Methodology

Source and cadence

ChartStats reads the Apple Music "most played" songs chart and albums chart (Top 100 each) for each tracked country through the Apple Music API. The chart is fetched once a day at 06:00 UTC. Apple refreshes its charts on its own schedule, so consecutive days can be identical; each fetch is stored as a dated snapshot regardless.

Every page shows the chart date its numbers reflect. "Today" always means the most recent snapshot.

Rank, movement and new entries

Rank is the position Apple published. Movement on the country page and on dated pages compares a song's rank with its rank on the previous recorded chart; a song absent from the previous chart is a new entry. If the previous recorded chart is more than 14 days old (for example after an outage), movement is not shown for that day rather than shown against stale data.

The weekly pages (biggest risers, new entries, breakouts) compare the latest chart with the chart recorded closest to seven days earlier, between five and fourteen days apart. While fewer than five days of charts exist for a country the pages fall back to the previous chart and say so.

Peak, days on chart, first and last charted

Peak is the best rank a song has held in that country across every recorded chart. Days on chart counts recorded daily charts on which the song appeared, so 30 means thirty daily snapshots, not thirty weeks. First and last charted are the dates of the earliest and latest snapshot containing the song. All of these are recomputed from the full history on every ingest, so they are never stale.

Number ones and monthly summaries

A number-one run is an unbroken sequence of daily charts on which the same song held #1; a song returning to #1 later begins a new run. Monthly pages rank the "strongest" songs by the sum over the month of (101 − rank) for each day the song charted, divided by the number of chart days in the month, so a song at #1 all month scores 100. A debut is a song's first-ever appearance on that country's chart since tracking began.

Cross-country pages

"Charting in N countries" counts countries where the song is on the latest chart. Global top songs order songs by that count, then by best rank. Breakout country is the country where the song first reached a high rank and is an indication, not a claim about where the song originated.

City charts

Apple publishes a "Top 25" most-played chart for about a hundred cities worldwide. It is one global set, identical from every storefront, so ChartStats records it once a day from the US storefront and attaches each city to its country. City charts use the same movement, gap and peak rules as country charts; "days" counts recorded daily city charts. Cities in countries ChartStats does not track still have pages.

Genres

Genre is Apple's primary genre for the song. Genre pages list the songs of that genre on a country's latest chart in chart order; a genre needs at least three charting songs in a country to have a page. The generic genre "Music" is treated as unknown.

What is indexed

Every song and artist has a page. Pages for songs and artists that peaked at #50 or better, appeared on at least three daily charts, or charted in at least two countries are listed for search engines; the rest exist but are marked noindex so search results are not filled with one-day entries at the bottom of a chart.

What ChartStats does not do

It does not estimate streams, sales or revenue: Apple publishes ranks only. It does not hold historical UK singles-chart data from this domain's earlier life. It does not track Spotify or other services. Album charts follow exactly the same rules as song charts (movement, gap policy, peaks, days, indexing).