Global Reggae Charts - Issue #8 / December 2017

editorial
Welcome to a new edition of the Global Reggae Charts!
This month, you’ll find that we implemented one major update: the album charts, just like the
single charts, now feature 20 LPs. This was made possible thanks to the increased number of votes
we gave to every voter - a novum we introduced last month and about which I wrote in last
edition‘s editorial. In doing so, we achieved clearer, more distinct results among albums that didn’t
make the Top 10. This is a great step forward as it allows us to make more room for releases that
are clearly popular but didn’t make the cut before.
Also, this is the last edition of the GRC magazine in 2017 (since the December voting will only be
published in January). Thus, I want to take the time to reflect upon what we have achieved in our
first year - and give an outlook on our plans for 2018.
We launched the Global Reggae Charts in May. Of course, work in the background had begun way
earlier than that. When I talked to Felix (Rühling, the founder of GRC) for the first time in March,
he had already developed the idea, created the concept, and talked to many people from in and
around reggae. From there, we (as in: mostly Felix) created the first model of the charts, launched
our website, recruited the initial set of voters, found media partners, and eventually started
the first voting round in April. Then, in early May, our magazine‘s first issue saw the light of day.
Thanks to the great work of Solvey Schönknecht, the GRCs are not only packed with good music, it
also looks great and is visually up to di time. Mad ting!
Since then, we put continuous efforts into further optimizing the charts. We made improvements
to the voting system, grew the number of voters, and launched playlists on Spotify and YouTube.
Anderson Muth joined our team as an editor (thanks to him, all texts in here are now actually
good reads!). We tweaked many other details. All of that is well-documented in the past editorials.
Overall, I think we have come a long way and built something that is slowly starting to be valuable
to reggae.
Still, we are far from satisfied. 2017 has just been the first step of this project. I explained the
reason for creating the Global Reggae Charts in the first edition’s editorial. I wrote:
“Everybody knows reggae. And almost everybody likes it. ... But that’s not reflected in the
music’s recognition by the media. Nor in sales. Why? Because it’s really tough for outsiders
to find an easy entry to the vast jungle that is reggae.”
Our goal is to develop the GRCs into a helpful solution to this problem - for fans and media professionals
alike. To get there, a lot remains to be done. One milestone, on which we are already
working, is the relaunch of our website. Continuing to increase our voter pool and media partners
are other important steps. So, too, is raising awareness of the charts inside the reggae community.
I’m confident: 2018 won’t get boring.
But first, I wish all of you Happy Holidays and a Wonderful New Year!
Cheers
Thomas
Thomas Euler is founder of the German reggae & dancehall blogazine whagwaan-magazine.de
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global reggae charts | issue 8 / dec 2017