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The worlds greatest song chart act
As the site generation page explains the list of songs does not reflect the most popular songs of all time since there are variable levels of charts for different historical periods. There are a number of reasonable ways to compare artists of different periods, further down this page there is an analysis that examines the top songs, but first we show what happens when you list the top artists of each year and tallying up the number of years each artist held the top slots.
The charts for the 1920s are much less certain than later ones, so maybe Paul Whiteman does not deserve his position. It is also notable that since we last calculated these scores both The Beatles and Elvis Presley have lost one year at the top slot, this reflects the fact that we now have charts from a wider range of countries. It is interesting to note that this fact has improved Madonna's position.
The top five artists are far ahead of the rest. If the entries for John Lennon, George Harrison and Paul McCartney's groups were to be included The Beatles would clearly be top.
Here are the top five song artists for each year from 1920 to 2011.
This analysis was done with data version 2.1.044
Another Similar Approach
The figure above shows the order that results from looking at the songs rather than artist's success. Each song has been scored based on the position it reached in the overall year chart, 1.0 for the number 1, 0.5 for number 2 and so on, and each artist has been rated based on the number of songs reaching the number one slot, or top 5, or top 10 etc. We started these at 1930, because the earlier ones are too sparse to give reasonable results.
The first thing to note is that once again the top 5 artists are significantly ahead of the rest. In this measure The Beatles are ahead of Elvis Presley (but not by much).
This analysis was done with data version 1.10.0014
The comments here are from the the MusicID impact site site. This version is not able to accept comments yet
Previous Comments (newest first)
18 Jun 2013
Paul whiteman+
There are also similar issues to Paul whiteman's ranking on this page compared to the actual year pages.like 1920 and 1933 for example
Yes. Different versions of the input data and a range of ways of calculating.
We see this as a strength (getting a range of different views)
18 Jun 2013
Bing crosby 1939
There is a similar issue on this page for bing being at fifth place while on the actual 1939 page he is at fourth. Can you clarify these conflicting datas please?
Thanks :)
There are two different issues, one is that some of the pages are based on the most recent version of the data and others on older sets. "The worlds greatest song chart act" page was based on the 2.1.044 data (as it says on the page).
The other issue is that we apply a number of different algorithms and parameters values to get as many different ways to view the results as possible.
Obviously as we correct issues with the source data, or add extra sources, these positions change. We'd be happy to say that Glenn Miller was the top artist of 1939 (he is top in most of the calculated lists), and that Bing Crosby is one of the top 5 artists of that year (again he is in all the lists), but we would be unsure if Bing should be number 4 or 5 (that depends much more on the details of how you calculate)
18 Jun 2013
Bing crosby 1950?
On this page bing crosby was the 2nd most successful artist of 1950 but when I go to the actual 1950 page bing is at first place. Can you clarify this for me? ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ ++ + Thanks :)
4 Dec 2012
Songs from 1995
I have a question: Why is Mariah Carey not listed in the top 5 song artists for 1995?
According to your data, she had the #2, #5 and #18 most successful songs of the year while Take That only had the #7 and #59 most successful songs of the same year. Please explain.
The issue is that the "top 5 song artists" list you were looking at was calculated on data set 1.10.0014 (as it said at the bottom of the page) and the song listing you're looking at was based on 2.1.0044
The charts you were looking at have been recalculated with the most recent version. With this improved data Take That are not in the top 5 of any year.
4 Dec 2012
Songs from 1995
I have a question: Why is Mariah Carey not listed in the top 5 song artists for 1995?
According to your data, she had the #2, #5 and #18 most successful songs of the year while Take That only had the #7 and #59 most successful songs of the same year. Please explain.
The issue is that the "top 5 song artists" list you were looking at was calculated on data set 1.10.0014 (as it said at the bottom of the page) and the song listing you're looking at was based on 2.1.0044
The charts you were looking at have been recalculated with the most recent version. With this improved data Take That are not in the top 5 of any year.
4 Dec 2012
Songs from 1995
I have a question: Why is Mariah Carey not listed in the top 5 song artists for 1995?
According to your data, she had the #2, #5 and #18 most successful songs of the year while Take That only had the #7 and #59 most successful songs of the same year. Please explain.
The issue is that the "top 5 song artists" list you were looking at was calculated on data set 1.10.0014 (as it said at the bottom of the page) and the song listing you're looking at was based on 2.1.0044
The charts you were looking at have been recalculated with the most recent version. With this improved data Take That are not in the top 5 of any year.