The Canadian music charts are a collection of record charts reflecting the music consumption of people in Canada. RPM and Billboard are the biggest publications to have published Canada's official charts for decades. However, the first Canadian music chart was published by radio station CHUM AM in 1957. The oldest music publication in Canada, RPM launched music charts in 1964, compiling the country's top albums and singles. It remained the nation's music industry standard chart until they ceased publication in November 2000.
Nielsen SoundScan began tracking retail sales in November 1996.[1] It was published every Wednesday and also published on Thursday by Jam!/Canoe. The singles chart also appeared in Billboard until March 2006, when Billboard stopped publishing the retail singles chart in favor of the Canadian Digital Song Sales chart. The Canadian Hot 100 was launched by Billboard on June 7, 2007, and remains the standard music chart in Canada for songs, alongside Billboard Canadian Albums for albums.
The oldest Canadian music chart was CHUM Chart, which debuted on May 27, 1957, under the name CHUM's Weekly Hit Parade by Toronto radio station CHUM AM. It was considered the de facto national chart of Canada until 1964, when RPM magazine was founded and CHUM lost its special status and became just a regular single-station chart. RPM (1964–2000) was the oldest music industry publication in Canada and was considered the country's "music bible".[2] [3] [4] It published Canadian national record charts from June 22, 1964 until its final issue on November 13, 2000.[3] RPM also created Juno Awards,[5] which remains the biggest music award ceremony in Canada and their equivalent of Grammy Awards in the United States.[6]
In the 1960s, the Canadian music industry was disparate and regionally focused, and English-speaking Canadian artists were often overlooked in favour of American acts. To encourage a more national focus and ensure that domestic artists were promoted across Canada, the Maple Leaf System (MLS) was set up in 1969. The MLS produced its own national singles chart,[7] which Billboard magazine reproduced as Canada's entry in its weekly Hits of the World section.[8] The MLS struggled to achieve widespread support in Canada, however, particularly as participating radio stations failed to give the nominated Canadian records the requisite national airplay.[9]
In 1983, The Record magazine began publishing Canadian music charts to rival RPM. The Retail Singles chart of The Record was based on a national sample of single sales reports given by Canadian retailers and rack jobbers. The chart was associated with Canada in the Hits of the World section of American magazine Billboard. The Record ceased publishing the chart due to a lack of sales reports owing to declining single sales in the country.
In November 1996, Nielsen SoundScan started compiling sales charts in Canada.[10] When the chart was started in 1996, there were 200 positions (with the top 50 being published by Jam! and the top 10 being published by Billboard). By the late 1990s, physical single sales in Canada had greatly declined. In April 1999, Billboard described Canada's singles market as "dire" and Doug Spence, Director of the Canadian operations of Soundscan, said: "there's no singles market here".[11] Due to the limited amount of commercially available physical singles, singles began remaining on the chart for lengthy periods of time. Elton John's charity single "Candle in the Wind '97"/"Something About the Way You Look Tonight" spent 45 weeks at number one despite selling only one million copies in its first two years of release in the country.[12] It stayed in the top twenty for three years.[13]
With of the growing popularity of digital music downloads in the mid-2000s, physical single sales in Canada declined further, and in March 2006, Billboard reported that most of the then-recent number-one singles on the Canadian Singles Chart had sold less than 200 copies.[14] In March 2006, Nielsen Entertainment Canada created the Canadian Digital Songs Chart, which tracked sales of digital music downloads, and Billboard stopped publishing the Canadian Singles Chart in favor of the new chart. However, the chart continued to be published on Jam!.[15]
Billboard introduced their own singles chart for Canada, the Canadian Hot 100, on June 7, 2007. Similar to the US Billboard Hot 100, the chart is based on digital download single sales and streaming data from Nielsen SoundScan and radio audience levels from Nielsen BDS.[16]