TopHit
TopHit.com is a worldwide-oriented music chart website that includes internet platform for music distribution and airplay monitoring with generation of charts. As of 2024, TopHit has over 9,000 artists, songwriters, DJs, record labels, and music publishers. TopHit's services are utilized by more than 2,500 radio stations and 90 television channels across 45 countries, primarily in the US, UK, EU, Ukraine, Russia and the CIS. The platform's content library includes over 200,000 radio hit songs and more than 10,000 music videos. Universal Music has described TopHit as the most authoritative site for airplay monitoring in Russia. TopHit has been referenced by music critics and music producers as a key source for tracking the popularity of artists in Russia and the CIS.
Annually TopHit.com holds the live Top Hit Music Awards music ceremony that recognize the top radio and internet performers and their most popular hits, celebrating outstanding contributions to the music industry.
Functionality
TopHit is a social network-like internet platform for aggregating, distributing and promoting digital music content. Authors, artists, producers and record labels upload their works to TopHit website. Music radio stations and TV channels examine uploaded songs and are able to download the ones they find suitable for airing. Representatives of labels watch new artists and songs using TopHit to determine most interesting ones to work further with them.The website's own automated service TopHit Spy is aimed to monitor music broadcast at partner radio stations and to generate statistics of aired music. This data is used to form summary radio charts. As well, similar charts for YouTube and Spotify are available. Detailed play statistics for each song are given to rights holders — artists, authors, publishers and labels.
Formation of the TopHit content database
Producers and rights holders of musical content, upon registering with TopHit, upload their new works, phonograms and music videos to the platform. The TopHit content database is organized into two primary sections: Music Arrivals and Golden Hits. Approximately 60% of these songs are in English, while the remainder are performed in Russian, Spanish, German, Romanian, Ukrainian, Korean, and other languages.Testing new songs
Since 2009, TopHit has introduced online testing of all music arrivals. On the Homepage and the Music Arrivals page of TopHit, all new songs undergo testing. The testing procedure consists of listening to a short demo version of a new track and then giving a "like" or "dislike" rating.When forming a track's rating, TopHit considers both the song's parameters and the profiles of the radio stations or labels evaluating it. Ratings from radio stations, streaming platforms, and labels carry the most weight. After 2–3 days of testing, each track receives a rating on a 10-point scale.
The primary goal of testing is to help creators and rights holders objectively assess the potential of their hits before release and to select those for further promotion that have received the best feedback and ratings from music industry and media pros.
All preliminary song ratings on TopHit have a limited "shelf life." If a track does not get airplay on the radio or gain traction on the internet within six months after testing on TopHit, its "test" rating is reset. Subsequent ratings will only increase based on the accumulation of radio airplay, YouTube views, and streams on platforms like Spotify. Therefore, the highest ratings ultimately belong to tracks that have garnered the most radio airplay, YouTube views, and Spotify streams.
Song distribution and artist promotion
Promising tracks are downloaded by radio stations, added to their music libraries, and placed into rotation. Authors, artists, and labels can view detailed statistics on radio station activities concerning their content.Label representatives use TopHit charts and music statistics to monitor the emergence of interesting new music and performers. They then reach out to the artists' representatives to discuss potential collaboration opportunities.
Monitoring airplay: TopHit Spy
TopHit Spy is an automated airplay monitoring system designed to identify the most frequently played songs. Operating 24/7 in real-time, TopHit Spy tracks the broadcasts of over 2,500 radio stations across 45 countries and collects streaming statistics from Spotify and YouTube.The data gathered by TopHit Spy provides authors, performers, and rights holders on TopHit with detailed airplay and streaming statistics for their works and recordings. Additionally, it generates comprehensive airplay and streaming charts.
TopHit Music Charts
Based on the data collected, TopHit publishes airplay and streaming charts for the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Moldova, and Romania. The platform also releases consolidated charts reflecting airplay and streaming statistics from all the countries where TopHit operates, including data from YouTube and Spotify.TopHit charts are categorized into Radio Charts, YouTube Charts, Spotify Charts, and the All Media Chart, which uses both airplay and streaming data. Chart positions can represent tracks/videos or artists.
Charts on TopHit are updated on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual, and decadal basis. Subscribers to TopHit have access to reports for individual radio stations, extended charts with up to 500 positions, and charts for ongoing periods, such as the current week, month, and year.
The TopHit Golden Hits section is formatted as a consolidated chart of the most popular singles of the 21st century.
Chart milestones
- Dima Bilan and David Guetta are found to be the most aired musicians. They each have over 30 million of registered airplays.
- MakSim is the only singer in the chart's history, who has had four number one songs within a calendar year.
- MakSim has had seven consecutive number one hits, which is considered an unbreakable record for other artists.
- Elka is the only artist to have topped the Annual General Chart twice and Annual Russian Chart three times on Tophit.
- Elka is the only Russian artist who topped all of the Tophit charts simultaneously, in 2010–2011.
- "Provence", performed by Elka, spent 109 weeks on Tophit General 100.
- Yulia Savicheva is the only artist to self-replace at the top of Tophit Audience Choice Chart.
- "Love You Like a Love Song" by Selena Gomez & the Scene holds the record as the longest-running chart-toper of the Tophit single chart, spending 20 weeks at the first spot.
Top Hit Music Awards
Yolka singer, one of the most popular Russian singers, honors Top Hit Music Awards as a tool for determining artists by their real statistical popularity, not by decisions of some jury. This also emphasizes professional nature of the award. Yolka was awarded multiple times, including "Artist of the decade award", as Top Hit measurements show that she is extremely popular among Russian-speaking listeners with over 19 million of airplays in 10 years.
There is a Top Hit Hall of Fame as a part of the award. Every year 10 nominees are announced by partnering radio stations, determined by voting. Then past Hall of Fame members elect 2 of them.
TimeOut showbiz magazine coined the ceremony a metaphor of "Unbiased Prize of Numbers which is based exceptionally on statistics and is not subject to objections".
Recognition
Experts from the InterMedia news agency, Evgeny Safronov and Aleksey Mazhaev, expressed the opinion that the charts published by the portal could not fully reflect the artist popularity in Russia, as Tophit along with Moskva.FM deal with radio industry research. Nevertheless, the experts qualified the portal hit parades as professional. Boris Barabanov also marked that Tophit.ru activity is more familiar to the music industry professionals than public at large. "One of the most effective chart-based sources is Tophit.ru. It's rather a reliable, in professional circles, mechanism that allows the rightholders to place their compositions on the website and make them available for station download. The latter ones, in their turn, having downloaded the song, send reports on its rotation, if this song is put on air, which shows its popularity. Tophit.ru promotion model is considered very effective on the market," wrote the author. Guru Ken called Tophit the leader in the area of media content delivery to radio stations. In the journal Kompania, Anastasia Markina also mentioned the portal as the leader in its professional sphere and wrote, "Tophit.ru took under its wing over 400 stations and 60 TV-channels. On the other hand, over a thousand rights holders, among which are the majority of record labels, including the majors Sony Music, Universal Music, Warner Music and EMI/Gala Records», work with this website."In RMA, Dmitry Konnov, Universal Music Russia CEO, speaking of Russian music promotion perspectives, underlined the fact that "if you want to reach popularity, I advise to write and perform Russian music, promote Russian artists and keep a close watch at Tophit.ru but not get lost in admiration at Billboard".
In 2010, the summary statistical data of the portal for the year of 2009 became the foremost source in defining the nominees for "Bog Efira" Music Awards. Tophit annual charts are also covered in the mass media.