Overview
What's the Billboard Hot 100?
The Billboard Hot 100, or simply the Hot 100, is the music industry standard record chart in the US for songs, published weekly by Billboard Magazine.
- Chart rankings are based on sales (physical and digital)
- streaming
- radio play in the U.S.
When's the Billboard Hot 100 updated
A new chart is released to the public online on Tuesdays and since July 2015 the weekly tracking period has been Friday-Thursday.
How It's Calculated
- Streaming data: Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora, Soundcloud and Deezer provides data that Billboard uses to apply a formula to convert plays into points.
- The weighting in streams depends on the platform and the type of stream (free/ad-supported vs paid/premium).
- Radio play: Billboard tracks plays on both AM/FM and digital radio stations, using data from Nielsen Music to determine the frequency with which a song is played on various stations.
- Sales data: streaming is popular but physical and digital music sales still play a vital role in the Hot 100. The chart includes purchases from digital stores like iTunes and Amazon plus physical CD and vinyl sales.
How does the Hot 100 track sales data?
It's collected through Nielsen Music which tracks transactions across platforms and stores.
Paid vs Free Streams
For example, Spotify is one of the most popular streaming services and the platform offers a free version and a paid version with different but significant perks.
- A free stream means it's ad-supported but you're still able to play your favorite song or album.
- A paid stream means that you pay a monthly fee to be able to just stream without ads without interruptions.
Key Changes
Starting January 2026, streaming will count more heavily towards charts:
- Before: 1 album unit = 10 track downloads = 3,750 ad supported streams = 1,250 paid/subscription streams.
- After: 1 album unit = 10 track downloads = 2,500 ad-supported streams = 1,000 paid streams.
That means 33.3% fewer ad-supported streams are needed to count as an album unit and 20% fewer paid streams are needed to count as an album unit.
Paid vs Free Streams Ratio
- Old ratio: 1 paid = 3 ad supported streams
- New ratio: 1 paid = 2.5 ad-supported streams
In other words, paid streams are still worth more than ad-supported streams but ad-supported have a bit more of importance compared to previous years.