| TopHit | |
| Founders: | Igor Kraev, Vadim Botnaruk |
| Key People: | Igor Kraev, Pavel Balashov |
| Location: | San Jose, CA, United States |
| Industry: | Show business |
| Products: | Aggregation and distribution of genuine songs, testing of songs, audio recognition software TopHit Spy, payment and donation system TopHit Pay, music radio monitoring, music charts |
TopHit is an internet platform for music distribution, airplay monitoring and chart publishing. Originating from Ukraine and Russia, it now works on global scale. It offers a variety of functions, main of them regular statistical music charts based on data from radio broadcasts and musical internet services such as YouTube and Spotify. Musicians are able to upload their songs and promote them via TopHit. The songs from Russian and worldwide singers become aggregated, tested, distributed and rotated on radio using TopHit's capabilities. Promotion of music videos is also available, as well as donations collecting system for supporting artists. Permanent users and partners of TopHit include over 5700 musicians, music groups, DJs and tens of record labels, including Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, BMG, Black Star Inc., Velvet Music and others.
Nowadays, TopHit assists in promoting about 90% of songs on radio and over 60% of hit songs on YouTube and Spotify. TopHit's services are available for 1070 radio stations and 75 TV channels in 38 countries including Russia, Ukraine, CIS countries, European countries, Middle East countries, US and Canada. Weekly audience of TopHit's partner broadcasters is estimated to be over 200 million of listeners and watchers. Universal Music Group qualifies TopHit as the most reliable source of music radio charts in Russia.[1] Artists and critics emphasize that TopHit is considered firstly the professional tool for music industry, and only secondly as mass media resource.
TopHit's chart leaders are awarded annually at a ceremony called Top Hit Music Awards.[2] There are also Top Hit Hall of Fame and annual concerts called Top Hit Live!.
The Dialog project became the prototype of TopHit Kim Breitburg, Evgeny Fridlyand and Vadim Botnaruk search for and promote young artists through regional radio stations. Each of the 50 radio stations participating in Dialogue presented two songs of "their" local artist to a multimillion audience. After six months of rotation, the listeners of each station voted on the best songs and artists. The most famous "graduates" of Dialogue are Nikolai Trubach, Konstantin and Valery Meladze. The future founders of TopHit, Igor Kraev and Vadim Botnaruk, were the program directors of the radio stations participating in Dialogue Crimean Radio Rocks from Sevastopol and Radio Set from Mykolaiv.
2002, July-August Igor Kraev, with the participation of Vadim Botnaruk, came up with a system of online distribution of musical novelties to regional radio stations. The prototype of the platform has been tested on the subdomain radio.ars-records.ru of the record label ARS-Records since the fall of 2002.
2003, March 27 Igor Kraev and Vadim Botnaryuk launch a new platform for online distribution of songs to radio stations on the mp3fm.ru domain; more than 50 regional radio stations in Russia and CIS countries, dozens of young artists and even Russian pop stars, such as Alyona Sviridova, Vladimir Kuzmin, Leonid Agutin, Alla Pugacheva, Murat Nasyrov, Ilya Lagutenko become mp3fm.ru partners.
2003, November 1 attempted raider seizure of the platform through gaining control over the domain mp3fm.ru, the work of the site stops.
2003, November 3 Igor Kraev registers the domain tophit.ru and the service is relaunched at tophit.ru. In the same month, TopHit starts publishing a weekly updated Weekly General Airplay Top Hit 100 radio chart, which allows tracking the statistics of popular hits on air. In November 2003, the first major network radio station, Russkoe Radio Ukraine, becomes a partner of TopHit.
In 2004, the monthly December Top Radio Hits chart and the annual radio singles chart were published for the first time; according to TopHit, the best radio track of 2003 in Russia and CIS countries was the song "Ocean and Three Rivers" performed by Valery Meladze and VIA Gra.
On February 13, 2003 the largest Russian radio network "Europe plus" became a partner of TopHit, which was soon joined by other leading Moscow radio broadcasters Autoradio, Russkoye Radio, Love Radio, Maximum, Nashe Radio and others. In April the first live concert TopHit Live! 2004 with the participation of Russian pop stars.
In 2005, the final (for 2004) radio chart of the most popular hits and the annual artist chart were published for the first time. TopHit radio named Irakliy, Glukoz'u, Hi-Fi and Uma2rman as the best artists of 2004, while the hit of the year was "Vika" by the band Korni.
2005, April 20 Sony Music Entertainment becomes TopHit's record label partner, later joined by Universal Music (26.07.2005) and Warner Music (20.10.2005).
In December 2005 the number of TopHit partner radio stations reached 350, the largest radio networks of Russia and CIS countries also became TopHit partners during 2005: AvtoRadio, DFM, Humor FM, Dorozhnoe Radio, Russkoey Radio, Nashe Radio, Love Radio and others.
In January 2006, separate annual charts of Russian-language radio hits and artists are published for the first time; the most popular artists of 2005 were Brothers Grim, Uma2rman, Valeria and Dima Bilan, and the track of the year on the radio was the song "From a Clean Slate" by Dmitry Malikov.
Already in February, the number of TopHit partner radio stations reached 400, and the number of Moscow radio stations participating in the TopHit chart reached 18. In 2007, TopHit received the A. Popov Award "for the great contribution to the development of Russian radio. A. Popov Award "for a great contribution to the development of Russian-language radio broadcasting abroad".
In June 2007, online distribution of music videos for TV channels was launched, and on January 19, Vadim Botnaruk died; the cause of his death was severe injuries caused by unknown criminals on the evening of January 15 in the courtyard of the house in Moscow where one of TopHit's founders lived.
2008, June copyright holders get the opportunity to upload their content to TopHit independently. 2009, February was the year of the launch of an online pre-testing system for new songs by radio station music editors, labels and artists themselves.
2010, February TopHit registers its trademark in Ukraine and launches the service on the domain tohit.ua.
2010, March all new music became available to TopHit partner radio stations in uncompressed .wav format. 2010, October production and distribution of the radio and TV program "Top Hit Chart", an hour-long hit parade of the best songs of the week.
2011, January for the first time separate final TopHit radio charts for Russia and Ukraine were published.
In February 2011, for the first time, an annual report on the situation in the radio air of Russia and CIS countries was presented[3], compiled by Igor Kraev based on the results of analyzing TopHit's annual airtime statistics.
Since 2013, the annual Top Hit Music Awards Russia ceremony has been held to recognize the highest achievements of artists, authors and record companies in radio airplay and on the Internet. Legendary Russian performers, authors and producers become members of the "TopHit Hall of Fame" Top Hit Hall Of Fame.
2013, September — TopHit moves the platform's phono library from an American radio format grid including Contemporary Hit Radio (CHR), Adult Contemporary (AC), Hot AC, Urban, etc. formats to a simpler format system such as Pop, Dance, Rock, Rap, Jazz, etc.
2015, January — version 3.0 of the TopHit platform is launched, and in March 2015 TopHit signs a partnership agreement with Google and starts publishing the YouTube Russia chart and the Radio & YouTube Russia chart.
2016, January — TopHit has exclusively published for the first time the YouTube Russia charts for 2015 performer and music video charts, as well as the consolidated annual charts Top 100 Radio & YouTube Artists Russia, Top 200 Radio & YouTube Hits Russia.
In July 2007, TopHit launched its own radio air monitoring system and TopHit Spy telegram bot, which allows tracking the appearance of hits on the air of more than 800 radio stations in real time.
In 2019, the number of TopHit partner radio stations exceeded 1000 for the first time, and the geography of the platform expanded to 30 countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the United States. In April 2019, the TopHit record label was launched.
In April 2020, Top Hit Music Awards Ukraine honored the best artists, authors and record labels in Ukraine for the first time. In May of the same year, the TopHit Pay system was launched, allowing TopHit users to send donations to artists.
In March 2021, TopHit becomes Spotify's chart publishing partner for the streaming platform.
In September 2021, the system of testing new songs on TopHit will be updated. From now on, all songs are ranked on a 10-point scale, and their rating is influenced not only by the preliminary estimates of radio stations, but also by the sum of the song's airplay on the radio and views of the music video on YouTube.
In November of the same year TopHit published the 1st issue of Top Hit Chart Ukraine program. Jerry Heil became the host of the first issue. The next episodes, along with Jerry Heil, will also be hosted by Artem Pivovarov, MamaRika, Anna Trincher, and other stars of the Ukrainian scene.
In 2023, the presentation of an updated single portal on the domain tophit.com takes place.[4]
TopHit is a 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.
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 (featuring 600-800 successfully tested new releases from the past two months) and Golden Hits (comprising over 200,000 radio hits from the past 30 years).Approximately 60% of these songs are in English, while the remainder are performed in Russian, Spanish, German, Romanian, Ukrainian, Korean, and other languages.
Copyright holders (authors, performers, music groups, DJs, record labels) upload up to 5 new music videos for TV channels and 25-30 new songs to TopHit every day. New music that has successfully passed the test is made available for download by TopHit's partner radio stations and is included in the radio rotation.
Since 2009, TopHit has introduced online testing of all music novelties. Testing is carried out by music editors of TopHit partner radio stations. Depending on the test score of the track, a decision is made on its further placement on TopHit and promotion on the radio. Since 2021, testing has become continuous (preliminary testing before the song appears on the air, and subsequent on-air testing), the current rating of each track is measured by a 10-point scale, the degree of correspondence of the format of the tested track and the tester is taken into account automatically. The final rating of each track is exposed taking into account more than 10 factors with different weighting. The testing procedure consists of listening to a short version of a new track and then giving a "like" or "dislike" rating. Points, which a track gets in the course of preliminary (pre-air) testing, are subject to "inflation", depreciate and zero out in a few months. At the same time, "on-air" and "viewing" points are accumulated for each song that goes on air and on the streaming platforms. Therefore, in the end, the tracks with the most radio airplay, YouTube views, and Spotify listens have the highest ratings.
In January 2004 TopHit published its first monthly chart Top Radio Hits and annual chart of radio singles and chart of popular musicians on radio. Per TopHit, the best track of 2003 on radio in Russia and CIS countries was the song "Ocean and three rivers", performed by Valeriy Meladze and the band VIA Gra. Since 2003 to 2016 statistics were based on reports about airplays weekly provided by radio stations themselves. Anatoly Veizenfeld and Mikhail Sergeev of Звукорежиссёр (Zvukorezhissyor: Soundproducer) magazine wrote, "That is the way, how the feedback comes from the broadcasters in this project, and it allows them to receive the data about each song rotation on air".[5]
In 2017 Top Hit introduced digital multi-channel tuners and launched separate onair monitoring in Moscow, Saint-Petersburg and Kyiv. For playlist recognition it began to use audio recognition system. Digital metadata transmitted by radiostations is also used. Number of partnering radiostations counts more than 1000. Since 2015 TopHit also publishes charts from YouTube as well as joint chart Radio & YouTube. Spotify was added in 2021. In 2019 an audio recognition system TopHit Spy was implemented. Charts include: overall charts, weekly charts from Moscow and Kiyiv, monthly charts and yearly charts. Advanced users can use extended features such as charts from all partner stations. Charts are divided into weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, decennial.[6] TopHit statistics are most relevant for the territories of Russia (including Moscow), Ukraine (including Kyiv), CIS countries and Eastern Europe countries.
TopHit charts are usually covered by mass media.
TV and radio shows dedicated to TopHit charts are produced for mass media. Muz TV TV channel aired the TV show Top Hit Chart from 2010 until 2013 where 30 top songs were regularly announced. Advertology.ru monitoring service found the show to be in top-10 of all music TV shows in Russia, with average share 3.7% and rating 0.7%.[7]
Nowadays programs with the same name are aired regularly at about 50 radio stations in ex-USSR countries. Ukrainian version of the show was launched in November 2021 and is hosted by Jerry Heil, Artyom Pivovarov and other Ukrainian popular singers.
Annual concerts with participation of leaders of the rating and other Ukrainian and Russian pop stars (since 2005).
Automatic radio air monitoring system to determine the most frequently played songs. Since 2017, TopHit began to independently monitor the airwaves of partner radio stations around the clock to obtain data (the number of stations at this point approached a thousand).
This is a system for collecting donations ("donates") for musicians.
See main article: Top Hit Music Awards. Top Hit Music Awards is an annual awards ceremony established by TopHit in 2013. Russian artists, authors and producers are honored for outstanding achievements in popular music and record business, based on the data of song rotation on air of the radio stations. Ceremonies are held annually in Moscow. In April 2020, for the first time, the Top Hit Music Awards Ukraine recognized the best performers, authors, and record labels in Ukraine.
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.[8] 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.[9]
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".[10]
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.[11] 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.[12] In the journal Kompania (Company), 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."[13]
In RMA (a course of lectures for professionals in the music business), 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".[14]
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" (Air God) Music Awards (a music version of Popov's Award in the area of radio broadcast). Tophit annual charts are also covered in the mass media.