Billboard Magazine

Every industry has a scoreboard, and in music it’s the Billboard Hot 100. Number one on that chart has been the definition of a hit since 1958, the milestone artists chase, argue about and put in their biographies. Billboard doesn’t just cover the music business. It publishes the numbers the business is measured by, which is a position no rival magazine has ever managed to take.

Around the charts sits proper industry journalism. Cover interviews with the biggest artists in the world, reporting on label deals, streaming economics and touring money, and analysis of why a song is exploding rather than a simple note that it is. That last part is the divider: Billboard treats music as an industry as much as an art form, so you get the story behind the numbers, what a viral moment actually earns, how a tour makes or loses millions, which genre the money is quietly moving toward.

That makes it two magazines in one depending on who’s reading. For a music obsessive, it’s authority, chart history and access to artists at the exact moment they matter. For anyone working in or studying music, marketing or entertainment, it’s closer to essential reading, the trade paper the industry itself argues with.

It’s an American title, which for UK readers is the point rather than a drawback, since the US charts are the global scoreboard everyone else watches. Delivered to your door, no auto renewal, and we’ll remind you before your term runs out.