TopHit
TopHit is an internet service for musicians founded in 2003. Originating from Ukraine and Russia, it now works on global scale. It offers a variety of functions, main of them regular statistical music charts based on data from radio broadcasts and musical internet services such as YouTube and Spotify. Musicians (mainly playing pop music) are able to upload their songs and promote them via TopHit. The songs from Russian and worldwide singers become aggregated, tested, distributed and rotated on radio using TopHit's capabilities. Promotion of music videos is also available, as well as donations collecting system for supporting artists. Permanent users and partners of TopHit include over 5700 musicians, music groups, DJs and tens of record labels, including Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, BMG, Black Star Inc., Velvet Music and others.
Industry
2003
Russia, Ukraine, United States
Igor Kraev, Pavel Balashov
Aggregation and distribution of genuine songs, testing of songs, audio recognition software TopHit Spy, payment and donation system TopHit Pay, music radio monitoring, music charts
Nowadays, TopHit assists in promoting about 90% of songs on radio and over 60% of hit songs on YouTube and Spotify. TopHit's services are available for 1070 radio stations and 75 TV channels in 38 countries including Russia, Ukraine, CIS countries, European countries, Middle East countries, US and Canada. Weekly audience of TopHit's partner broadcasters is estimated to be over 200 million of listeners and watchers. Universal Music Group qualifies TopHit as the most reliable source of music radio charts in Russia.[1] Artists and critics emphasize that TopHit is considered firstly the professional tool for music industry, and only secondly as mass media resource.
TopHit's chart leaders are awarded annually at a ceremony called Top Hit Music Awards.[2] There are also Top Hit Hall of Fame and annual concerts called Top Hit Live!.
History[edit]
The idea of the TopHit project came out of the 1978-formed Soviet music band called Dialog. Members of the bang Kim Breitburg, Evgeniy Fridland and Vadim Botnaruk invented a system for searching for young talented musicians and promoting them via partnering radio stations. During the 1990s, over 50 stations participated and their audience voted for the best new artists. The most known of them so far are Nikolai Trubach, Konstantin Meladze and Valeriy Meladze.
Vadim Botnaruk worked at one of the radio stations, and in 2002 he joined efforts with his colleague Igor Kraev to use Internet for artist searching and voting for new hits. They established an Internet service for this, with the help of a record label ARS Records managed by Igor Krutoy. In early 2003 they entitled it mp3fm.ru.
Initially the website partnered with over 50 local radio stations, many new artists and some Russian showbiz establishment figures such as Alena Sviridova, Vladimir Kuzmin, Leonid Agutin, Alla Pugachova, Murat Nasyrov, Ilya Lagutenko. On 1 November 2003, the domain mp3fm.ru was intercepted and re-registered. The team qualified this as corporate raid and established a new domain name and brand: TopHit.ru.
In January 2004, TopHit's first annual chart was published (for 2003). TopHit determined that the most popular song among Russian-speaking listeners was "Ocean and three rivers" by Valeriy Meladze and VIA Gra. At the time, major radio networks began to join: Russkoye Radio Ukraine and international holding Europa Plus. They were shortly followed by AvtoRadio, Love Radio, Radio Maximum, Nashe Radio and others.
TopHit Live! concert was for the 1st time held in Moscow in April 2004. In 2005 TopHit became partners with record labels Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music and Warner Music. In 2006, the number of partner radio stations exceeded 400. In 2007, TopHit received the professional Popov Award for "great contribution in development of Russian radio abroad". Also from 2007, TopHit began to process music videos.
In January 2008 one of the founders, Vadim Botnaruk, was killed by unknown criminals near his home in Moscow.
In 2010 TopHit started its Ukrainian branch with registering of trademark. Also in 2010 all new music became available for radios in uncompressed .wav format. 2010 was also the year when TopHit Chart online shows were introduced. In April 2010, TopHit held a concert in Kyiv, Top Hit Live! featuring Svetlana Loboda, Gaitana, Alyona Vinnytska and other stars of the Ukrainian pop scene.
In 2011 Igor Kraev published his first analysis of radio scene in Russia based on TopHit's substantial amount of statistics.
In January 2012, the final TopHit Ukraine radio charts for 2011 were published for the first time. The most popular artists on Ukrainian radio were Vera Brezhneva, Potap, Yolka and Ani Lorak. The most rotated hits were "Petals of Tears" by Dan Balan & Vera Brezhneva, "Real Life" by Vera Brezhneva and "You're the Best" by Vlad Darwin & Alyosha.
In 2013 the Top Hit Music Awards ceremony was held for the first time. Top Hit Hall of Fame was launched simultaneously. In 2015, TopHit became partners with Google to produce YouTube-based music charts: YouTube Russia and Radio & YouTube Russia. The next year music video charts were added along with charts Top 100 Radio & YouTube Artists Russia, Top 200 Radio & YouTube Hits Russia.
In 2017, TopHit Spy service was launched to monitor music on partner radios automatically (over 800 stations by that time). In 2019 there were more than 1000 stations and project's geography expanded onto 30 countries of Europe, Asia, Middle East and the United States. TopHit's own record label started to work also in 2019.
In January 2019, TopHit published the annual YouTube Ukraine charts for the first time: the artist and video charts, and the Radio & YouTube Ukraine charts. The main hit of these charts was the song "Plakala" by KAZKA.
In 2020 TopHit Pay payment system was launched. It's main purpose is collection of donations for musicians. In 2021, TopHit became partners with Spotify streaming service to provide more charts.
In March, 2023, the Internet portal was re-launched under the new domain name tophit.com; a concert was held to commemorate.[3]
Recognition[edit]
Experts from the InterMedia news agency, Evgeny Safronov and Aleksey Mazhaev, expressed the opinion that the charts published by the portal could not fully reflect the artist popularity in Russia, as Tophit along with Moskva.FM deal with radio industry research. Nevertheless, the experts qualified the portal hit parades as professional.[9] Boris Barabanov also marked that Tophit.ru activity is more familiar to the music industry professionals than public at large. "One of the most effective chart-based sources is Tophit.ru. It's rather a reliable, in professional circles, mechanism that allows the rightholders to place their compositions on the website and make them available for station download. The latter ones, in their turn, having downloaded the song, send reports on its rotation, if this song is put on air, which shows its popularity. Tophit.ru promotion model is considered very effective on the market," wrote the author. Guru Ken called Tophit the leader in the area of media content delivery to radio stations.[10] In the journal Kompania (Company), Anastasia Markina also mentioned the portal as the leader in its professional sphere and wrote, "Tophit.ru took under its wing over 400 stations and 60 TV-channels. On the other hand, over a thousand rights holders, among which are the majority of record labels, including the majors Sony Music, Universal Music, Warner Music and EMI/Gala Records», work with this website."[11]
In RMA (a course of lectures for professionals in the music business), Dmitry Konnov, Universal Music Russia CEO, speaking of Russian music promotion perspectives, underlined the fact that "if you want to reach popularity, I advise to write and perform Russian music, promote Russian artists and keep a close watch at Tophit.ru but not get lost in admiration at Billboard".[12]
In 2010, the summary statistical data of the portal for the year of 2009 became the foremost source in defining the nominees for "Bog Efira" (Air God) Music Awards (a music version of Popov's Award in the area of radio broadcast). Tophit annual charts are also covered in the mass media.