How UPCHART ratings work

Lately we’ve had questions about our ratings system. Unlike charts that are driven mainly by play counts, UPCHART is built around star ratings, but not every rating counts the same on the chart. We weight ratings so the chart reflects real listening, not quick taps or coordinated campaigns.

Why ratings? Why not plays?

UPCHART is trying to surface great music, not simply the most played music. Raw play counts are easy to inflate when a big name tells millions of people to hammer a link or leave a playlist on loop—so a “play chart” often measures reach and coordination as much as quality. Ratings are a separate signal: they reflect what listeners think of a track after they’ve engaged with it, not how many times a promo machine can run up the counter. For example, Justin Bieber encouraged his fans to play “Yummy” to boost streams to chase a No. 1. We’d rather the chart answer a different question: what are people actually willing to stand behind with a score?

Your rating counts more when you’ve actually listened

We give more weight to raters who:

• Have listened to more of the track — engagement with the song itself matters.

• Have listened through more of the song — shallow or skipped listens don’t carry the same weight as hearing the track properly.

So the chart isn’t just “who got the most ratings”; it’s closer to “who got meaningful ratings from people who listened.”

Ratings do not equal rankings

It's also important to understand that songs are not ranked in strict ratings order. Each song’s chart score starts from a weighted rollup of ratings (heavier weight from stronger, more trustworthy listening), then we apply a smoothing algorithm so brand‑new songs with a handful of extreme scores don’t instantly leapfrog tracks with a real consensus. On top of that we use velocity (sometimes called momentum): recent rating activity can give a modest boost so music that’s gaining honest traction now can move up faster than something that only had a spike months ago—without letting one lucky afternoon dominate forever.

You can see this on the site: The number above the song position in the charts, the Chart Score, is a different number from the Overall Rating.

One new rating per artist every 24 hours

To reduce abuse from fresh accounts spam-rating every song from the same friends, you can only add a new rating on one song per artist (uploading account) in any rolling 24-hour period. Example: If you rate Artist X’s Song A today, you can’t add a first-time rating on another Song B by Artist X until that 24-hour window has passed. (You can still change the score on a song you’ve already rated. We’re blocking extra songs from the same artist in that window, not honest edits.)

Credits and new accounts

You can rate as many songs as you like: there’s no cap on how many ratings you submit. What’s limited is how many times you can earn credits from first-time ratings on songs you haven’t rated before: up to 5 of those credit rewards on day one, up to 10 on day two, and from day three onward the cap goes up to 15 (per rolling 24 hours after that). That way real listeners aren’t blocked, but it’s much harder to spin up new accounts just to farm credits.

Other protections

We also run automated checks that can reduce how much a rating moves the chart when patterns look abusive—for example very high rating speed (“burst” behavior), very low listen depth, or very new accounts (stricter treatment for the first week). On top of that, API rate limits help stop scraping and scripted abuse.

Fair use

This isn't a definitive list: We are constantly evolving UPCHART to work for artists and listeners who play fair. If you deliberately abuse ratings or the credit system, we can, and will, restrict or ban accounts. We’d rather have simple rules to prevent abuse than have to enforce them. Thanks for helping keep the chart credible.

Mark Devlin is the CEO of UPCHART