Hot Country Songs is a chart published weekly by Billboard magazine in the United States.

This 50-position chart lists the most popular country music songs, calculated weekly by collecting airplay data from Nielsen BDS along with digital sales and streaming.

The current number-one song, as of the chart dated for February 20, 2016, is "Die a Happy Man" by Thomas Rhett.

History

Billboard began compiling the popularity of country songs with its January 8, 1944 issue. Only the genre's most popular jukebox selections were tabulated, with the chart titled "Most Played Juke Box Folk Records". The chart length was not standardized; a given week had anywhere from two to eight positions.

For approximately ten years, from 1948–1958, Billboard used three charts to measure the popularity of a given song. In addition to the jukebox chart, these charts included:

Hot Country is a 24-hour music format produced by Westwood One. Its playlist is composed of country music released from the late 1990s to the present. Core artists include Luke Bryan, Lady Antebellum, Blake Shelton, Zac Brown Band, Keith Urban and Taylor Swift among others.

Its competitors were "Country Today" by Waitt, CD Country, True 24-Hour Country, and U.S. Country by Jones; however those assets were absorbed by Triton Media Group, leaving ABC Radio's Today's Best Country and Real Country the only competitors. CD Country was consolidated into this satellite feed as of early 2009. Country Today is now a locally customized version of sister network Mainstream Country.

Westwood One has rebranded this network as Hot Country Today for a short time as part of Dial Global's revamped satellite format line-up, but then reverted to its previous name.

Westwood One offers this format only in a Total version, not in a Local version.

External links

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