When I first started surfing the Web about 2 years ago, there were very few sites devoted to Country Music. Since then, the number of sites has grown exponentially and many of those sites are taking advantage of the Internet technologies to bring fans a whole new experience in this genre. The problem that faces me, as an editor, or you, trying to find useful information, is where to start. Today, there are Web sites that cover:
- Country Music charts - letting fans know how the singles and albums from their favorite artists are doing commercially;
- Country radio stations - letting fans know what is happening at their local radio station and giving them an opportunity to participate interactively by voting for their favorite songs or even listening to the broadcast over the internet;
- Country Music artists - letting fans know about their favorite stars and where they'll be on tour;
- Country Music record labels - letting fans know about the music of their favorite artists and even letting them sample audio and video clips (30-second samples) from the artists albums;
- Country Music Magazines (also known as "e-zines") - letting fans know a wide variety of information on Country Music, including album reviews, fan club listings and articles on selected artists; and
- Country Music fan pages - letting fans know about their favorite artist; these types of pages are often a combination of a lot of the information covered above. The quality of these sites vary considerably.
I thought I would start with some information about the various sites that provide chart information on Country Music, although these sites may provide other information about Country Music as news warrants. Billboard Magazine publishes what is probably the most widely recognized set of music charts. A chart of the top twenty country albums from the current edition, with new charts being published every Thursday evening (ET), is available for free. You can also get the Number 1 selections from each of the charts, including the Country Singles chart. To read the complete album or singles charts, you can subscribe to a pay service; details and costs can be found on the Billboard site.
Radio & Records publishes another charting service that is widely used in the industry. This site provides a free listing of the top twenty Country singles and is compiled by monitoring a selection of radio stations around the country. I'm not sure how their chart dates compare to Billboard's: the dates are different by about a week but they could be covering the same time periods (or this one could be a week old). There is also information here on radio station rankings within a particular geographic market, but the data is about six months old.
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