YouTube to launch music charts in Egypt, UAE and Saudi Arabia

The weekly charts will offer the Arabic music industry a more streamlined and transparent approach by measuring the popularity of its songs. They will be updated on Sundays and will be available on YouTube Music and on www.charts.youtube.com.

The top songs chart will rank up to 100 tunes based on a number of factors including streams on YouTube Music, views on a song’s video on YouTube, and the frequency of a song used in user-generated content on YouTube. Three of the charts will consist of the top 100 songs, artists, and music videos played on the platform over a seven-day period, while the fourth chart will track the top 20 newest and most popular music trends.

“I have seen firsthand the impact YouTube has had on the Arabic music industry,” YouTube’s head of music for the Middle East and North Africa region Liliana Abudalo said. “There has been a great shift in how artists release their work in terms of production and promotion on YouTube.

“YouTube Charts will help emerging and established artists highlight their success, and with more than 2 billion monthly logged-in users it will offer a more holistic representation of a song’s performance.”

Warner Music managing director of Middle East Moe Hamzeh said: “YouTube Music charts is a great platform for our artists here in the Middle East. It’s a way for fans to see at a glance which songs are popping across the region, and we hope that leads to them discovering more about the artists behind the songs and the rest of their music, and that’s another tool to help us build our artists’ careers.”

YouTube first launched its music charts across 44 countries in May 2018, and has been expanding them geographically since then.

The move adds to the platform’s efforts to improve the music business in the Middle East and North Africa region. Over the years, the company has partnered with several key music labels to provide tools and knowledge to help users in the region grow their businesses on the platform. The region now boasts more than 170 music channels with over 1 million subscribers, compared to 18 channels about four years ago.