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| ▲ This photo, provided by Melon Company, shows Melon's newly reformed "Top 100" music chart. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap) |
SEOUL, Aug. 2 (Yonhap) -- Melon, South Korea's largest music platform, will reform its previous "24 Hits" chart to "Top 100" in order to reflect the usage of music by concurrent users from Aug.9, according to Melon Company on Monday.
This is the first revised service released by Melon Company, which operates Melon, after announcing to have merged with Kakao Entertainment last month.
The 24 hits chart, a major chart within Melon, is updated every hour and ranks songs based on the number of streams and downloads within the past 24 hours.
The new "Top 100" chart is weighted 50 percent from the usage of the past 24 hours and 50 percent of the last hour usage.
However, from 1-7 a.m., when there are only a few users, the chart will be based on usage from the last 24 hours.
"We designed this chart to quickly reflect the latest trends and prevent attempts to manipulate the music rankings as much as possible," explained Melon Company.
Previously, Melon operated a hourly-based real-time chart system until last July, however ditched the chart to make the 24 hits chart.
This change was made to prevent the so-called "sajaegi," also known as chart-rigging, controversies that could easily occur on the real-time chart system.
If music is ranked based on cumulative usage over 24 hours, it would be difficult for users to intensively play music in a short period of time and rank it at the top of the charts.
However, some pointed out that the charts have become "concrete," as the system has only allowed small changes in the ranking since it's more difficult for latest songs to break the popularity of existing songs.
Melon's decision to partially reflect usage of concurrent users in the new chart is also interpreted to reflect the feedback made by the public.
Melon Company said, "This decision was made by intense research and actively reflecting feedback from the music industry and users after changing from the real-time chart to the current 24 hits chart last July.
This January, Melon also established the latest 24 hits chart, which exclusively ranks the latest songs which have been released within a week up to four weeks, in efforts to revise on the criticism that the 24 hits chart does not quickly reflect the trend of newly released songs.
The latest 24 hits chart will also be changed to the "latest chart," following the same system as the Top 100 chart.
In addition, Melon will release a chart report that provides data on the number of listeners after five minutes, one hour, and 24 hours, for each song linked on the Top 100 chart.
In addition, Melon Company said it will establish a department dedicated to the charts, in order to actively monitor and analyze the chart at all times. The company also promised that if any abnormal circumstances occur, it will disclose the analysis results and update on the situation after cooperating with related agencies and organizations.
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