ARIA Charts

The ARIA Charts are the main Australian music sales charts, issued weekly by the Australian Recording Industry Association. The charts are a record of the highest selling singles and albums in various genres in Australia. ARIA became the official Australian music chart in June 1988, succeeding the Kent Music Report which had been Australia's national charts since 1974.

History

The Go-Set charts were Australia's first national singles and albums charts published from 2 February 1966 until 24 August 1974. Succeeding Go-Set, the Kent Music Report began issuing the national top 100 charts in Australia from May 1974. The compiler, David Kent, also published Australia's national charts from 1940–1974 in a retrospective fashion using state based data. In April 1983, the Australian Recording Industry Association commenced licensing the Kent Music Report chart. The first printed national top 50 chart available in record stores, branded the Countdown chart, was dated the week ending 10 July 1983.

Record chart

A record chart is a ranking of recorded music according to popularity during a given period of time. Examples of music charts are the Hit parade, the Billboard Hot 100 or Top 40.

Many different criteria are used in different charts, including sales of records, cassettes and compact discs, the amount of radio airplay, and since the introduction of digital technology, the number of downloads and the amount of streaming activity.

Some charts are specific to a particular musical genre and most to a particular geographical location (although download charts are not easily pinned down in this way). The most common period of time covered by a chart is one week with the chart being printed or broadcast at the end of this time. Summary charts for years and decades are then calculated from their component weekly charts. Component charts have become an increasingly important way to measure the commercial success of individual songs.

Chart hit