BigChampagne Unveils “Ultimate Chart”

BigChampagne Media Measurement has announced the release of the Ultimate Chart (www.ultimatechart.com), a ranked list of the week’s most popular artists and songs. Integrating data from categories including Song and Album Sales, Radio Airplay, Online Audio and Video Plays, and Fans/Friends/Followers, the Ultimate Chart is the first and only chart that looks at all of the ways in which music is popular, online and off. The first published Ultimate Chart is the Ultimate 100, available now.

The news was broken yesterday (7/20) at the New Music Seminar, currently underway in New York, during the opening remarks conversation between NMS Founder Tom Silverman and BigChampagne CEO Eric Garland. 

BigChampagne’s partners and sources for the Ultimate Chart include retailers, online and traditional broadcasters (radio and television), major content companies, subscription services, social networks and other venues where fans demonstrate their passion for music: Yahoo!Music, Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, VEVO, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, MTV, Clear Channel, MediaBase, AOL, Napster, Microsoft Zune, We Are Hunted, LastFM and many more.

“The explosive popularity of music in the digital age has given us access to a quality of information about the connection between artists and fans previously unimagined,” said Garland. “The internet launched a thousand charts. But the marketplace is asking, ultimately, what does it all mean? There has been no satisfying answer, until now. The Ultimate Chart examines music sales and radio airplay and the access to music, and socializing around music, that are growing much faster. We’re rewriting the top of the charts for the new music business and enlisting the help of its chief architects to surface the most popular music that the charts have overlooked.”

“The evolution of the Ultimate Chart will revolutionize the way artists and labels measure the fan/artist relationship,” Silverman said. “This information will eventually allow artist and their representatives to maximize the monetization of that relationship.”

“This chart is long overdue and represents for the first time an 
accurate view of where popular music is today,” said Tamara Conniff, Founder/Editor of The Comet and former Billboard Editor-in-Chief and Associate Publisher. “Music is not just about sales, it’s about interaction—listening, watching, playlisting, evangelizing and socializing. The Comet (TheComet.com) will be publishing the Ultimate Chart and using BigChampagne’s data for analysis, prediction, and consumer trends.”

BigChampagne will also develop the Ultimate Chart for independent and DIY artists and has partnered with a who’s-who of top marketing and distribution partners, including Tunecore, CDBaby, Disc Makers, MySpace Music, Reverb Nation, Topspin, Nimbit and many more to ensure eligibility for all artists and to produce unprecedented insight into the independent music world.

“We’re examining the fastest-growing aspect of the music business for which there has not been a standard measure, by the numbers,” Garland said. “Every artist can be counted, and every artist will be counted.”

The Ultimate Chart is one of the new features of BigChampagne’s ground-breaking business intelligence dashboard, BC Dash Ultimate, and will be widely syndicated across BigChampagne’s media and press partners. The Ultimate Chart is a ranked list of the week’s most popular artists and songs.