Music Charts on "My Thoughts In Stereo"

Starting this week, I have decided to keep track of specific music charts by way of this blog. Partially for work, and partially for personal purposes, I've always referred to music charts as a gauge of what's going on in the international music scene.

I suppose it started with my fixation on those old chart shows from Casey Kasem (which was on RT and on KC for a time) and Rick Dees (which was on RT for the most part). As I joined the radio industry, the music being played on radio became very diverse- and so you now have different charts tracking airplay and record sales for different radio formats.

Radio and Records or R&R is an industry magazine I've been reading up on (at least as much as I can, anyway) since my early radio days at 99.5 RT. Even to this day, it has always been an invaluable tool to any radio or record industry executive. I've always had it bookmarked, and I continue to refer to their charts on a weekly basis.

I thought I might as well do all that via this blog- check out the pertinent music activity for my current line of work. And so with that, I'll be tracking the following music charts:

1. CHR/Pop - Contemporary Hit Radio or Top 40, is the most popular of all these music charts, hence the term 'pop'. It gives anyone at the very least a reference point of the general feel of the music atmosphere at a particular point in time. Then again, pop music doesn't appeal to everybody, and so you have a wide variety of other 'alternative' formats.

2. AC - The Adult Contemporary format is essentially pop music for a more mature audience; it's CHR radio that's generally devoid of hard rock, hip-hop, teen pop and dance tracks.

3. Urban AC- more like a personal preference, really. Urban AC is mostly soul and R&B music- music that typically caters to an African-American audience, but without the rap or heavy hip-hop.

4. Triple A- is your Adult Album Alternative radio format. Some call it 'underground' , others would refer to it as 'progressive'. It caters (again) to a more mature market, but it differs from regular AC in that it has more a diverse sound- drawing from alternative rock, alternative country, blues, jazz, folk, even world music, but tends to stay away from heavy rock and rap.

5. Smooth Jazz - is also known as new adult contemporary (or NAC). It draws more from pop jazz than it does traditional jazz, but also has R&B, soul and funk elements.

I like keeping track of music so I have an idea who to keep my eyes and ears on- whether looking out for a particular CD, or knowing what song gets used in the soundtrack for certain songs and movies, or just watching out for bits on music and entertainment news.

I'll also be keeping track of the most popular recurrents every week. Recurrents are songs still frequently aired on a radio station even several months after the initial debut. According to Radio and Records, recurrents are:

"...titles that have appeared on the chart for 20 or more weeks and have fallen below the top 20."

The way I see it, recurrents are your more popular songs which have somehow managed to maintain a sizeable (and seemingly sustaining) amount of airplay and sales, and therefore, a persistent deal of likeability. For many radio stations, these songs are 'defining' titles that pretty much make up a signature sound.

So watch out for these charts. I'll try to keep em as regular as possible.

Cheers, everyone!