Official Texas Music Chart is a digitally monitored chart, utilizing fingerprinting methods to track music over the airwaves. We encourage you to look over our data and let us know what you think. As of July 1, 2024 the OTMC is now the largest Digitally Monitored Chart that is distributed weekly in the USA. We currently monitor over 145 stations. While our focus is primarily Texas Country Music, we also welcome Alt Country, Americana, and any other format that program directors deem to be country music.
I want to take a moment to explain the OFFICIAL part of OTMC. We are not claiming to be proclaimed “official” by any state government, rather it was a business decision. A decision to achieve the best google search results, and to maximize search engine optimization. The only thing I can say that is truly official about our chart, is that we are officially here to stay. We are officially here to help the industry, and we are officially here to help artists.
WHAT QUALIFIES AS TEXAS MUSIC?
We are glad you asked. In our experience, this is something nobody can agree on. For us at OTMC, Texas Music is authentic music that tells a story, evokes emotion, or gets you on that dancefloor. Music that has been known by many as Texas Country; but, depending on what part of Texas you are from, and depending where you are from, your definition of Texas country can mean a lot of different things. It is for that reason we are looking at all forms of Texas & Indie Country Music: Texas Country, Americana, Country Music, Mountain Country, Country Western Music, Red Dirt Music, Yallternative, Country Rock, Southern Rock, and more. We believe that if the station spinning a track thinks it is country music, then that it is country music enough for us. For example; is Koe Wetzel and Whiskey Myers your standard definition of country music? No? We can probably find a person for every No to say Yes. With that said, our goal is to provide data to all artists. We believe that if the stations we have selected to be on our panel want to play a track, who are we to tell them if it should or shouldn’t be counted. We are taking the “tiny box” Texas Country is normally put in, and making it a whole lot bigger. This is all for the artist, and for industry growth for all.
CURRENT SONGS
A current song is a new song that has been released to AM/FM Terrestrial radio, Internet Radio, or Satellite Radio. We understand that there are two modes of thought in the music world. Some think you should submit a song to radio and streaming on the same day. Others may say release it to radio before you release it to streaming. To us that isn’t all that important. We just want the most recent single you are promoting, to be the one you are submitting to the chart.
ELIGIBILITY FOR OTMC
Eligibility for the Official Texas Music Chart is as follows – You must have released your song to radio. If you do not know how to release your song to radio, you are in luck as we have many vetted and verified partners that would love to assist you. We are here to grow Texas Music, grow the Artists that create and play it, and grow the radio industry professionals that spin it.
We are not going to dictate that you play a certain percentage of your shows in Texas. We are going to ask you to have a presence on Texas radio. We are going to ask that you are playing live shows in Texas that support the live music economy. Don’t expect to never play a show in Texas and be listed on the chart. We are doing this to be fair to all the bands and artists that do spend their lives traversing our state and region. We do however understand how vast Texas Music has gotten, so we don’t care if you live in New Mexico, or Colorado, Kansas or Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, or Missouri, or any other state if:
- We think your music sounds like Texas Music
- Your music is being played on Texas Radio
- You have performative presence in Texas, that actively supports the live music economy.
- Performative is imperative – we have seen some artists cut songs for radio play that have no plans on ever performing live – this is an immediate removal from the chart.
WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO DISREGARD SPINS FOR ANY ARTIST THAT WE DEEM DOES NOT MEET THE CRITERIA OF TEXAS MUSIC WE HAVE SET FORTH. IT IS NOT AN EXACT SCIENCE AND WE DEAL WITH A HIGH VOLUME. IF YOU FEEL YOU HAVE BEEN EXCLUDED WRONGLY, PLEASE CONTACT US IMMEDIATELY TO RESOLVE.
HOW DOES THE OTMC COLLECT SPIN COUNTS?
All songs will need to be submitted to OTMC in order to be digitally fingerprinted. No song that is not fingerprinted will be counted on the Official Texas Music chart. There are some instances when music is sent to us and when we have time we fingerprint it for you, but to streamline this process please submit your music to the links at the top and bottom of the page, and while you are doing that head over to our friends at CDX and submit your music to them as well. https://cdxnashville.com
We maintain this data on our servers, in a database for submitted songs, which is always kept secure and is never available to anyone except chart staff or those people you indicate we can share it to. OTMC will never share your song or data to anyone except to verified media/radio personnel or with your express permission.
All songs that are tracked have to be digitally fingerprinted. Fingerprinting is a technology employed by virtually every other chart in the industry. There is never any cost to have a song fingerprinted and placed into our system. However, only songs that have been fingerprinted and placed into our system can be tracked. Songs that have not been fingerprinted can’t be recognized by the system. When a song that has been fingerprinted is played on one of our monitored stations, it records the song and adds it to the total spin calculation for the reporting period. Pretty simple and straightforward, if you are submitting to one chart, submit to all.
YOU CAN SUBMIT MUSIC TO US USING THE LINKS ALL OVER THE PAGE UNDER MUSIC SUBMISSION.
WE CAN’T FREEZE STATION SPINS
We utilize a 24/7-365 monitoring platform that never stops. The only way a stations reporting stops is if the online radio stream stops. Most of our stations utilize either Live365 or Online Radio Box. Online Radio Box is the largest, and most used platform that AM/FM radio stations use to put their radio stream on a platform that reaches potentially millions. A stations Radio stream is an exact copy of what they are broadcasting over AM/FM if they are terrestrial. We monitor that stream for the songs metadata, and our fingerprint that is broadcast with the song.
WANT TO BE A PART OF OUR MONITORED PANEL?
We would love to have you, we are actively looking for stations all over the US and internationally but we are mainly focused on Stations in the following states. Stations must be playing a majority of non mainstream country or Americana.
- Texas
- Oklahoma
- New Mexico
- Colorado
- Kansas
- Missouri
- Arkansas
- Louisiana
We will accept stations outside those states assuming you play mostly Independent Country Music. We do all our monitoring through DigitalRadioTracker.com and there are a few steps to get set up as a monitored station
- Contact us immediately – [email protected]
If you are interested in becoming a monitored station, click the link inside the menu located at the top and bottom of the webpage. Or you can email us at [email protected]
RECURRENT RULE AND METHODOLOGY
Simple is the best way to put this
- 20-week chart – Period from the day it is fingerprinted and then tracked the clock starts, we want to always be welcoming new music on the chart so regardless of song performance no song will remain after 20 weeks.
- If a song remains in the top 10 for 10 weeks and then falls down the chart are we going to make it recurrent? No it will stay on the chart for 20 weeks regardless of performance. We think a little volatility similar to the stock market is a good thing and the honest thing.
HOW DO MUSIC CHARTS WORK?
That depends on the chart you are inquiring about. For our area there are a couple different methodologies in use.
- Digital Monitoring – Several companies offer this, and it varies from API ID3 Metadata, to a variation of different encoding techniques. But regardless, a stations online stream is monitored, and songs are counted. This is how our chart works, it is also how the wonderful people at the Texas Country Music Chart, American Country Music Chart, and CDX Traction monitor their stations.
- Projected Spins – Long story short this is the method of a station manager or program director telling the chart a rough guess or idea how many times they think they are going to spin a particular song. The only chart left that does this is Texas Regional Radio Report.
- Manual Spin Reporting– The process by which a Station Manager or Program director tells the chart how many times they played a particular song the week prior. The Texas Regional Radio Report utilizes this method in addition to Projected spins for their chart. One other chart that employed this method went out of business in 2016 and it was Texas Music Chart. The only other chart that comes to mind is the Music Row Chart which is still manually counted.
TERMS YOU MAY SEE ON OUR CHARTS OR BREAKDOWNS YOU WON’T SEE ON OTHERS, OR ANYWHERE ELSE
- SPINS TW & SPINS LW – is a abbreviation for Spins This Week, and Spins Last Week. It is the amount of times a song is played for a given week.
- POS – is short for Position
- SPIN MOVE – The Change in position represented by subtracting Last Weeks spins from This Weeks Spins giving us a numerical difference.
- SPIN AVG or SPIN AVERAGE – This is a mathematical computation we use to work data down to the smallest common denominator. We take the total spins for this week and divide them by the total stations for this week, we also do that for the Spins Last week and the Stations Last Week. This gives us a number that is the Average amount of plays a song received in a week. This is not the exact number that the song was played on the station but the average. We can use this to see if an artist is in Low, Mid, High, or Max rotation. We can also see the changes happening with a song through the change in Spin Average,
- SPIN AVG MOVE – Spin Average Move or the change in spin average is achieved by subtracting the Spin Average Last week from the Spin Average This Week. This simple equation gives us an idea of our gains or our losses when it comes to average spins. This along with the metric of Growth or Shrink % can help us to understand what is going on with our song. If our Spin Average decreased, maybe we added a bunch of stations and our spins haven’t caught up. Maybe we maintained stations but we got lowered in rotation. This again helps you to understand what is going on with your music so you know how to react.
- Growth or Shrink in Spin Average Week over Week – this is a difference equation converted to a percent to show the reader a percent increase or decrease in the spin average this week compared to last week. If I put you gained 5 spins on average this week, that may not make as much sense as saying you had a 61% increase in spins this week compared to last week.
- Growth or Shrink in Position this week over Last week – much like spin average, this is a percentage difference when looking at an artists position on the chart. someone may have a larger jump up the chart by moving from say 110 to 76, but another person may have a larger growth percentage by moving from 13 to 6 making the growth percentage 53.8% over their position last week. Where as the person going from 110 to 76 had a jump of 34 positions, it was only a growth of 44.7%