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There's loads of different ways in which you can count whether a song is popular or not. The original - and best - is the old fashioned chart of actual sales, where every song bought is tallied up. Then there's the American chart, which is based around sales and radio play, or the charts which are just about radio play, or about how many times a frog blinks when shown a picture of Madonna, or...

Well, loads of different ways, as I said.

But what about a chart which brings together every time a song or artist has been talked about or listened to or watched on the internet? That would be a chart worth looking over, wouldn't it? The ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Sound Index crawls some of the biggest music sites on the internet - Bebo, MySpace, Last.FM, iTunes, Google, YouTube and the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ - and then counts and analyses this data to make an instant list of the most popular 1000 artists and tracks on the web...every six hours!

The more blog mentions, comments, plays and profile views an artist or track has, the higher up the Sound Index they are. And you can filter the Sound Index to reflect the sites you use the most, or your favourite music styles, or the things people your age like, or people who live near to where you live.

Hell you can filter it so it becomes a chart of people twice your age on the other side of the country from you if you want. That's just how damn flexible a thing this is.

Gwan, go check it out. It's The Future...