We launched a very basic site with the idea of updating and improving the site on a frequent basis. Here's a record of the upgrades to iTunesCharts.net (formerly DownloadCharts.net).
24 February 2017
Audio players added to Song charts and to Song pages where available. Some older songs in the iTunes back catalogue may not have clips available but most new releases do. Enjoy!
5 October 2016
iTunes searches refactored - the results that are displayed in the box headed "iTunes Search Results" are now correctly localised and more accurate.
Missing prices - where the text "Get" (or "Obter") appeared next to a song/album/podcast im place of the price - are gradually being re-instated. For some reason iTunes removed the price from their RSS feeds. We backfill by using the Search API.
23 March 2015
Sitemaps.xml was returning a 500 error. Google complained. Now fixed. In addition, Genre Charts were added to the sitemap.
19 March 2015
This release has little affect on the front-end, public user experience, but is a major upgrade to how the codebase is structured and means the site is faster, more secure and more maintanable - hopefully this opens the floodgates for lots of new features!
3 October 2014
Improvements to the the algorithm that sorts search results. This should see the most relevant artists/songs/albums/podcasts nearer the top of the results list. Our search geek is VERY pleased with this minor tweak ;)
22 August 2014
Olá Brasil! Bem-vindo ao itunecharts.net. We've added Brazilian charts for Songs, Albums and Podcasts to the site (iTunes don't publish a TV chart for Brazil).
15 August 2014
Genre charts added for US, UK and Australia. These are 'live' charts - we frequently pull the data you see direct from iTunes. These charts are not stored and progress and/or historical data for each entry is not available. Performance on these charts is not surfaced in our search results either. It's just too darn confusing!
Genre charts are linked to from the main chart pages. Enjoy!
30 November 2013
Search facility added. This allows searches on the name of musicians, podcasters and TV shows as well as the titles of songs, albums, podcast channels and TV episodes. We hope you find it useful. If you have any feedback on this, or any other aspect of the site, please send us a message, it will be lovely to hear from you.
25 September 2013
A responsive design applied to the site, mostly courtesy of Twitter Bootstrap but gareth53 pullled off some smooth moves too.
Apple also switched affiliate partners (apart from in the UK) so tracking code for new affiliate partner "PHG" was added. The small iTunes button and the large download/subscribe buttons were upgraded too.
17 November 2012
The site migrated from www.DownloadCharts.net to www.iTunesCharts.net. Mostly to see what affect that might have on our Google ranking and traffic to the site as a result. Also, additional of an XML sitemap.
2 October 2011
We've now added international artist pages. These artist pages give an overview to the chart success (or failure!) of albums/songs/podcasts/TV across all the territories that we cover.
Bugfixes for 404 and 500 http errors. We're getting much more adept at handling error conditions. Google Webmasters Tools is our friend in this matter :)
14 October 2011
We've now added artist directories. For each country we now have artist A-Z pages for each 'type' of content - music, television and podcast. The artist pages link to songs/albums/TV episodes and podcast channels that have charted.
Each type page e.g. /uk/artists/music/, /uk/artists/podcast/ and /uk/artists/television/ highlights the most active artists over the past 7 days.
24 August 2011
The site migrated from www.iTunesCharts.net to DownloadCharts.net. The old domain name infringed Apple's copyright of the trademark 'iTunes', so we changed it. The old domain should redirect to the new domain for the foreseeable future.
27 July 2011
Summaries and synopses are now displayed for TV Episodes and Podcast channels where available and meaningful. Short summaries are displayed inside the 'About This Item' box along with the cover art and price. Longer summaries have their own box in the right column. Even longer summaries are split into two and have a 'read more'/'read less' switch.
The homepage copy changed a smidge too. The previous copy was booooring.
16 July 2011
We're now using @twitter_id in tweets - where the musician/band has a known twitter account.
Also - a minor tweak on item pages where the artist is listed as "Various Artists" - this used to link to other releases by "Various Artists" which was pretty dumb. That's fixed now! Hooray!
30 June 2011
Performance improvements for the 'item' pages. URLs for individual podcast channels.
26 June 2011
We've added individual URLs for each chart entry. These pages are accessed by clicking on the song/album/episode title in the charts themselves.
Chart pages display statistics including: release date of the relevant item, chart debut, highest position, most recent position and days on chart. There's also links to the other localised URLs if that song/album/episode has charted in other countries.
Additionally, there's a full run-down of the chart history in tabular form and a graphical representation of the chart history. The graph is provide by Google Charts and is limited to 140 chart positions.
These pages feature a 150x150 pixel packshot (or 'cover art' if you prefer) with a link to the iTunes store where available. Navigation back to the referring chart is via mini-chart in the right column.
29 April 2011
Due to lack of interest, we've stopped offering film and app charts. The archive is still available via the footer navigation - just click on the 'all charts' link. New charts will not be available however.
There's more details about the decision to stop supporting charts for film and iPhone applications here. We apologise for any inconvenience and hope you understand - you're a grown-up now, so be brave. Consider it a life lesson in love and loss.
31 March 2011
Leaderboard advertisements added to every page. All revenue generated goes to ensuring that iTunesCharts.net can continue to exist :)
7 March 2011
We were running on two domains: www.itunescharts.net and just itunescharts.net (no www prefix). That was a massive oversight. A sysadmin has had his privileges revoked until he can prove himself worthy once more.
17 August 2010
Advertisements added to chart pages. All revenue generated goes to ensuring that iTunesCharts.net can continue to exist :)
7 August 2010
iPad Application Charts for UK, US and Australia.
Australian Charts for a full range of formats
'Winners & Losers' boxes added to chart pages detailing highest new entry and biggest climbers and fallers.
19 July 2010
RSS feeds for all charts - populated with news-worthy highlights from each chart.
'Follow us on twitter' boxes on the UK and US homepages.
Significant changes to the data import process.
23 June 2010
Slightly re-modelled homepage including mini-charts for the most popular charts (song charts for UK, US and France)
Server-side caching for performance improvements.
Updated country-less content-type hubs (limiting the mini-charts to four for appearances sake)
TV mini-charts now showing the TV series name as well as the episode name.
Added iPhone Apps charts for United Kingdom and United States.
Two new countries added - Spain and Italy. Bienvenida! Benvenuto!
24 April 2010
Hub pages for chart types showing all charts across all countries. This means we have navigation on all pages, not just country specific sections. Country-specific navigation links to the latest full chart rather than a hub page showing the top 10.
Country-specific chart hubs display a graph comparing the number of new entries / climbers / non-movers / fallers over a 12-day period.
'Contact Us' form now takes upto 400 chars in the textarea and the error messaging is more helpful :)
"Days on chart" figures now make more sense (despite being a teeny bit less accurate, according to the prissy dev).
16 January 2010
Addition of a contact us form.
Chart entries now have links to iTunes for purchase.
02 January 2010
The right column archive navigation on chart pages now collapses using javascript.
The right column 'chart statistics' box can filter chart entries.
Fixes for Internet Explorer (versions 6 & 7) wonkiness.
Also, added an FAQ - "What are podcasts?" and "What's iTunes?" (these for Gareth's mum!)
15 December 2009
Adding charts for Germany and France.
Fixed broken links in the primary navigation in the French section.
Extra stability to the XML importer and coarser-grained error reports.
01 November 2009
Basic charts for the UK and USA.
If you have an idea for an improvement to iTunesCharts.net, email us at genie[at]itunescharts.net. We'd be seriously delighted to hear from you.