How the GNA Charts Are Built
This page exists so that anyone — an artist, a label, a radio programmer, a reader — can see exactly how a position on a Gospel News Access chart is arrived at. Nothing here is hidden.
What these charts are
Four weekly charts: the GNA Gospel 20, the GNA Christian 20, the GNA Albums 20, and What’s Hot (ten slots, fastest movers only).
They are Gospel News Access’s own charts — our own measuring instrument. They are not derived from, licensed from, or dependent on any other publication’s chart.
What is measured, and how much each part counts
| Input | Weight | What it actually is |
|---|---|---|
| Reporter panel | 40% | Gospel radio stations, syndicated shows, streaming programmers and DJs who voluntarily report their weekly spin counts to us. Every reporter is named publicly on the reporter panel page. |
| Streaming and video momentum | 35% | Week-over-week change, never cumulative totals. This matters: if you count total plays, a 20-year-old classic sits at number one forever and no new record can ever chart. We measure movement, not accumulation. |
| Release and submission activity | 15% | New releases, radio singles worked to programmers, and material submitted through the submission form. |
| Editorial desk | 10% | Human judgement, applied last. Every single adjustment is written down with a one-line reason in a public log. |
The editorial desk cannot rescue a record
The editorial input is capped at 10%, and the chart is built so that it computes and publishes correctly with the editorial input at zero. The three measured inputs alone produce a valid chart. If nobody touches it in a given week, it still goes out on time.
The editorial desk is not yet seated. Until it is, the editorial input is zero and the charts are produced entirely by the three measured inputs above. This is stated here rather than left vague, because a reader is entitled to know exactly who can and cannot influence a position.
The tracking week
Friday 12:00 AM Pacific through Thursday 11:59 PM Pacific.
Submission cutoff is Thursday 11:59 PM Pacific. Anything arriving after that is considered in the following week — it is not lost.
Charts publish every Tuesday at 12:00 noon Pacific, without exception.
How reporter spins are normalised
A station reaching two million people and a station reaching eight thousand cannot both count as “one spin”. Reported spins are weighted by station tier:
| Tier | What it means | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Tier A | Major-market terrestrial radio and nationally syndicated shows | ×1.00 |
| Tier B | Regional and secondary-market terrestrial stations | ×0.65 |
| Tier C | Local, community, internet-only radio and individual programmers/DJs | ×0.35 |
A reporter’s tier is recorded on the panel page alongside their name. Tier is assigned on measurable reach, never on relationship, and never on payment.
How long a record stays
- A title falls off after 20 weeks on a chart, unless it is still in the top 10.
- Long-running titles move to a Recurrents list, so that a record everybody already knows does not block a new one from charting.
- A title returning after falling off is flagged RE and resumes its previous peak — its history is not erased.
- A first appearance is flagged NEW.
- A title moving upward carries a bullet.
Weeks on chart and peak position are real running totals kept in a file that persists from week to week. They are never recalculated from scratch. A chart that recomputes its own history each week is producing fiction, and we will not do that.
Streaming sources, and a note on permission
Before any platform is used as a chart input, we read that platform’s own developer terms on ranking and chart creation. If the terms do not permit it, the source is dropped and its share of the weight is redistributed across the remaining measured inputs. We do not use a source quietly and hope.
The current status of every candidate source — including which ones are
switched off and why — is recorded in
data/chart-sources.json in our public repository.
If you think a position is wrong
Tell us and we will check it. Send the chart name, the chart week, the title and artist, and what you believe the correct figure is. Data errors are corrected openly and the correction is noted on our corrections page.
A dedicated inbox for this is being set up. Until it is live we are not printing an address here, because an address that nobody reads is worse than none.
What will get you removed
Falsified spin reports, or any attempt to buy a position, end a reporter’s participation permanently and the removal is stated publicly on the panel page.