Introduction to the real Jamendo Charts

Free music is wonderful both for the artists and for the fans. For the artists because they have no strings attached with a label who is eating up the biggest part of the money coming in from the sales (ok ok, they are doing PR for them as well, but if you ask me, that's a very expensive PR...). And for the fans, because they can do a lot with the music as long as they respect the license under which it has been published. Jamendo is a platform for exactly this: artists who publish their music and fans who listen to it, download it and spread the word.

There are lots of genres on Jamendo: pop, rock, electronica, ambient, new age, classic, jazz, hip-hop and you name it... Litterally everybody finds something they like. There's a Top 100 tracks section on the website, reflecting the most listened to tracks. It's an "all genres top 100 singles" as billboard might call it. There are a few downsides to this top 100 and that's why I've created this blog.

• It's too eclectic. I decided to make an "instrumental"-top and a "vocal"-top. You might say I should have made a top for every single genre but that would be too much work not only because it's not always easy to categorize a given song.
• New people discover Jamendo every day. Usually, they first go to the top 100 listing and start discovering great tracks. This way, they help these songs to stay in the top 100 or even the top 10. Of course, this means that the tracks found there really are popular and it probably also means the quality is top. However, people wanting to listen to a "free music charts" every week get the same tracks every week, sometimes the ranks are a little bit shuffled, but it's really too repetitive.
• Last (and that's really a small downside), you cannot play the charts from the bigger number all the way down to number 1 (without making a custom playlist).

What I am doing here is take Jamendo's official top 100 and calculate the ranking by taking into account the release date (on Jamendo) of the track. This way, songs that have been released 2, 3, 4 or even 5 years ago don't clutter the top any more, giving more chance to fresh releases.

This week a managed to get the top 13 for both charts. Give me some time and the number I review might increase. After a warming-up phase I also plan to write something about the artists and the songs. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.