Fresh Hits vs. Long Runners: Chart Turnover by Year
For most of chart history, each year-end list was almost entirely new: 100 songs, nearly none of them carried over from the year before. That began to change in the 1990s and sped up in the streaming era, as the chart below shows.
The lowest turnover came in 2025, when only 80 of the 100 songs were new to the year-end chart. Long-running streaming hits, songs that cross over from country and hip-hop, and holiday favorites returning every December all keep songs on the chart for more than one year.
| Decade | Average new songs per year |
|---|---|
| The 1950s | 99 of 100 |
| The 1960s | 100 of 100 |
| The 1970s | 100 of 100 |
| The 1980s | 100 of 100 |
| The 1990s | 94 of 100 |
| The 2000s | 92 of 100 |
| The 2010s | 89 of 100 |
| The 2020s | 86 of 100 |
Hear any of these. Tap ▶ next to a song to play it on the Hey DJ 4U decks: a 30-second preview, or the full song with Apple Music.
Open the mixerBased on the year-end Top 100 singles charts, 1956–2025, as compiled on Wikipedia. Artist counts include lead and featured credits. How we handle the data.