The Recording Industry of South Africa (RiSA) has launched South Africa’s first national music charts.
The Official South African Music Charts will rank the most popular songs in the country based on streaming data. RiSA is IFPI’s national member organization in the country.
The first chart, Weekly TOP 200 Tracks, ranks all tracks streamed in South Africa, including both local and international music. The second, Weekly TOP 100 Local ZA Tracks, only includes songs with at least one credited artist from South Africa. No album-specific charts have been announced.
Both charts, which debuted on Thursday (Sept. 2), will be aggregated based on streaming data from three platforms popularly used by local audiences: Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer.
Subscription streams will be weighted more heavily than ad-funded streams, while no track exclusion policy or accelerated decline methods are currently being applied. Different versions of tracks, including radio edits, additional features, remixes (only with the original artists credited) and different language country versions, are aggregated corresponding to their original track.
The chart week will run from Friday to Thursday.
“We are incredibly excited to be launching such a pioneering platform for the South African music industry and audiences, across different genres,” RiSA chairperson Sean Watson said in a statement. “This represents a significant milestone and a much-needed step up to aligning with popular forms of music consumption for the local music industry.”
Frances Moore, CEO of IFPI, called the charts a “great milestone for music in South Africa and for the development of the industry across the continent.” Streaming revenue in South Africa rose 24.7% in 2020 to $32.6 million, which helped offset an overall decline in recorded revenues of 2.8% to $51.7 million, according to IFPI’s Global Music Report.
RiSA CEO Nhlanhla Sibisi noted that South Africa has “seen an undeniable shift in how people consume music in the past few years, with more and more audiences making use of streaming services than before.”
Sibisi addd that RiSA hopes to provide “all South African music enthusiasts and general consumers with a platform that they can ‘own’ and one that reflects their own relationship with local and international music and their consumption patterns, irrespective of their taste in music.”
The Official South African Music Charts can be accessed here.
