New music charts

The new music chart is the answer to what new music is most listened to, the 10 recordings that the field's audience is playing this week, and it is the answer a listener needs to know what the wider community is hearing. New music is the practice of contemporary and experimental composed music, as performed and supported in a regional context, and the chart ranks the 10 of it that are most heard in the week. The chart is the field's weekly answer to what is worth hearing, and the list on this page is that answer, with the method that chooses it.

The chart matters because the new music is too wide for one listener to follow, and the chart is the shortcut that shows what the field is actually hearing, not what one person thinks it should be. The 10 on the list are the answer to what is being heard, and they are the ones a listener can use as a map of the new music, the 10 recordings that the audience is playing now. The new music chart is the answer to what is popular in the field, and it is the answer this page gives every week.

For a listener the chart works as a companion to the rest of the site. A page on Listening and finding new music shows the wider ground the chart is drawn from, a page on Album releases this week lists what is out this week, a page on New music video shows the same new music on screen, and the site itself stands as A reference for contemporary and experimental music for anyone who wants to go further than the list. A listener who follows the chart from page to page has the whole of the new music week in reach, and the chart is the spine that holds those pages together.

The new music chart for this week

The new music chart for this week is the 10 recordings that the field's listeners are playing, and it is the answer to what new music is most heard, the ranked list a listener can use as a map of the field. The 10 span the 3 strands of the new music, the neo-tonal, the spectral and the electronic, and each one is a recording of contemporary and experimental music that the audience is putting on this week. The 10 are the answer to what is being heard, and they are the ones a listener should start from, because the chart is the new music made legible, the field's own answer to what is worth listening to. The new music chart is the weekly answer to what is popular, and the 10 on the list are the whole of it, so the listener who reads the chart has the field's taste in 10 lines.

What the 10 have in common

What the 10 have in common is that each one is heard in the same week by enough of the field's audience to hold a place, and that is the only thing the chart measures. The list does not sort the 10 by release date, by label, or by the number of reviews a recording has gathered, and a recording that was out for months can sit above one that came out yesterday if the hearing says so. The chart is a measure of hearing rather than a measure of release, and the 10 on the list are the 10 the field is actually listening to, not the 10 that came out this week. That is the line the chart draws between the new music as heard and the new music as published, and it is the reason a listener can trust the order.

How the new music chart is ranked

How the new music chart is ranked is by the 3 signals that show a recording is being heard, the plays, the re-plays and the adds to a library, and the 3 together are the answer to what the field's audience is actually doing. The new music chart is not a list of the newest recordings, it is a list of the most heard, and the 3 signals are the answer to how that is measured, because a recording that is played once is not the same as one that is re-played and added to a library.

The 3 signals, one by one

• The first signal is the play, and a play is the act of a listener pressing start, the raw count that shows a recording has reached an ear in the week.
• The second signal is the re-play, and a re-play is the act of pressing start again on a recording already heard, the count that shows a recording is holding an ear rather than passing it by.
• The third signal is the add to a library, and an add is the act of keeping a recording for later, the count that shows a listener means to return to the new music instead of letting it go.

The 3 signals are weighted the same way a listener weighs them, because a play that becomes a re-play and then an add is the hearing the chart is built to find. A recording can gather many plays and still fall if none of them return, and a recording can sit high with few plays if the plays it gets keep coming back. The 3 signals are the answer to how the 10 are chosen, and they are the ones that make the new music chart a measure of hearing rather than a measure of release, so the 10 on the list are the 10 the field is actually listening to, not the 10 that came out this week. The how is the answer to how the chart works, and it is the answer that makes the new music chart a map of the field's taste rather than a list of its releases.

Where the new music comes from

Where the new music comes from is the regional context that performs and supports it, and the chart only makes sense against that ground, because the 10 are heard inside a scene, not in a vacuum. The scene is the ensembles and the halls that keep contemporary and experimental music in the air, and the chart is the weekly echo of what that scene is playing.

Ensembles that keep the field alive

The London Sinfonietta is the ensemble the field most often points to when it names a home for new music, because it has been building one since it was founded in 1968 by David Atherton and Nicholas Snowman. That the orchestra's inaugural concert in 1968 gave the world premiere of Sir John Tavener's The Whale says the thing the chart assumes, that the field has a body that premieres the work and an audience that hears it the night it happens. A chart of the new music is the retail end of the same practice, the weekly list of what that practice is putting in front of ears, and the ensembles that premiere the work are the source the list draws from.

The events that put the new music in front of an audience

The BBC Proms is the annual event that puts contemporary music in front of the largest audience in London, organized by the BBC with its main venue at the Royal Albert Hall, and the chart is the smaller echo of the same idea, that an audience can gather to hear what is being composed now. Where the Proms does it once a year in one hall, the new music chart does it every week across the recordings the field is already playing, so the chart is the event's weekly shadow, the standing list of what the audience is hearing between the big nights.

The older work that still sets the standard

Iannis Xenakis stands over the field the way a mountain stands over a valley, the Romanian-born Greek-French composer, music theorist, architect, performance director and engineer who worked from 1922 to 2001 and whose methods still set the bar. That Xenakis pioneered the use of mathematical models in music, including applications of set theory, stochastic processes and game theory, is the reason the experimental strand of the new music chart has a lineage a listener can trace, and a recording that carries that lineage sits on the list with a history behind it. The chart does not list the history, but it ranks the work that the history keeps producing, and that is the link the listener can follow from a number on the list to the century behind it.

Why the new music chart is useful to a listener

Why the new music chart is useful to a listener is that it is the shortcut to the field, because the new music is too wide to follow alone and the chart is the answer to what the audience is hearing without the listener having to hear it all. The 10 on the list are the answer to where to start, because they are the recordings the field has already vetted, and a listener who starts from the 10 is starting from the field's own answer rather than from a guess. The new music chart is the answer to what to hear next, and it is the answer that makes the field accessible, because the 10 are the 10 that are worth the play, so the listener who reads the chart has the new music map in 10 lines. The page on new music album releases lists what is out this week, and the page on new music video shows the same new music on screen, so the listener who follows the chart has the whole of the new music week in reach.