Billboard, best known for its music charts in the U.S., announced on Thursday that it has started providing charts for the Japanese music industry. Rankings will be released on Wednesdays, based on data from more than 3,000 CD shops and 33 radio stations. The charts will be managed by Billboard's partner in Japan, the Osaka-based Hanshin Contents Link.

There are 4 charts in all: Hot 100, Top Albums, Hot 100 Airplay, and Hot Singles Sales. The charts can be publicly viewed at the Billboard Japan site (top 10) or at Tsutaya Online (top 20).

The first set of charts already shows several differences from Oricon's rankings. In particular, the Hot 100 charts do not correspond to any of Oricon's charts, since they are not based only on sales.