Radio 1 Top 40 Visualisation

On his own blog Hugh Garry, Senior Content Producer for Radio 1 Interactive has written about the new Top 40 visualisation project that he's been working on. I mentioned it in a previous post about the last A&Mi departmental I went to. Over to Hugh:

"I've been working on a prototype for the Top 40 for what feels like forever. I'm delighted to say I can finally share it with you. Have a play with it.

Before I start I just want to put to bed a myth. There is a common misconception that the Top 40 is no longer relevant to young people. This couldn't be further from the truth. The fact remains that the chart pages on the Radio 1 Website are the most popular by far and the Chart Show on Sunday is still a massive pull.

The Top 40 is hugely important to the network and the website, so for this reason we should always innovate around it. I'm not saying we should rethink it because clearly it is not broken. People who like pop music love the chart, and though it is not broken in their eyes, we can offer them more than they are getting. What I am saying is we should always look at doing interesting things with the data from the 40 tracks/albums that make up the chart, rather than just accepting that what is doing well in terms of listeners and unique users is good enough. It's not.

The idea of the prototype is to offer chart data in a new and interesting and more playful way. Ever since the chart was first published in the NME in 1952 very little has changed in how we display chart data, or what data we include."

Read the rest of this post on Hugh Garry's website. Give the Radio 1 Top 40 Visualiser a go. There's also How To Make The Top 40 Beautiful... on the Chartblog.