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What song are they humming?

Ormax Media's new product gauges which songs are becoming popular

Ormax Media's new tool, Heartbeats, promises to be the first ever definitive Bollywood music chart. Heartbeats will track the top 20 current favourite Bollywood songs on a weekly basis with the help of a survey.

The weekly charts are formulated at an all India level, as well as for specific markets and other parameters such as age groups and genders. This survey is aimed at television and radio broadcasters.

The survey is based on results from consumer interviews conducted every week. A minimum of 500 respondents are asked to name their current favourite Bollywood song. The audiences interviewed include males and females in the age group of 15-34 years, SEC A,B across Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Indore.

Talking about the survey, Vispy Doctor, director, Ormax Media, says, "Retail sales were often used to measure song popularity earlier, but with diminishing retail sales and increasing digital downloads, there is no evident index to gauge the popularity of a song today."

Ormax believes that the study will be beneficial for broadcasters in their programming strategy, as well as for film producers and advertisers backing films as it will measure the performance of the films' music before and after the releases.

"Besides ranking of individual songs, Heartbeats will provide information such as regional diversities and current favourites in a top album," says Shailesh Kapoor, director, Ormax Media.

For example, in the first week's report, though Dhan Te Nan from the movie Kaminey is the No.1 song on a national level, it's at No.3 in Delhi, which has two Punjabi songs as the leading numbers.

Broadcasters can also know which song is declining in popularity due to over-exposure or fatigue, and replaced by another song from the same album.

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