The first ever Hot40 chart will be released today, ranking songs in relation to how many new listeners they attract in a week.
It doesn’t replace the traditional Top40 which measures the volume of a song’s sales and streams, but adds an alternative view to what’s happening in the music world.
“This is about velocity, it's about the things that are the freshest and moving the fastest” says Paul Kennedy, chart manager at Recorded Music NZ.
“We're looking at the things that have gained the most in that 7 day period… the most new listens, the most new fans”
“It doesn’t really matter where you were the week before, we're only really interested in what's happened this week” he said.
It comes alongside another chart called the NZ Hot20, focused only on kiwi music.
“It gives a lot of extra opportunities we think, for new local music to jump into that chart as opposed to in the past where they may have had to wait for a long time.”
“We're hoping it will be a bit of a discovery source as well, it will be pretty fresh stuff every week, it's going to be 20 pretty new local tracks” Mr Kennedy said.
Kiwi artist Kings, says the new charts provide a great opportunity.
“It gives people a chance every week to try your new stuff out, push your track” Kings said.
“It's like a competitive race continuously, every week you’re racing up against local artists, international artists.”
“Any musician that feels like they’re stagnant in terms of success or whatever chart wise this is a great opportunity to capitalise and try and get on top of this chart man cause it's possible.”
The new charts also take into account radio airplay.
Results for the first week will be released tonight at 5pm.
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