The Recording industry of South Africa (RISA) has launched the country’s first official music chart.
SA has an official music chart: Here’s what we know
The rest of the world has Billboard and MRC Data (formerly known as Nielsen Soundscan) as chart authorities. In South Africa, as of Wednesday 1 September 2021, our authority in music performance on streaming will be overseen by RISA.
The official South Africa music chart, according to RISA chairperson Sean Watson is a “significant milestone and a much needed step up to aligning with popular forms of music consumption for the local music industry.”
In its early stage, the chart will only count the digital streaming numbers of single releases. To ensure accuracy, the SA music chart will only aggregate data from the three major streaming platforms, Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer.
“We have a robust music industry in our country, and our people have a natural thirst for music. We have also seen an undeniable shift in how people consume music in the past few years, with more and more audiences making use of streaming services than before. We are thus excited to put in place an offering that not only recognises that but is set to help drive the growth of our industry,” RISA CEO Nhlanhla Sibisi said.
How does it work?
The SA music chart will count digital streams of single releases, aggregated from Spotfy, Apple Music and Deezer, for a period of six days, between Friday and Thursday the following week.
At the start of the chart’s launch, only digital streams will be taken into account.
“The number of streams shown in the charts is always weighted, so that subscription streams have more relevance than ad-funded streams.”
SA music chart
If an artist’s single release has a radio edit, remix with additional featured guests, DJ remixes with the original song credited and different language or country remakes, the respective streams from these versions will count towards the corresponding original song.
At this time, no exclusion policy exists. Except, the fact that approved covers are not aggregated to the original track.
SA music chart: The first week’s Top 10
There are two types of charts that will feature on SA’s first official music ranking system:
- Weekly TOP 200 Tracks which takes into account all tracks streamed in South Africa, including both local and international music; and
- Weekly TOP 100 Local ZA Tracks which only includes tracks wherein at least one of the credited artists is from South Africa.
Here is the launch week’s Top 10 entries in the Weekly TOP 100 Local ZA Tracks:
Ed Sheeran’s Bad Habits topped the Weekly TOP 200 Tracks