Average Number of Weeks on Chart

[j]

Can someone work it out?

I'm guessing it's 15.

(Positions on Chart) * (No. of Chart Weeks) / (Approx. No. of Songs That Make The Chart In A Year)

30*50/100 = 15

[Devil Marlena Nylund]

If you're looking for the formula to determine the average number of weeks a song will spend on the AC chart in total, I'm not sure if that's the one. Maybe it is but I don't think it takes into account actual weeks that songs spend on. The best way would be to just add up the weeks on the chart for every song in a certain time period... say 2003. Determine whether you want to include only the time within 2003 or if you want to go beyond years for songs that charted before January.

[Matt4319]

That formula seems right to me. With 50 weeks and 30 songs per week, that makes 1500 "song-weeks" to be filled up by around 100 songs. Each song would get 15 weeks on average.

If you took into consideration that some songs make the chart in two different years, the average weeks on would be higher.

My guess is that 29 songs would make the chart in two different years (the first week of '04 would have the same songs as the last week of '03 except for a debut or two). Taking that into account, the average WOC would change to (30*100)/171=17.54.

[j]

Matt4319 said:

If you took into consideration that some songs make the chart in two different years, the average weeks on would be higher.

Oh good point. I didn't think of that. I'm just trying to find an indicator for how ridiculously long AC stations hold on to their favorite tunes.

[EvanJ]

The average weeks on chart for the Billboard Adult Contemporary Top 20 is 18.90. The five songs in the Top 20 with the most weeks on chart are the Top 5.