Editorial

Bruno

Created ChartFM and writes the articles that explain how the site works, using numbers from the community itself.

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Articles

• How levels and XP work
  The Level on your profile is a reading of the XP your account has piled up since you joined. It is not currency, it is never spent, and it grants no advantage. This piece explains what pays XP, how much each action is worth, and why the curve gets steeper after Level 25.
• How the Global 100 counts artists
  There is no vote for artists on ChartFM. The artist ranking is derived from the songs, and two rules explain almost every position that looks odd.
• What CriticsFM is
  Charts measure loose songs. CriticsFM exists for the rest: scoring a record, writing about it and following what the community is playing all the way through.
• Why the Global 100 freezes and does not change afterwards
  A chart published after the cutoff does not enter that week. And the published ranking is not recalculated later, which is the only way peaks and weeks on top mean anything.
• What your profile keeps from your history
  You do not have to log anything. The editions of your chart are added up into tables showing who you played most, what stayed longest and what has led.
• Daily or weekly chart: which to choose
  You can keep two charts, and the second can be daily. The cadence changes what each position is worth, how movement is calculated and what the chart can show.
• How Global Airplay and Global Albums work
  Airplay and Albums count what played, not what was picked. Connecting a Last.fm account enters you automatically, and a cap keeps one person on loop from deciding the top.
• How the global genre charts work
  Genre charts are not separate votes. They are filters applied to the same charts that form the Global 100, and what decides whether a song enters is its tag.
• How to discover new music without relying on an algorithm
  If you feel like you always hear the same thing even with the whole world available, the problem is probably not a lack of options. It is the shape of the recommendation.
• How the ChartFM Cup works
  The Cup is the most playful part of the site. The mechanic is an artist tournament, but the way the result is presented is what makes it work.
• What your chart size says about how you listen
  Looking at the thousands of charts already published on ChartFM, the sizes cluster around very few numbers. The distribution says something about how people organise their own taste.
• How the ChartFM catalogue avoids the same song twice
  Remasters, single versions, features inside the title. Every music platform fights the same problem, and ChartFM's answer contains a deliberate choice worth explaining.
• How communities work, and the rules almost nobody configures
  A community on ChartFM is not just a feed with a name. It runs its own weekly chart, fed by its members' charts, and the owner can rewrite almost all of that chart's rules.
• How chart points are calculated
  Every published chart hands out points that feed the Global 100. Understanding the curve explains how a song can appear on few charts and still lead.
• How the Album Club works
  It is the slowest part of ChartFM, and deliberately so. One record per round, heard by the community at the same time, and only then discussed.
• How Push works, and why the scoring rewards passion over consensus
  Push is ChartFM's discovery contest. The mechanic is easy to describe, but the scoring formula has a consequence that changes how it pays to vote.
• Why almost nobody gives a low score
  Looking at the album scores published on the site, the overwhelming majority sit above 70. Anything below 50 is rare. That does not mean the community is too generous.
• What the ChartFM community listens to, according to its own data
  When someone signs up to ChartFM, they pick the genres they listen to. Adding those choices up draws a map of the community's taste, and it holds a few surprises.
• Why listening to a full album still pays off
  The playlist solved the problem of finding good music and created another one: almost nobody plays a record from start to finish. It is worth understanding what drops out of that trade.
• How to read chart movement
  Every chart shows more than the current position. Next to each song sit numbers that describe its trajectory, and that is where reading a chart gets interesting.
• How to build your first weekly chart
  Building a chart means picking the songs that defined your week and putting them in order. It sounds simple, and it is, but a few decisions make the result far more interesting to read and to compare later.