From “American Bandstand” to “TRL,” every generation naturally finds its own barometer to measure the hottest songs and artists of the moment. For this generation, it’s YouTube. There is simply no better current measure of the world’s music listening than YouTube. Every day, we strive to showcase and celebrate the hottest artists, songs and music videos from around the world.
Today, we’re sharing some important changes made to YouTube Music Charts, the go-to destination to see what’s popular, what’s rising and trending both locally and globally on YouTube, and updates to how we determine videos that are eligible for 24-hour record debuts on YouTube.
YouTube Music Charts have become an indispensable source for the industry and the most accurate place for measuring the popularity of music listening behavior happening on the world’s largest music platform. In an effort to provide more transparency to the industry and align with the policies of official charting companies such as Billboard and Nielsen, we are no longer counting paid advertising views on YouTube in the YouTube Music Charts calculation. Artists will now be ranked based on view counts from organic plays.
Over the last few years, fans, artists, and their teams have touted the number of views a video receives on YouTube within the first 24 hours as the definitive representation of its instant cultural impact. It’s a great honor and one we take very seriously. As we look to maintain consistency and credibility across our platform, we’ve made some necessary revisions to our methodology for reporting 24-hour record debuts.
Our goal is to ensure YouTube remains a place where all artists are accurately recognized and celebrated for achieving success and milestones. Videos eligible for YouTube’s 24-hour record debuts are those with the highest views from organic sources within the first 24 hours of the video’s public release. This includes direct links to the video, search results, external sites that embed the video and YouTube features like the homepage, watch next and Trending. Video advertising is an effective way to reach specific audiences with a song debut, but paid advertising views on YouTube will no longer be considered when looking at a 24-hour record debut. The changes will not impact YouTube’s existing 24-hour record debut holders.
Staying true to YouTube’s overall mission of giving everyone a voice and showing them the world, we want to celebrate all artist achievements on YouTube as determined by their global fans. It’s the artists and fans that have made YouTube the best and most accurate measure of the world’s listening tastes, and we intend on keeping it that way.
Additional information on how YouTube Music Charts are calculated can be found here and additional details about YouTube Views and ads can be found here.
