Billboard and Nielsen Soundscan are a never-ending source of various music charts to track, but the former entity has introduced a more curious segment that will track the popularity of songs on Twitter in real time.
The Trending 140 will provide an up-to-the-minute ranking of songs based on the "acceleration" of mentions across one hour periods. This will be analyzed by taking into consideration hyperlinks to streams of songs or YouTube videos of the song, the mention of song titles alongside the hashtags "np" or "#nowplaying," plus the general use of terms such as "track" or "song" coupled with a title. So, for example, if we were to tweet (and we will) that "Today's song of the day is Owen Pallett's 'The Sky Behind The Flag,'" that track will get a boost on the Trending 140 chart. At least theoretically.
For an example of operation, let's check out what the chart reflects as of press time. Austin Mahone is at the top with his new single "The Secret," but that probably got some help after being promoted by Billboard and the performer for the sake of this launch. It's showing a 22.54 percent drop in the last hour. Ne-Yo's "Money Can't Buy" and G-Eazy's "Tumblr Girls" are showing slight rises at no. 2 and 3 respectively, whereas social media interest in Kanye West's "God Level" has dropped 170.93 percent in the last hour.
With this much changing of position, will we necessarily learn anything that the Hot 100 or Billboard 200 doesn't tell us? Maybe not, but there is one definite benefit to the Trending 140, based on what we saw. Basing a chart on social media mention yields rewards for smaller performers who can't get mainstream radio play (or enough to crack the Hot 100). For example, metal band Behemoth was in the Top 100 for its track "Blow Your Trumpets Gabriel." An unsigned performer could also launch a social media among friends and locals in their region to break in and grab some attention.
