Billboard Revises Country Chart Methodology

Billboard has a squib today, describing its new way of computing the Country Songs chart. The chart used to be airplay alone, as compiled by Nielson; now it includes streams and downloads (though I presume there's no way to tell where and whom the downloads are coming from — that is, whether they're coming from the country audience or not). Also: "With digital download sales and streaming data measuring popularity on the most inclusive scale possible, it makes perfectly logical sense that the radio portion of the new chart calculations include airplay from the entire spectrum of monitored formats." Don't know if I'm interpreting that sentence correctly. Does it mean Billboard is now counting the airplay a country song receives on noncountry stations as well as on country stations? (In this case, is it always clear what a country song is? What about an alt-country track that gets a lot of play on Triple A but almost no play on mainstream country?*)

Guess who has a song that's number 42 on Mediabase's current country airplay chart, that was number 21 on last week's Billboard Country Songs chart, and that has just jumped to number 1 on the new Country Songs chart as a result of the change in methodology!

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