The Music History Calendar started on the Songfacts Forums in 2004 when our community of music lovers (some would say geeks) appropriated a calendar feature in the software to document events, allowing us to see what happened on any particular day. In 2009, we moved it to calendar.songfacts.com, giving it a nice overhaul. In 2017, we redesigned it with images, videos and expanded entries to provide a lot more detail about the events. We also made it responsive, so it will look good on any device.
How Do You Choose The Featured Events?
The same people who work on Songfacts.
Yes. The entries have been reviewed. If you spot a mistake, send us an email and we'll fix it.
In some cases, sources differ as to the correct date (like Lead Belly's birth date). When this happens, we go with what we feel is the most reliable source. We've been doing this a long time, and have developed a nose for sniffing out the most accurate info.
The featured events, which show up first (or if you're on a big screen, in the right column) are what we feel are the most historically significant events of the day, with a preference for the contemporary. It's a judgment call. We think it was a pretty big milestone when Johnny Cash recorded an album at a prison, and also a pretty big story when a raunchy song from South Park hit #1 in the UK.
We've come up with a bunch of categories to classify events so you can see them all in one place. Some of these, like "Releases," are very broad with hundreds of entries. Others, like "Fan Problems," have fewer entries.
Timelines put significant events from an artist's career in chronological order. These can also be used for entities like Woodstock.
Unless specified, when we refer to a chart position, it's the Billboard Hot 100, or if referring to an album, the Billboard Top 200 Albums. For UK songs, it's the Official Charts.
We go by the dates listed by these companies, which lag quite a bit, but it's the standard. For example, Adele released "Hello" on Friday, October 23, 2015. Since songs and albums are typically released on Fridays, that's when Billboard starts monitoring for its weekly charts, so data is collected for "Hello" from October 23-29. The charts are posted the following Tuesday, but dated 11 days later, so on November 3, Billboard reveals that Adele has debuted at #1 with "Hello," but the chart is dated November 14. That's the date we use.
Until July 2015, songs and albums were released on Tuesdays, but the lag was the same.
If there is an event you think we should add, send us a note and we'll take a look.
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