The first chart published by Billboard was 'Last Week's Ten Best Sellers Among The Popular Songs', a list of best-selling sheet music, in July 1913. The charts are released each Tuesday with an issue date the following Saturday. Radio airplay song charts, however, follow the Monday-to-Sunday cycle (previously Wednesday-to-Tuesday). The weekly sales and streams charts are monitored on a Friday-to-Thursday cycle since July 2015 previously it was on a Monday-to-Sunday cycle. For the Billboard 200 album chart, streams and track sales are included in addition to album sales. The charts can be ranked according to sales, streams, or airplay, and for main song charts such as the Hot 100 song chart, all three data are used to compile the charts. The two most important charts are the Billboard Hot 100 for songs and Billboard 200 for albums, and other charts may be dedicated to a specific genre such as R&B, country, or rock, or they may cover all genres. Billboard biz, the online extension of the Billboard charts, provides additional weekly charts, as well as year-end charts.

The results are published in Billboard magazine. The Billboard charts tabulate the relative weekly popularity of songs and albums in the United States and elsewhere.

Youtube soft rock songs