The official music charts in Germany are gathered and published by the company Media Control GfK International on behalf of Bundesverband Musikindustrie (Federal Association of Phonographic Industry). Media Control GfK International is the provider of weekly Top-100 single/album, Compilation, Jazz Top-30, Classic Top-20, Schlager Longplay Top-20, Music-DVD Top-20 and the official-Dance (ODC) Top-50 charts.[1]
Official charts in Germany are presented by various companies who release charts on a weekly basis, online or on television. One example would be VIVA music channel which was founded in 1993[2]. Another two examples would be MusicLoad[3] and MIX 1[4]both of which are online associations who post almost all the charts on weekly bases published by Media Control GfK International. The entire batch of the official charts; however, is presented by online enterprise called Charts.de which happens to be the subsidiary of Media Control GfK International.[5]
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Charts have been available in Germany since late 1953 ever since the Jukebox was taken to Germany from USA. During this era, the magazine called Der Automatenmarkt (The Vending Machine Market) would once a month publish a list of the most popular songs in Germany, which would have 30 positions mostly. The magazine remained in existence being the only one providing a complete list of the successful songs in Germany until 1959.
In June 1959, the second institution began its monthly chart determination, Der Musikmarkt(The Music Market).[6] The charts provided by the latter appeared to be more mature in a sense that it provided not only what the former did but it also presented the combination of sales fugures and airplay entries which was to be the present record-sales determination. The first number one hit that appeared in the Music-Market-Charts was Freddy Quinn's Die Gitarre und das Meer, which in the meantime was the number one on the charts of The Vending Machine Market.
The Music-Market (also could be referred as Music-Market-Hit-Parade) after delivering the charts for a short period of time became the official German chart provider. However, it took nearly one year for the Music-Market-Hit-Parade to stabilize its strongly fluctuating range within chart positions which would, in the beginning, run from 20 to 70 sometimes during a single publishing. In 1960, charts would still appear in the magazine once a month, on the 15th of every issue but with consistent 50 positions, which would on rare occasions run up to 54 mostly.
By the beginning of 1965, the number of positions were reduced to 40 spots, however, twice a month this time around, once on the first of the month and also on the 15th. This did not last more than six years as in 1971 The Music Market began to deliver its charts on weekly basis, the number of which were increased back to 50 spots.
It wasn't until 1977, however, that Media Control enterprise came into the picture and started its chart determination again on weekly basis as the former, the company which is still responsible for the official German charts to date.[6] Media Control did change the number of the chart positions several times in its turn as well. From January 1980 the company began to deliver the Top-75, which lasted until August 1989, thereafter, the Top-100 came into existence.[6]
The calculation of online CDs and DVDs as well as VHS began to be included within the Top-100 single and album charts since January 2001 (for CDs) and July 2002 (for DVDs and VHS).[6] It took a few years; however, for the Download-Sales to be counted towards the Media-Control-Charts through Download-Shops such as iTunes when the evaluation of Digital Downloads was introduced in August 2004.[7]
Digital-only releases came into existence on July 13, 2007 for online-publication only, which also altered the way the sales figures were conducted up to that point. Consequently, chart positions would no longer be affected by the number of sold music-downloads as before but rather they would be affected by the sales-value of a product. In the meantime, the most sold albums would not necessarily be the ones ending up in the number one position on the charts.[8]
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