How the Hot 100 and Billboard 200 Charts Work

For over two decades, Keith Caulfield has been an integral part of the Billboard charts team, tabulating which singles and albums are the most popular in the United States. To be more specific, Caulfield — managing director of charts and data operations — looks after the Billboard 200, the standard bearer for an album’s performance since it was first introduced in 1956.

In the years since the Billboard 200 — and the Hot 100, Billboard‘s premiere singles chart — debuted, a lot has changed in the music industry. Music fans went from buying vinyl records at physical stores, to buying 8tracks, cassettes and CDs, to downloading singles online, to streaming music for a flat monthly rate. To keep up with how people are listening, Caulfield and the charts team at Billboard have evolved the rules a number of times to balance the incorporation of new media while still staying true to the origins of the charts.

In this wide-ranging conversation on Billboard’s new music business podcast, On the Record, Caulfield discusses how to compare chart performance in the past versus the present, why albums are often longer than ever and why artists are releasing so many album variants. He also offers some chart fun facts that might come as a surprise, discusses the power of algorithms to push songs to new audiences, and explains how the charts are keeping up with an increasingly fragmented cultural landscape.

The interview can be watched in full below or listened to at this link.

To catch up on past episodes of On the Record, including interviews with guests like Atlantic CEO Elliot Grainge, top investor Matt Pincus, hitmaker Amy Allen, Spotify exec Sam Duboff, head of Sphere booking Josephine Vaccarello and more, click here.

This podcast is a co-production of Billboard and Sickbird Productions.