Rolling Stone debuts its own music charts

Rolling Stone has launched its own interactive charts to monitor music popularity. The charts are powered by BuzzAngle Music, which rebranded to the name Alpha Data following an investment from Rolling Stone parent Penske Media Company last July. The Rolling Stone charts will receive daily updates, and the latest results will be published weekly. The launch was intended for May, but Rolling Stone postponed their official introduction shortly after announcing the project.

Rolling Stone Top 100 Songs: Covers track streams, digital purchases, and physical purchases. Passive listening, such as digital or terrestrial radio plays, is not included.

Rolling Stone Top 200 Albums: Covers physical and digital album sales, song sales, and audio streams.

Rolling Stone Artists 500: Covers audio streams. No passive listening is included.

Rolling Stone Trending 25: Covers percentage growth in audio streams for songs released in the last 12 months.

Rolling Stone Breakthrough 25: Covers audience demand by audio streams. No passive listening is included. Only artists who have not appeared on the Artist 500 chart are eligible.

The equivalence calculations for these charts will weight free streams differently than paid ones. It will treat 1,200 on-demand audio subscription streams or 3,600 on-demand ad-supported streams as one album unit. A song unit will count as 120 on-demand audio subcription streams or 360 on-demand ad-supported streams.