STACKVERIFIED CHARTSHow the index is made

Chartbusters is the daily index published by StackVerified Charts. Every day it ranks a hundred songs for the world, the United States, India and the United Kingdom. It is made from charts and signals that anyone can see, checked against each other. Its principles are public and stand on this page. Its weights are not, so that nobody can steer the ranking by knowing them.

What the index reads

Paid listening: What subscribers of paid music services play.
Free listening: What is played on services that cost nothing, video among them.
Purchases: What people buy to keep.
Radio: What stations play.
Editorial charts: The weekly charts that chart companies compile by their own rules.
Curiosity and conversation: How often a song’s lyrics are looked up, how often an artist is read about and written about, and how much people talk about them in public.

The index sees no service’s own records of plays. It reads what each of them publishes, and cross-checks one against the other. Where a published chart carries counts, the counts are read; where it carries ranks alone, the ranks are.

How a song earns its place

Paying counts for more: A play by somebody who pays for music says more than a free one, and a purchase more than a play. A free view counts, and counts least.
Agreement, not volume: A song leads when several kinds of listeners agree on it. Services of one kind speak with one voice, however many they are, and a kind of listeners that does not list a song counts against it.
No artist takes the index: No artist holds more than three of the first fifty places. When a release brings many songs at once, the strongest stay and the others follow below.
Every country by itself: A song in India is measured against the songs of India, a song in the United States against those of the United States. What is common in one country is not held against another.
Plays need curiosity: A play counts in full only when people also look the song up, read and write about its artist, and talk about them. Plays that nobody is curious about are background, and count for less.
Against an artist’s own normal: Curiosity is measured against what is usual for that artist: a rise counts, standing fame does not. It is measured so wherever the index has a record of what is usual; its records of lyrics, news and conversation began on 29 September 2026 and are still short.
Movement from counts joining: Whether a song is rising is read from how its plays grow, where counts are published, and not from its place alone. A song that has stood unchanged for months fades; an old song that people return to is kept and marked a revival.
A jump is looked at twice joining: A sudden rise that only one service shows is held back until others show it too.

A rule marked joining is decided and not yet in force: it joins as the index gathers its own history. What is in force today stands below, by its date.

What keeps it honest

A chart is read whole or not at all. A page that arrives cut short is no chart.
A chart whose own date is old is left out, however fresh it looks.
A day that was not read is never filled in afterwards from another day.
No place on the index can be bought, by anyone, in any way.
No service’s chart is published here. The index publishes its own ranking, and its ranking alone.

What a row shows

Place and movement: Where a song stands today, and how many places it gained or lost since the day before.
Level: Five bars for how far a song stands above the day’s field: five lit bars are close to number one. The number behind the bars is not published.
Days: How many days a song has been on the index.
Fresh: Released in the last sixty days.
Revival: Released two years ago or longer, and back on the index.

What is in force

29 September 2026: The index starts. In force: paying counts for more; agreement across the kinds of listeners; plays need curiosity, measured within each country and against an artist’s own normal where there is a record of it; no artist holds more than three of the first fifty places; charts that are out of date are left out.

Still to join, as the index gathers its own history:

Movement from counts, once the index has a week of its own history.
The second look at a jump that only one service shows.

Weights change without notice: that is what keeps them from being used against the index. A change to a principle is written on this page, with its date.