• Country Music charts - letting fans know how the singles and albums from their favorite artists are doing commercially;
• Country radio stations - letting fans know what is happening at their local radio station and giving them an opportunity to participate interactively by voting for their favorite songs or even listening to the broadcast over the internet;
• Country Music artists - letting fans know about their favorite stars and where they'll be on tour;
• Country Music record labels - letting fans know about the music of their favorite artists and even letting them sample audio and video clips (30-second samples) from the artists albums;
• Country Music Magazines (also known as "e-zines") - letting fans know a wide variety of information on Country Music, including album reviews, fan club listings and articles on selected artists; and
• Country Music fan pages - letting fans know about their favorite artist; these types of pages are often a combination of a lot of the information covered above. The quality of these sites vary considerably.

I thought I would start with some information about the various sites that provide chart information on Country Music, although these sites may provide other information about Country Music as news warrants. Billboard Magazine publishes what is probably the most widely recognized set of music charts. A chart of the top twenty country albums from the current edition, with new charts being published every Thursday evening (ET), is available for free. You can also get the Number 1 selections from each of the charts, including the Country Singles chart. To read the complete album or singles charts, you can subscribe to a pay service; details and costs can be found on the Billboard site.

Radio & Records publishes another charting service that is widely used in the industry. This site provides a free listing of the top twenty Country singles and is compiled by monitoring a selection of radio stations around the country. I'm not sure how their chart dates compare to Billboard's: the dates are different by about a week but they could be covering the same time periods (or this one could be a week old). There is also information here on radio station rankings within a particular geographic market, but the data is about six months old.

Gavin Publications publishes a third set of charts. Here one can find the top twenty singles from "mainstream" Country radio stations and a second chart (called "Americana") covering singles from the top twenty albums as heard on so-called "alternative" Country radio stations. There are no dates published with these charts, so one can't tell how old the data may be.

Lastly, there are a set of charts that I publish on Country Music Viewpoint. Here, one can find the top 75 country singles based on the playlists that are published by various radio stations on the Web. The selection of stations on which this chart is based is not as large as the other commercial ones. I've tried, however, to use ones that represent the broad range of markets across the United States. The advantage to this chart is that you get a bigger perspective of what's going on in radio than the "top twenty" of other charts. I also believe that the data on which the charts is more recent. One can also find a chart of the editor's (that's me) favorite twenty albums.

I recently received an email from Walcoff Associates of a new Web site they produced called CoolCountry.Com. This site produces an interview show, hosted by David Ross, that is available over the Web. You need at least a 28.8 kbps modem and the RealAudio plugin (available through a link at the CoolCountry.Com site) to receive the audio. Currently, the show is interviewing Joe Diffie, but past guests, also still available, include the band BR4-59, Paul Brandt, Gretchen Peters and producer Tony Brown. During the interview, several songs from the artists latest album are played. The sound is not CD quality and the host is not studio-perfect, but Country Music fans will enjoy the insights that this show brings out from the guests. This is well worth a visit and probably even a bookmark.

Until next time - happy surfin'.

Steve, the Country Music Guy