The Billboard 200 is a record chart ranking the 200 most popular music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists. Often, a recording act will be remembered by its "number ones", those of their albums that outperformed all others during at least one week.
The chart is based mostly on sales (both at retail and digital) of albums in the United States. The weekly sales period was originally Monday to Sunday when Nielsen started tracking sales in 1991, but since July 2015, tracking week begins on Friday (to coincide with the Global Release Date of the music industry) and ends on Thursday. A new chart is published the following Tuesday with an issue post-dated to the Saturday of the following week. The chart's streaming schedule is also tracked from Friday to Thursday.[1]
New product is released to the American market on Fridays. Digital downloads of albums are also included in Billboard 200 tabulation. Albums that are not licensed for retail sale in the United States (yet purchased in the U.S. as imports) are not eligible to chart. A long-standing policy which made titles that are sold exclusively by specific retail outlets (such as Walmart and Starbucks) ineligible for charting, was reversed on November 7, 2007, and took effect in the issue dated November 17.[2]
Beginning with the December 13, 2014 issue, Billboard updated the methodology of their album chart to also include on-demand streaming and digital track sales (as measured by Nielsen SoundScan) by way of a new algorithm, utilizing data from all of the major on-demand audio subscription and online music sales services in the United States.[3]
As of the issue dated March 4, 2017, the number-one album on the Billboard 200 is Fifty Shades Darker by Various artists.[4]
The Chainsmokers are an American DJ duo consisting of Drew Taggart and Alex Pall.
The duo achieved a breakthrough with their 2014 song "#Selfie", which was a top twenty single in several countries. Their debut EP, Bouquet was released in October 2015 and featured the single "Roses", which reached the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100.[1] "Don't Let Me Down" became their first top 5 single and won the Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording at the 59th Grammy Awards, while "Closer", featuring vocals from Halsey, became their first number-one single on the chart.[2]
The duo's second EP Collage was released in November 2016, consisting of several previously released singles. Their debut studio album Memories: Do Not Open is set to be released on April 7, 2017.