What an Echoeboard line actually counts.
Every row on an Echoeboard chart is a number. Every number is a count. This is what the count includes, what it excludes, and why the same number on a different chart can mean two different things.
Most national charts in most markets are, historically, a press release. A song appears near the top because the right party said so. Echoeboard publishes a chart that can be walked backwards — from the headline number to the station that contributed, to the minute it contributed, to the row in the ledger the minute sits in.
What the count is
A chart line on Echoeboard is the sum of qualifying detections of a work during the chart window. A detection qualifies when the work has been registered and claimed, when the station is a partner on the network, when the broadcast is complete rather than clipped, and when the same detection has not already been counted by another row of the same chart.
- Registered — the work is in the DNA Registry at the moment of broadcast.
- Claimed — the rights-holder has an identity the platform can route to.
- Complete — the broadcast ran long enough to be counted as a full play under the chart's rules.
- Unique — a detection counted toward one row cannot be counted toward the same row again.
What the count is not
- An estimate. A chart number is a count of rows the platform holds, not a projection from a sample.
- A proxy for streaming. The streaming count is a separate line on a separate chart.
- A weighted blend of airplay and social. Blended charts are labelled as such and methodology is published per chart.
- Sales or revenue. Chart standing and earnings are different quantities on the same ledger.
Why the same number can mean two different things
Echoeboard ships one hundred and one chart types across six continents. A song can hold position on a national airplay chart while sitting lower on a regional streaming chart and differently again on a genre cross-chart. The number is the same count mechanism everywhere. The window, the surface, and the eligibility rules change — and the methodology panel on every chart sets out which ones apply.
What drills down from a chart row
Every row on every chart carries a drill-down to the evidence underneath it. A reader can open a chart row and see the detections that made the count — station by station, minute by minute — bounded by what the chart window permits. A chart that cannot be walked back into its ledger is not a chart Echoeboard will publish.
“A chart that cannot be walked back into its ledger is not a chart Echoeboard will publish.”