BROADCAST DATA SYSTEMS (BDS)
BDS is the world's leading provider of off-the-air music recognition to the recording and radio
industries and Arbitron is the music industry standard for measuring listening audiences, according
to Gabriel Aviles, director of CMTA.
Top Christian Hits will be the first Christian music industry radio airplay chart to employ the
BDS technology. CMTA, with the support of Christian label promotions departments, has been working
with BDS for more than two years to add enough key markets so that the BDS monitoring system could
have a sufficient station panel from which to publish a national chart. As BDS detects "spins," it
also applies Arbitron audience data to reveal how many people heard the single. Aviles told GMAil
that, "our radio subcommittee felt it was important that this new chart not only measure spins, but
measure audience. Heavy airplay on a small market station is not likely to reach as many people as
light airplay in a major market. By using these leading industry standards in radio, our industry
gains even more credibility much like it did when it started using SoundScan to track album sales."
"As we profile the Christian music consumer to corporate America, media and government, the
ability to add data about weekly radio listeners will be vital in making our case that Christian
music consumers are an identifiable, important and growing demographic in American society," said
Aviles.
BDS is the world's leading provider of off-the-air music recognition to the record and radio
industries monitoring music in more than 128 markets. BDS listens to more than 1,100 radio stations
24 hours a day, seven days a week and detects more than one million songs a week. BDS houses one of
the largest music libraries in the world, recognizing over 400,000 songs.
List of Christian radio stations currently being tracked
All others can contact
ben@gospelmusic.org for BDS information.
