Billboard 200
American weekly album chart / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Billboard 200 is a record chart ranking the 200 most popular music albums and EPs in the United States. It is published weekly by Billboard magazine to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists. Sometimes, a recording act is remembered for its "number ones" that outperformed all other albums during at least one week. The chart grew from a weekly top 10 list in 1956 to become a top 200 list in May 1967, acquiring its existing name in March 1992. Its previous names include the Billboard Top LPs (1961–1972), Billboard Top LPs & Tape (1972–1984), Billboard Top 200 Albums (1984–1985) and Billboard Top Pop Albums (1985–1992).
The chart is based mostly on sales – both at retail and digital – of albums in the United States. The weekly sales period was Monday to Sunday when Nielsen started tracking sales in 1991, but since July 2015, the tracking week begins on Friday (to coincide with the Global Release Day of the music industry) and ends on Thursday. A new chart is published the following Tuesday, post dated to the Saturday of that week, four days later.[1] The chart's streaming schedule is also tracked from Friday to Thursday.[2] New music is released by the music industry to the American market on Fridays. Digital downloads of albums are included in Billboard 200 tabulation. Albums that are not licensed for retail sale in the United States (yet purchased in the U.S. as imports) are not eligible to chart. A long-standing policy rendering titles that are sold exclusively by specific retail outlets (such as Walmart and Starbucks) ineligible for charting, was reversed on November 7, 2007, and took effect in the issue dated November 17, 2007.[3]
On December 13, 2014, Billboard began to include on-demand streaming and digital track sales (as measured by Nielsen SoundScan) using a new algorithm with data from all major on-demand audio subscription and online music sales services in the U.S.[4][5] Starting on the issue dated January 18, 2020, Billboard updated its method again by incorporating video data from YouTube, along with visual plays from digital platforms like Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, Vevo and, as of the issue dated March 23, 2021, from Facebook.[6][7]
As of the issue dated May 18, 2024, the number-one album on the chart is The Tortured Poets Department by Taylor Swift.[8]