Each Monday Last.FM has a new chart of the most played artists for the previous week (Monday through Sunday.) Last week Michael Jackson was #67 which isn’t too bad for someone hadn’t released any new music in almost 10 years.

This week Jackson climbed up 66 spots all the way up to #1 with over 136K listeners and over 2 million plays. He also dominated the most played tracks chart with the top 6 songs being “Billy Jean,” “Beat It,” “Thriller,” “Smooth Criminal,” “Bad,” and “Black or White.” #7 is Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” before MJ comes in with two more tracks: “The Way You Make Me Feel” & “Man in the Mirror.”

Usually the top artists charts don’t move very much and for a long time Radiohead, Coldplay, & The Beatles have been in the top three slots (in one order or another.) This week they are #2, #3, and #4 respectively.

The Last.FM Charts

#1 Michael Jackson 136,300 Listeners & 2,043,275 Plays.
#2 Radiohead 104,685 Listeners & 1,035,703 Plays.
#3 Coldplay 103,824 Listeners & 782,966 Plays.
#4 The Beatles 94,735 Listeners & 1,083,782 Plays.

As you can the rankings are determined by the numbers of listeners and not the total number of plays. There’s a few good reasons for this: #1 The number of listeners gives you a much better idea of how many actual people are listening to this artist (obviously.) #2 Different artists have songs of different lengths. Those with longer songs (Think Pink Floyd) would be hurt by judging popularity by the amount of songs played and conversely those with shorter songs (Think Guided By Voices) would be helped. #3 The number of songs played can be much more easily manipulated by fans.

Billboard Charts?

With Jackson dominating the Last.FM charts, the bestselling albums list at Amazon.com, and the most purchased albums at the ITunes store – the big question I have now is will any of his albums pop into the Billboard top 200 albums and if so, where? I’ll be very curious to see the Billboard charts for last week when they come out.