Billboard Country Airplay or Mediabase Country chart?

[CoJoFan]

I’ve always been interested to see what everyone prefers between our 2 weekly charts so I created this poll

[carriefan15]

I’ve always preferred Mediabase, mainly because I can see the chart updates every day and pretty much all the weekly countdown shows use it.

I remember back when Radio & Records had that website for Billboard Airplay..I used to love seeing the chart there. Not sure what ever happened to it, but I just remember the website being gone one day

[CoJoFan]

I follow Billboard more closely but I prefer the Mediabase chart anymore.

[ericNY2002]

I lean toward Mediabase due to their consistent recurrent rule, and that most countdown shows use them. I do wish that both Billboard and Mediabase would use spins to rank the songs instead of audience/points, like they do with every other format. National stations like SiriusXM “The Highway” and Music Choice’s “Todays Country” are relegated to the indicator charts because they can’t be ranked by audience. Changing to spins can add them to the main panel. Yes, there will still be “push weeks” and other “manipulation” but it’s happening anyway.

[sabre14]

Billboard Country Airplay (formerly Hot Country Songs) used to be ranked by spins, prior to 2005. 

The famous push week for “Somebody” by Reba McEntire, which saw it gain nearly 1,000 spins on Mediabase in late July of 2004, is what caused Billboard to change its chart to rank on audience, rather than spins. The label paid for spot time (commercials) and played Reba’s song. It was a loophole to try and get as many spins as humanly possible, just as long as the advertising is disclosed, which it was. Some may not realize “Somebody” only peaked at #2 on Mediabase but reached #1 on Billboard.

There’s no debate that Mediabase is more accessible than Billboard and that was made even more evident after Billboard added a paywall to their site. You still need a Mediabase subscription to access the full Mediabase chart (costly enough only labels and industry folks subscribe), but Mediabase allowing their top 50 to be seen every day on All Access is a huge plus for those like us, who love chart watching. 

The manipulation aspect is what it is and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. 

I do prefer the Mediabase recurrent rules and how rigid it is, vs. Billboard which tends to waffle a bit when it comes to sending songs recurrent. Back in the early-to-mid 2000s, the reason for huge discrepancies between Billboard and Mediabase peaks were recurrent rules. Mediabase’s was the same then as it is now (three consecutive weeks without a bullet, unless an unbulleted week is at number one), but Billboard had to have singles fall below the top 15 to go recurrent. Before that it was top 20 and 25, which meant a ton of singles spent a long time in the teens and 20s and were already long gone on Mediabase.


Mediabase’s parent company is iHeartMedia, which gives it a leg up on being the main chart countdown shows love to use. 

[zdm1998]

I like that I can access Mediabase whenever to see the day to day of what happens during the week. I don't really care for Billboard's recurrent rule, I think it should be moved up to if it falls below the top 5 when descending the chart that it should go recurrent. The top 10 rule causes a fat log jam with old song. I do think a lot of fans put more emphasis on BB, even though the industry seems to care about Mediabase more.

[onebuffalo]

Team Billboard here.

[ericNY2002]

Jul 10, 2022 16:01:56 GMT -5 sabre14 said:

Billboard Country Airplay (formerly Hot Country Songs) used to be ranked by spins, prior to 2005. 

The famous push week for “Somebody” by Reba McEntire, which saw it gain nearly 1,000 spins on Mediabase in late July of 2004, is what caused Billboard to change its chart to rank on audience, rather than spins. The label paid for spot time (commercials) and played Reba’s song. It was a loophole to try and get as many spins as humanly possible, just as long as the advertising is disclosed, which it was. Some may not realize “Somebody” only peaked at #2 on Mediabase but reached #1 on Billboard.

There’s no debate that Mediabase is more accessible than Billboard and that was made even more evident after Billboard added a paywall to their site. You still need a Mediabase subscription to access the full Mediabase chart (costly enough only labels and industry folks subscribe), but Mediabase allowing their top 50 to be seen every day on All Access is a huge plus for those like us, who love chart watching. 

The manipulation aspect is what it is and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. 

I do prefer the Mediabase recurrent rules and how rigid it is, vs. Billboard which tends to waffle a bit when it comes to sending songs recurrent. Back in the early-to-mid 2000s, the reason for huge discrepancies between Billboard and Mediabase peaks were recurrent rules. Mediabase’s was the same then as it is now (three consecutive weeks without a bullet, unless an unbulleted week is at number one), but Billboard had to have singles fall below the top 15 to go recurrent. Before that it was top 20 and 25, which meant a ton of singles spent a long time in the teens and 20s and were already long gone on Mediabase.


Mediabase’s parent company is iHeartMedia, which gives it a leg up on being the main chart countdown shows love to use. 

I agree on the manipulation aspect not going away. This week will probably be an example of that lol. I remember the whole “Somebody” saga in 2004. It was going on for a while before hand but that was the most extreme example at that time. Some songs at that time were all of a sudden getting a ton of overnight spins, so you knew something was up. My station would an “advertisement” called cd preview at least once an hour which was a song getting played courtesy of so and so records.


Songs usually cracked the top 30 on R&R/Mediabase the same week they cracked the top 40 on Billboard due to those recurrent rules. The Billboard chart had about 10 songs every week that were either former #1s hanging around in the 30s waiting to get to 20 weeks to be moved to recurrent status (mid to late 90s), or finally getting below the top 15/20/25 to get moved (very late 90s/2000s).

This was probably also the reason why most countdown shows using R&R were top 30. Crook and Chase used to be the only show to use the R&R chart for a top 40 countdown show in the 1990s. I used to love to listen to it on early Sunday mornings because the songs in the 31-40 range were sometimes songs you would never hear anywhere else since some would peak in the mid to upper 30s here, but would peak in the 40-50 range on Billboard.

I always remember R&R always seemingly being a “week ahead” of Billboard in the 1990s. I think that’s because R&R used “projected playlist data from the monitored stations for the upcoming week” to compile their chart while Billboard used actual Detected spins (BDS) from the previous week. Sabre14 will be better at answering that question though. Once R&R started using actual detected spins for the chart, the 2 charts were much more similar.

[sabre14]

Jul 11, 2022 15:39:32 GMT -5 ericNY2002 said:

Jul 10, 2022 16:01:56 GMT -5 sabre14 said:

Billboard Country Airplay (formerly Hot Country Songs) used to be ranked by spins, prior to 2005. 

The famous push week for “Somebody” by Reba McEntire, which saw it gain nearly 1,000 spins on Mediabase in late July of 2004, is what caused Billboard to change its chart to rank on audience, rather than spins. The label paid for spot time (commercials) and played Reba’s song. It was a loophole to try and get as many spins as humanly possible, just as long as the advertising is disclosed, which it was. Some may not realize “Somebody” only peaked at #2 on Mediabase but reached #1 on Billboard.

There’s no debate that Mediabase is more accessible than Billboard and that was made even more evident after Billboard added a paywall to their site. You still need a Mediabase subscription to access the full Mediabase chart (costly enough only labels and industry folks subscribe), but Mediabase allowing their top 50 to be seen every day on All Access is a huge plus for those like us, who love chart watching. 

The manipulation aspect is what it is and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. 

I do prefer the Mediabase recurrent rules and how rigid it is, vs. Billboard which tends to waffle a bit when it comes to sending songs recurrent. Back in the early-to-mid 2000s, the reason for huge discrepancies between Billboard and Mediabase peaks were recurrent rules. Mediabase’s was the same then as it is now (three consecutive weeks without a bullet, unless an unbulleted week is at number one), but Billboard had to have singles fall below the top 15 to go recurrent. Before that it was top 20 and 25, which meant a ton of singles spent a long time in the teens and 20s and were already long gone on Mediabase.


Mediabase’s parent company is iHeartMedia, which gives it a leg up on being the main chart countdown shows love to use. 

I always remember R&R always seemingly being a “week ahead” of Billboard in the 1990s. I think that’s because R&R used “projected playlist data from the monitored stations for the upcoming week” to compile their chart while Billboard used actual Detected spins (BDS) from the previous week. Sabre14 will be better at answering that question though. Once R&R started using actual detected spins for the chart, the 2 charts were much more similar.

You’re right about that but by the 2000s they lined up accordingly when R&R officially switched to show Mediabase numbers on their chart.

I’ve always found it fascinating when people would be floored about the chart peak discrepancies between the two charts from that era, when it was simply the drastic differences in recurrent rules lol. 

[.indulgecountry]

The daily updates for MB are nice to track, but I prefer the published BB chart and that it's less manipulated by the record labels.

[Kanenrá:ke]

Billboard but mostly because there’s a longer history there. Which I know between eras is hard to compare but it is what I enjoy haha