Salon.com has a recent article which notes that for the first time ever, Billboard magazine, the source of the “Billboard Hot 100 Songs of the Week” countdown that has been a staple of the music industry for decades, will now incorporate digital sales and download of songs in their calculations of the most popular songs in the country. As the article explains,

The list was calculated for years using a combination of radio airplay and retail sales. That changed in the late 1990s, when the music industry largely phased out the single as a product. . . so for the last several years the rankings have been almost totally based on radio play. . . Nielsen SoundScan has been tabulating digital downloads for Billboard since 2003.

There were some initial problems accounting for different versions of songs, or all the places where the songs were available, but Billboard now feels comfortable enough with those counts to factor them in to the Hot 100 . . . Billboard’s move is another validation of the digital marketplace, one the music industry didn’t accept for many years . . .

Billboard also expects the change will add more variety to a singles chart that has been dominated by hip-hop over the past few years. That’s primarily because they are the most popular music styles of today, but it also reflects the habit of hip-hop radio stations of playing hits more often than, say, rock or country stations, Mayfield said. The chart does not reflect activity among songs illegally swapped.

As a socioloist, I find it fascinating and rather amazing how the Internet and information technology in general has changed the way people live, work, communicate, and have recreation is such a relatively short amount of time. Another sign that the information technology revolution is real and is here to stay.