TopHit

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TopHit

Industry	Show business
Founded	2003; 21 years ago (2003)
Founders	Igor Kraev, Vadim Botnaruk
Headquarters	Russia, Ukraine, United States
Key people	Igor Kraev, Pavel Balashov
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
Website	tophit.com

TopHit is an

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!.

History

The idea of the TopHit project came out of the 1978-formed Soviet music band called

Vadim Botnaruk worked at one of the radio stations, and in 2002 he joined efforts with his colleague Igor Kraev to use Internet for artist searching and voting for new hits. They established an Internet service for this, with the help of a record label ARS Records managed by Igor Krutoy. In early 2003 they entitled it mp3fm.ru.

Initially the website partnered with over 50 local radio stations, many new artists and some Russian showbiz establishment figures such as Alena Sviridova,

In January 2012, the final TopHit Ukraine radio charts for 2011 were published for the first time. The most popular artists on Ukrainian radio were Vera Brezhneva, Potap, Yolka and Ani Lorak. The most rotated hits were "Petals of Tears" by Dan Balan & Vera Brezhneva, "Real Life" by Vera Brezhneva and "You're the Best" by Vlad Darwin & Alyosha.

In 2013 the Top Hit Music Awards ceremony was held for the first time. Top Hit Hall of Fame was launched simultaneously. In 2015, TopHit became partners with Google to produce YouTube-based music charts: YouTube Russia and Radio & YouTube Russia. The next year music video charts were added along with charts Top 100 Radio & YouTube Artists Russia, Top 200 Radio & YouTube Hits Russia.

In 2017, TopHit Spy service was launched to monitor music on partner radios automatically (over 800 stations by that time). In 2019 there were more than 1000 stations and project's geography expanded onto 30 countries of Europe, Asia, Middle East and the United States. TopHit's own record label started to work also in 2019.

In January 2019, TopHit published the annual YouTube Ukraine charts for the first time: the artist and video charts, and the Radio & YouTube Ukraine charts. The main hit of these charts was the song "Plakala" by

In 2020 TopHit Pay payment system was launched. It's main purpose is collection of donations for musicians. In 2021, TopHit became partners with Spotify streaming service to provide more charts.

In March, 2023, the Internet portal was re-launched under the new domain name tophit.com; a concert was held to commemorate.^[3]

Functionality

TopHit is a platform for aggregating, distributing and promoting digital music content. Authors, artists, producers and

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.

Aggregation and distribution

One of the main functions of TopHit is the aggregation and distribution of new radio hits to radio stations. Since 2007, TopHit has been distributing music videos on TV.

As of 1 November 2021, TopHit's music library includes more than 150 thousand radio hits, 50% of which are in English, 45% in Russian, and about 5% in other European languages. The database contains over 10 thousand music videos. Copyright holders (authors, performers,

New song testing

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.

Charts

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

• Dima Bilan and David Guetta are found to be the most aired musicians. They each have over 30 million of registered airplays.
• MakSim is the only singer in the chart's history, who has had four number one songs within a calendar year ("Отпускаю", "Знаешь ли ты", "Ветром стать", "Мой рай" in 2007).
• MakSim has had seven consecutive number one hits, which is considered an unbreakable record for other artists.
• Elka is the only artist to have topped the Annual General Chart twice and Annual Russian Chart three times on Tophit.
• Elka is the only Russian artist who topped all of the Tophit charts simultaneously, in 2010–2011.
• "Provence", performed by Elka, spent 109 weeks on Tophit General 100.
• Yulia Savicheva is the only artist to self-replace at the top of Tophit Audience Choice Chart.
• "Love You Like a Love Song" by Selena Gomez & the Scene holds the record as the longest-running chart-toper of the Tophit single chart, spending 20 weeks at the first spot.

Top Hit Live! concerts

Annual concerts with participation of leaders of the rating and other Ukrainian and Russian pop stars (since 2005).

TopHit Spy

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).

TopHit Pay

This is a system for collecting donations ("donates") for musicians.

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.^[6] 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.^[7]

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".^[8]

Recognition

Experts from the

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".^[12]

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.

See also

• Music of Ukraine
• Music of Russia

References

External links

• Official website