Home Front

RINGMASTERS CHART DEBUTS

This issue marks the debut of the new Hot RingMasters chart (page 20), measuring weekly sales of the top 20 master ringtones in the United States. The chart replaces the Hot RingTones chart, which had tracked only polyphonic ringtone sales.

Data for the Hot RingMasters chart comes from the new Nielsen RingScan monitoring program, which measures all ringtone formats—polyphonic, master and voicetones. Sales figures are collected directly from wireless operators participating in the RingScan program, as well as ringtone aggregators and other sources.

The Hot RingMasters chart will run every other week in the print edition of Billboard and weekly at billboard.biz. The Hot RingTones chart will only be accessible online.

The first No. 1 on Hot RingMasters belongs to Akon. His "Smack That," with Eminem, one of two singles that Akon has in the top five of The Billboard Hot 100 and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, leads all masters with 164,000 sold. That's 54,000 more than the units sold for this week's top-selling download, Akon and Snoop Dogg's "I Wanna Love You." The latter Akon track is No. 3 on Hot RingMasters, trailing the runner-up title, Beyoncé's "Irreplaceable."



WHAT MEN WANT

Ludacris will be the subject of the keynote Q&A address at the second Marketing to Men Executive Summit, to be held Dec. 5 at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. The event is hosted by Adweek, Mediaweek, Brandweek and Billboard and unites more than 200 executives in the brand marketing, entertainment and media industries to rethink traditional marketing strategies and discuss how to better capture the male consumer.