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Billboard Hot 100

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The Billboard Hot 100 is a list of the current most popular music made by Billboard magazine. Rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking week for sales is each Monday to Sunday, while for radio play it is Wednesday to Tuesday.[1] A new chart is made and officially released to the public by Billboard on Thursday. Each chart is dated with the "week-ending" date of the Saturday two weeks after. Example:[2]

  • Monday, January 1 – sales tracking-week begins
  • Wednesday, January 3 – airplay tracking-week begins
  • Sunday, January 7 – sales tracking-week ends
  • Tuesday, January 9 – airplay tracking-week ends
  • Thursday, January 11 – new chart released, with issue date of Saturday, January 20.

The first number one song of the Hot 100 was "Poor Little Fool" by Ricky Nelson on August 4, 1958. As of the issue for the week ending January 31, 2026, the Hot 100 has had 1,185 different number-one hits. The current number-one song on the chart is "I Just Might" by Bruno Mars.[3]

History

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What has always been known as the Hot 100 existed for nearly 15 years as numerous charts, tracking and ranking the most popular singles of the day in several areas. During the 1940s and 1950s, popular singles were ranked in three significant charts:

  • Best Sellers In Stores—ranked the biggest selling singles in retail stores, as reported by merchants surveyed throughout the country (20 to 50 positions).
  • Most Played By Jockeys—ranked the most played songs on United States radio stations, as reported by radio disc jockeys and radio stations (20 to 25 positions).
  • Most Played In Jukeboxes—ranked the most played songs in jukeboxes across the United States (20 positions). This was one of the main outlets of measuring song popularity with the younger generation of music listeners, as many radio stations resisted adding rock 'n roll music to their playlists for many years.

Although officially all three charts had equal importance, many chart historians refer to the Best Sellers In Stores chart when referring to a song’s performance before the Hot 100. Billboard eventually created a fourth singles popularity chart that combined all aspects of a single’s performance (sales, airplay and jukebox activity), based on a point system that typically gave sales (purchases) more weight than radio airplay. On the week ending November 12, 1955, Billboard published The Top 100 for the first time. The Best Sellers In Stores, Most Played By Jockeys and Most Played In Jukeboxes charts continued to be published at the same time as the new Top 100 chart.

On June 17, 1957, Billboard stopped the Most Played In Jukeboxes chart, as the popularity of jukeboxes was less and radio stations incorporated more and more rock-oriented music into their play lists. The week ending July 28, 1958 was the final publication of the Most Played By Jockeys and Top 100 charts, both of which had Perez Prado's instrumental version of "Patricia" ascending to the top.

On August 4, 1958, Billboard started one main all-genre singles chart: the Hot 100. Although similar to the