Mission Accomplished (Part 3)

Hello again everyone. Seriously, the weather across central Florida this week has really affected my vibe; I have had little motivation to get much of anything, let alone this blog done. Suffice to say the "Sunshine State" isn't living up to her nickname, and all this rain needs to leave.

Anyway, this is the third part of this series of posts (the first two an be found here and here) regarding my system that I have used to chart songs over the years. Now at the end of yesterday's entry, I said that I had found a website that allowed me (and anyone else who's interested) to access old Radio and Records magazines from yesteryear. Well, up to a point. You see in 2006, R/R was bought by VNU media and integrated with Billboard Magazine's Radio Monitor to create a new chart based off Neilsen Soundscan data. Billboard would buy Radio and Records outright three years later,ad effectively ended the publication.

But the methodology used by Radio and Records up until 2006, Mediabase 24/7, would continue, and does so to this very day. I think I mentioned how they went about compiling this data in an earlier entry to this blog, I think it was called "Radio Days." Anyway, the points system I go by is based off those findings, with a few exceptions.

First let me explain how my system works. For every song that reaches the Top 40, a preset point value is assigned. For the first 25 positions (40-16), it works like a reverse points system (40 gets 1, 39 gets 2, and so forth). Then the system starts getting weighted heavily towards the top, like this:

15. 28 pts
14. 30 pts
13. 32 pts
12. 34 pts
11. 37 pts
10. 40 pts
 9.  45 pts
 8.  50 pts
 7.  55 pts
 6.  60 pts
 5.  70 pts
 4.  80 pts
 3.  90 pts
 2. 100 pts
 1. 125 pts

There are also bonus points awarded for chart longevity, and where they are on the chart. I'll explain it over the weekend. Basically, the longer the song is on the chart, the bigger the bonus. Also, the year is the actual calendar year, not from November to November monitored by publications (which would explain "Walk Like An Egyptian" grabbing #1 song of 1987 even though it peaked in December of 1986).

In this weekend's post, I'll go into detail what I have found out from these charts, as well as my rankings for the top song of each year since 1980. Until then, stay dry...

CT