FAQ

What is Breaking Alt?

Breaking Alt highlights the songs that are just starting to gain traction at radio. Our chart is based on airplay from Alternative Rock stations across Canada, combined with weekly picks from industry ‘tastemakers’ who are on the leading edge of music culture. 

Our focus is on music currently generating play through ‘specialty’ shows and features, avenues where stations typically expose material that is new and not yet included in their regular playlist. We run the assembled weekly airplay information, combined with our ‘tastemaker’ picks, through a proprietary algorithm that helps pinpoint the songs developing a degree of co-ordinated support across multiple outlets, spotlighting the titles that have the potential to create consensus airplay across the format.  

During the early stage of a song’s lifecycle, airplay can be variable and scattershot, so songs can appear on the Breaking Alt chart one week, disappear the next, then reappear two weeks later, all simply as a result of another round of discovery and exposure at different stations.However, there is a limit to how long this cycling on-and-off the chart can happen. If after twelve weeks a song is still unable to secure enough airplay to grow beyond Breaking Alt’s chart criteria, it’s deemed recurrent and removed from future chart consideration.

While the Breaking Alt chart aims to highlight ten entries, there are weeks when additional music meets our criteria but falls just outside that #1-to-#10 range. When that happens, we’ll include those titles as ‘Incoming’, just a happy added bonus.

42, at least according to Douglas Adams.