The Canadian Singles Chart is compiled by the U.S.-based music sales tracking company, Nielsen SoundScan [1]. The chart is compiled every Wednesday, and is published by Jam! Canoe on Thursdays.
Originally, when the chart was started in 1996, there were 200 positions (with the top 50 being published by Jam!). However, because of the reduced singles market in Canada, only the top 10 positions now appear on the SoundScan chart (SoundScan has a policy that at least 10 copies have to be sold in order to make its singles chart).
Since the early 1990s, single sales in Canada have decreased dramatically, and most songs were not available as commercial singles. As a result, the chart rarely reflected the listening habits of Canadians. In perhaps the most notorious example, Elton John's charity single "Candle in the Wind '97"/"Something About the Way You Look Tonight" stayed in the top twenty for three years. By 2004, sales in Canada declined even further, because of the growing popularity of digital downloading of music. As a result, Canadian sales are not as substantial as they had been before in the 1990s and early 2000s, and singles remained on the chart for even lengthier periods of time.
Starting in 2005, Nielsen SoundScan compiled a Digital Tracks chart, based on download sales from Napster, puretracks, iTunes Canada, and Archambault. In 2006, SoundScan introduced the Digital Songs Chart, combining all versions of each song and ranking them accordingly (different versions of each song appeared separately on the Digital Tracks Chart). The Digital Songs Chart appears on CANOE and also appears at Billboard.biz.
Billboard introduced their own singles chart for Canada, called the Canadian Hot 100, on 7 June 2007. It is based on digital download single sales data from Nielsen SoundScan and radio audience levels from Nielsen BDS.
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