Billboard Hot 100

The Billboard Hot 100, also known as the Hot 100, is the main chart in the United States that shows the most popular songs each week. It is published by Billboard magazine and updated every Tuesday, though the chart appears to be from the next Saturday.

The current Billboard Hot 100 logo

The chart ranks songs based on how many people buy them, how often they are streamed online, and how much they are played on the radio in the U.S. This way, it shows which songs people are enjoying the most at any given time.

The first song to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100 was "Poor Little Fool" by Ricky Nelson in 1958. As of May 23, 2026, there have been 1,191 different songs that reached the top spot. The current number-one song is "Choosin' Texas" by Ella Langley.

History

The Billboard Hot 100 is a chart that shows the most popular songs in the United States. It started in July 1913 when Billboard published a list of the best-selling sheet music. Over the years, Billboard added more ways to measure popularity, like radio play and jukebox plays.

In 1958, Billboard created the Hot 100, which combined sales, radio play, and jukebox plays to rank songs. The first number one song was "Poor Little Fool" by Ricky Nelson. Today, the Hot 100 still ranks songs based on sales, radio play, and streaming from online music services.

*Billboard* Hot 100 component charts
Period	Hot Singles Sales (physical single sales)	Radio Songs (song airplay)	Digital Song Sales (song downloads)	Streaming Songs (song streams)
1984–2005	Active	Active	—N/a	—N/a
2005–2013	Active	Active	Active	—N/a
2013–2017	Active	Active	Active	Active
2017–present	Defunct	Active	Active	Active

Compilation

The Billboard Hot 100 is a chart that shows the most popular songs in the United States each week. It uses data from sales, online listening, and radio play to decide the rankings.

A new chart is made and shared online by Billboard on Tuesdays, but it is marked with the date of the following Saturday. The week for counting sales, streams, and radio play starts on Friday and ends on Thursday. For example, if the week starts on Friday, January 1, it ends on Thursday, January 7, and the new chart is released on Tuesday, January 12, with the date listed as Saturday, January 16.

Policy changes

The rules and ways that Billboard makes the Hot 100 chart have changed many times.

The Hot 100 helps people in the music business know which songs are most popular. Billboard changes its rules to show what people like best. For example, in the early days, singles were the main way people bought music, so sales were very important.

Billboard has also changed how it counts songs that have two versions, called double-sided singles. In the past, both sides of a record were listed together, but now they are usually counted separately.

Another big change happened in 1998 when Billboard started including songs that people could hear on the radio but not buy as singles. Before that, a song needed to be sold as a single to appear on the chart. This change let more songs show up on the chart.

Today, Billboard also counts how many times people download songs online or stream them on services like Spotify and YouTube. These changes make the chart reflect how people enjoy music now.

Year-end charts

Billboard's "chart year" runs from the first week of December to the final week in November. This helps Billboard calculate year-end charts and release them in time for its final print issue in the last week of December.

Before getting sales and airplay information from Nielsen SoundScan, year-end charts were made using a system where points were given based on a song’s position on the Hot 100. After Billboard started using data from Nielsen SoundScan, year-end charts are made by adding up all the sales, streaming, and airplay points for the whole year. This way, the charts show the most popular tracks of the year more accurately. Sometimes, songs that are very popular near the end of November or December will appear on the next year’s chart because their points are split between two chart years.

Use in media

The Hot 100 was used for many years on the radio show American Top 40. In 1991, the show stopped using the Hot 100 and began using only the songs that were being played on the radio.

Some artists have had popular songs on the Hot 100 in many different years, showing they can stay popular even as music changes. Only a few artists have had top songs in each of the decades from the 1980s to the 2010s: Michael Jackson, Madonna, "Weird Al" Yankovic, U2, and Kenny G. Mariah Carey was the first artist to have a number-one song in four different decades.

Some radio stations use old Hot 100 charts for special shows. SiriusXM Pop2K plays the top songs from the 2000s, and '90s on 9 plays songs from the 1990s.

Similar charts

Billboard created a new chart called the Pop 100 in February 2005 because some people thought the Hot 100 had too much hip hop and R&B music. This chart was stopped in June 2009 because it started to look too much like the Hot 100.

Other countries also have their own versions of the Hot 100. The Canadian Hot 100 began on June 16, 2007. It uses the same way of counting sales and music playing on the radio as the Hot 100 in the U.S. The Billboard Japan Hot 100 started on May 31, 2008, and it also uses the same methods. Most recently, the Billboard Vietnam Hot 100 began on January 14, 2022.