In a tight race for the top, Taylor Swift narrowly bests One Direction for the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Artist 100 chart.
The Artist 100 provides the first weekly ranking dedicated to measuring artist activity across Billboard's most influential charts, including the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart, Billboard 200 albums chart and the Social 50. The Artist 100 blends data measuring album and track sales, radio airplay, streaming and social media fan interaction to provide a weekly multi-dimensional ranking of artist popularity.
Swift scores a record-extending sixth week at No. 1 on the Artist 100 despite a 24 percent loss in overall points. Album sales, for her three-week Billboard 200 No. 1 1989 (which falls to No. 2 this week) and her prior albums, again contribute her largest share of points (40 percent), as the set sold 214,000 copies (down 32 percent) in the week ending Nov. 23, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Digital song sales follow at 36 percent, led by 302,000 downloads sold (down 8 percent) of "Blank Space," the Hot 100's top song for a second week.
One Direction falls just shy of Swift on the Artist 100, but still reaches its best rank, leaping 10-2 (up 395 percent). Fueling the jump: the boy band's 387,000-unit start atop the Billboard 200 with Four, as album sales account for 72 percent of the group's Artist 100 standing this week.
http://www.billboard.com/articles/co...llboard-artist