Bop.fm provides listening on Billboard + Twitter charts

Billboard Twitter bop.fm chartsWe at RAIN wrote about the rise of platform-agnostic listening services last month, and today we’ve learned about a new use for them. Bop.fm has signed a deal with Billboard and Twitter to power integrate streaming into the companies’ real-time music charts.

Since the Billboard + Twitter Real Time Charts often include tracks that aren’t part of a formal album release – they are more often covers or live performances – they aren’t as easy to find on a single listening platform. Bop.fm can pull tracks from YouTube, Spotify, Rdio, Soundcloud, Deezer, Rhapsody, Xbox Music, and Beats Music. That means it’s more likely to have access to every song that becomes a social media phenomenon on the charts.

The new partnership is already live, and we browsed through some of the tracks to get a sense of how Bop.fm integrates into the list. Just as the experience is on the native Bop.fm app, most of the streams come from YouTube, but it’s not just sharing polished and professional music videos. For instance, we found one clip of a live show performed by a Weezer spinoff band. We also found a new track by rapper Talib Kweli that he’d uploaded to SoundCloud to tease an upcoming album. Both are examples of tracks that wouldn’t be easily found on a streaming platform that only shared official albums and singles. It’s a great fit for the fast-moving social charts.

Anna Washenko