Billboard 200

From Freepedia

The Billboard 200 is a listing of the 200 highest selling music albums in the United States, published weekly in Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists. Often, a musical group will be remembered by its "number ones", those of their albums that outsold all others during at least one week. The chart was first known as Pop Albums from the mid-1950s until 1983 when it changed its name to the Billboard 200.

Billboard began publishing album charts on March 24, 1945. The chart expanded to 200 positions for the chart of May 13th, 1967 and adopted its current name on March 14, 1992. Since May 26, 1991, the Billboard 200's positions have been derived from Nielsen SoundScan sales data, currently contributed by approximately 14,000 music sellers. Because these numbers are supplied by a subset of sellers rather than record labels, it is common for these numbers to be substantially lower than those reported by the Recording Industry Association of America when Gold album awards are announced (RIAA awards reflect wholesale shipments, not retail sales).

The current number one (as of week ending November 5 2005) on the Billboard 200 is I Am Me by Ashlee Simpson.

1 Uses
2 Limitations
3 Milestones and Trivia
4 See also
5 External links

Uses

The Billboard 200 can be helpful to radio stations as an indication of the types of music listeners are interested in hearing. Retailers can also find it useful as a way to determine which recordings should be given the most prominent display in a store. Other outlets, such as airline music services, also employ the Billboard charts to determine their programming.

Limitations

The chart omits unit sales for listed albums and total recorded sales, making it impossible to determine, for example, if the number one album this week sold as well as the number one from the same period in the prior year. It is also impossible to determine the relative success of albums on a single chart; there is no indication of whether the number one album sold thousands more copies than number 50, or only dozens more. All music genres are combined, but there are separate Billboard charts for individual market segments. The complete sales data broken down by location is made available, but only in the form of separate SoundScan subscriptions.

Milestones and Trivia

According to the December 1, 2001 issue of Billboard, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon has been on the charts for a total of 1,285 weeks, or just under 25 years. The album spent 741 of those weeks on the Billboard 200. The other weeks were spent on Billboard's Catalogue album chart for older albums. Its closest rival is James Taylor's Greatest Hits, checking in at 573 weeks on the chart. As of May 2005, Moon is up over 1,450 weeks on the 2 charts combined.

The first album to ever debut at #1 was Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy by Elton John.

It is worth noting that these longevity records will probably never be broken. Beginning in the nineties, Billboard created a new policy and chart in order to keep the Billboard 200 as fresh as possible and to give charting opportunities to developing artists. Albums that are two years old and have fallen below rank #100 are permanently removed from the Billboard 200 and moved to the Top Pop Catalog chart. The catalog chart features best-selling "older" albums and it contains a unique column which tallies "total weeks," meaning the cumulative total of weeks the album spent on both the Billboard 200 and the Top Pop Catalog chart.

The soundtrack to the musical South Pacific spent 31 weeks on top of the Billboard 200 in 1947. They were not all consecutive.

In 1983, Michael Jackson's Thriller spent 37 non consecutive weeks at #1, the longest non consecutive stay to date. The most consecutive weeks Jackson spent at the top was 17, on two seperate occasions.

The first album by a female artist to debut at the #1 spot was Whitney Houston's 1987 album Whitney

With the 2001 release of Janet Jackson's hit album All for you, she became the first female performer to score 4 back to back #1 studio album debuts on the Billboard 200, Rhythm Nation 1814, janet, The Velvet Rope and All for you all entered the charts at #1. Janet also holds the record for the most #1 studio albums by a female artist (5) including Control which climed to #1 in 1986. 2004's Damita Jo entered the Billboard 200 album chart at #2.

Britney Spears(Oops!...I Did It Again holds the records for highest first-week female sales, with over 1.3 million sold)

Rapper DMX earned a similar record in 2003 when his album Grand Champ became his fifth consecutive album to enter the chart at #1. He is the first artist to have his first five releases debut at #1 (DMX's five #1s represent his entire Billboard 200 chart history).

The Beatles have had more #1 albums than any other recording act, with 19. Elvis Presley has had 10 #1 albums, more than any other solo artist. Barbra Streisand has had 7 #1 albums, more than any other female artist.

Whitney Houston also has the record for most cumulative weeks at #1 for a female. Her albums Whitney Houston, Whitney, The Bodyguard, and Waiting to Exhale spent 50 weeks at #1 together.

The Beatles have more consecutive #1 albums than any other artist, with 8. Janet Jackson has the most for a female and solo artist with 4 consecutive #1 albums.