 20 points; if it's at #2, we assign 19 points, and so on down to #20, where we assign 1 point. We then total each song's points for the year, and then determine the highest overall rankings based on those songs that garner the highest score.
These end of the year charts are available during the last two weeks of the year, and the Net Music Countdown shows for those weeks are available in modular format (2 hours each week or a 4 hour show that can be run twice) on a first-come-first-served market exclusive basis to any radio station that wants it. Contact United Stations Radio Networks at 212-869-1111 for details.

For more information on the Net Music Countdown, the NMC NewsStream, or our methodology, drop David Lawrence an e-mail at [e-mail], or call 818-563-3123.

[somelikeitwhen]

What station do you listen to this on, and when?