Billboard Twitter Real-Time
The Billboard Twitter Real-Time charts were four interactive Billboard music magazine charts debuted on May 27, 2014. The charts ranked trending songs from popular and emerging artists based on how often they are mentioned in messages called "tweets" sent by social networking site Twitter in the United States.[1] The charts "Trending 140", "Emerging Artists", "Weekly Top Tracks" and "Weekly Emerging Artists" were reported to define how fans interacted with, and influenced, popular content by ranking the most popular songs being shared on Twitter in the U.S. The first two charts updated on a "real-time" minute-by-minute basis, with the last two charts providing weekly summaries.[2][3]
In August 2017, for the charts dating September 2, the "Trending 140" and real-time charts were discontinued and the Emerging Artists chart was revised to become a "breakout" of the overall Artist 100 chart, highlighting the top-performing rising acts of each week.[4]
In October 2021, Billboard and Twitter launched two new charts, Hot Trending Songs ("Real Time" - first 24-hours started at noon on October 22, and "Weekly" - first chart release date was October 30), sponsored by Rémy Martin, which track 24-hour and weekly global Twitter trends.[5][6]
History[edit]
2014: Charts created[edit]
These charts, for Billboard, represented an ongoing attempt to incorporate new-music consumption and sharing technologies in its charts. In 2013, Billboard added YouTube plays to its Billboard Hot 100 formula, alongside its Social 50 that already tracked which artists are most active on social networks,[7] and included data from Twitter.[8]
For Twitter, it was a follow-up to its failed Apple "#music" app,[9][10] launched in April 2013 to track music on Twitter, which intended to acquaint users with new acts and see what their contacts were listening to.[11] The app had a "Popular" page, showing music trending across Twitter, and an "Emerging" page, showing "hidden talent found in tweets."[12] On March 21, 2014, the "Twitter Music" account wrote that the app would discontinue on April 18, and said in another tweet, "We continue to experiment with new ways to bring you great content based on the music activity we see every day on Twitter."[13] On March 27, 2014, Billboard and Twitter announced the partnership for the Billboard Twitter Real-Time Charts, and Twitter Amplify to help with chart distribution; along with custom in-Tweet charts and a weekly in-Tweet video round up of the week in music.[14]
Music is one of the most popular topics on Twitter, and music acts routinely dominate its list of the most popular personalities on the service, with most of the top accounts being musicians.[1][11] Billboard President John Amato said “Twitter, for us, felt like the right way to capture real time more than anything else that we could think of,” and “They’re the only people that have true scale in real time. Facebook is a behemoth."[7]
Austin Mahone's performed his single "Shadow" at the May 27, 2014, New York City launch event for the Billboard Twitter Real-Time Charts and charted for the first number one on the (Twitter) Trending 140 chart on the same day.[1][15] "Problem" by Ariana Grande was the first song to top the weekly (Billboard) Twitter Top Tracks chart,[15] and K Camp's "Cut Her Off" featuring 2 Chainz was the first number one for the weekly Emerging Artists chart, both on June 7, 2014.[16] At the end of 2014, the first year for the charts, hip-hop was the most popular genre of music on Twitter and topped many of the year-end Billboard charts. Rapper Bobby Shmurda's "Hot Nigga" (also called "Hot Boy"), with its popular dance, gave him a number one for the real-time Emerging Artists chart for the year, with 837 peaks at number one, with Dej Loaf following at number two, and K Camp at number three.[17]