2023 is coming to a close and what better way to celebrate the year than with Billboard's year end charts, but what are the year end charts, when did they start and how are they created? Billboard sits down with Managing Director of Charts, Keith Caulfield to explain how we create these year end charts.
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00:00 2023 is coming to a close and what better way to celebrate the year than with Billboard's
00:05 year-end charts.
00:06 But what are the year-end charts?
00:08 When did they start?
00:09 And how are they created?
00:11 This is Billboard Explains the Year-End Charts.
00:14 Billboard first launched the annual year-end charts back in the 1940s and they have been
00:18 published every year since.
00:20 What exactly are these charts?
00:22 They represent aggregated metrics for each artist, title, label, and music contributor
00:27 on the weekly charts dated November 19, 2022 through October 21, 2023.
00:33 That's a complicated way of saying if you look at our charts and add them all together,
00:37 at the end of the year we spit out who the top artists, songs, and albums are.
00:40 The charts have evolved in different ways throughout the decades thanks to technological
00:44 advancements including how the year-end charts are determined.
00:48 Billboard's managing director of charts and data operations, Keith Caulfield, explains.
00:52 The simple answer as best as I can tell you is you take all of the combined performance
00:59 for all of the songs, artists, albums on a particular chart throughout that chart year,
01:05 add them all together, and then you get a bunch of numbers.
01:08 And that, generally speaking, is what the year-end version of that chart would look
01:13 like.
01:14 It can take months for the Billboard team to determine the nearly 500 year-end charts
01:19 including top 100 songs, Billboard 200 albums, and top artists, just to name a few.
01:24 We actually start running preliminary charts many, many weeks in advance before the public
01:30 actually sees our final year-end charts because we have so many checks and balances to run.
01:34 You may have a good idea of who will top the charts if you keep an eye on the Billboard
01:38 charts on a weekly basis, but surprises do happen.
01:45 One example is Dua Lipa's 2021 hit "Levitating," which became the year-end number one on the
01:50 Hot 100 chart.
01:51 But why was that surprising?
01:53 Because it never actually hit number one on the weekly Hot 100 chart.
01:56 So how does a song like that that never hit number one on the Hot 100 become the top song
02:01 of the year?
02:02 If you were on the chart every single week of the chart year and maybe never went to
02:05 number one, you'll have more, you know, let's call them points than another song or album
02:11 or artist would have had if they were only on the chart for one week.
02:14 Even if they were at reached a higher position.
02:17 So it's not always about where you peaked at on the chart during the chart year.
02:21 It's your continued performance throughout the entire year that ultimately tells the
02:25 story of where you end up on the year-end chart.
02:28 Did you know that a song or album could land on different chart years?
02:32 It's true.
02:33 It all depends on its release date or its success.
02:36 Take Morgan Wallen, for example, whose album "Dangerous," the double album, was in the
02:40 year-end top 10 of the Billboard 200 albums chart for three years in a row.
02:48 That hasn't happened where an album has been in the year-end top 10 in three years, consecutive
02:53 or not, since the 1960s when the "Sound of Music" soundtrack did the same thing.
02:58 That shows you just how popular Morgan Wallen is.
03:01 And it's no surprise that Taylor Swift topped this year's top artist chart.
03:05 But did you know she's claimed that crown in each of the last three decades?
03:12 Only one other artist has ever been our top artist of the year three times, and that is
03:16 Adele.
03:17 The year-end charts are a time capsule of the year in music, and we can't wait to see
03:21 who tops them next year.
03:22 (upbeat music)
03:25 (upbeat music)