TOP TEN PROJECT
About the Project

Top Ten Project is dedicated to the documentation and preservation of popular music history through charts. By preserving, compiling and reconstructing charts that are not otherwise available, as well as indexing and curating the vast array online, it aims to keep these road maps to the world of music visible and accessible, for the industry, for academia and for music fans.

At present, the focus is on publishing crucial radio charts that are not otherwise being compiled. This will remain a central priority, and may expand with available resources. This activity grew out of frustration with the absence of what seemed like obvious and important charts and the increasing accessibility of the data from which to compile them.

An additional, longstanding goal is to reconstruct American radio charts covering the Classic Rock era (1965-1981) and the New Wave and early Alternative Rock eras (1975-1988), filling in the gap that exists before Billboard began publishing the now-standard charts for these formats. The Internet has made available additional resources in this pursuit as well, but much of the data comes from contemporaneous radio journals. The new wave/alt rock section is nearing completion, and should be ready for publication by early 2022, while the classic rock section probably is a year or more further out.