The Billboard Top 100 chart must rate among the world’s top music brands in terms of recognition, and more pointedly its influence over those who find need to run their businesses by its weekly results. For decades the chart has measured the success (and worth) of artists based on the number of albums sold that week. Despite vast changes in patterns of music consumption brought by the digital age and the myriad of alternative charts provided by the internet, Billboard has somehow continued to hold sway as the definitive week-by-week barometer of artist success in the States, but it now has a much more complex and new world savvy competitor in the Ultimate Chart.

At the New Music Seminar held in New York this month BigChampagne Media Measurement announced the release of the Ultimate Chart, a ranked list of the week’s most popular artists and songs in the US which integrates data from categories including song and album sales, radio airplay, online audio and video plays, and fans/friends/followers. The algorithm is no doubt frighteningly complex but it will certainly make for interesting reading.

As Tamara Conniff, a former Billboard Editor-in-Chief succinctly puts it. “Music is not just about sales, it’s about interaction—listening, watching, playlisting, evangelizing and socializing.”

BigChampagne’s partners and sources for the Ultimate Chart include retailers, online and traditional broadcasters (radio and TV), major content companies, subscription services, social networks and other venues where fans demonstrate their passion for music: Yahoo! Music, Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, VEVO, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, MTV, ClearChannel, MediaBase, AOL, Napster, Microsoft Zune, We Are Hunted, LastFM and more.