What the Shazam chart tells you (and what it doesn't)
Updated 2026-10-19
The Shazam chart is the odd one out among Charty's four charts: it doesn't count plays or purchases, it counts moments of curiosity. That makes it unusually good at some questions and useless for others.
What is being counted
Shazam listens to a few seconds of audio, matches it against a database and tells you the song. Each match is one identification. The Israel Top 200 ranks songs by how often they are being identified by people in Israel. Nobody has to like the song, finish it, or ever play it again — they only had to wonder "what is this?" badly enough to reach for their phone.
What that makes it good at
Discovery. Songs people do not already know are exactly the songs people need to identify, so the chart tends to surface new releases and unfamiliar tracks earlier than radio does. Everyday exposure. A song in a TV series, an advert, a café or a viral clip produces identifications in bursts, so the chart is a decent read on what the culture is currently hearing.
What it is bad at
Familiar songs are under-counted — nobody Shazams a song they already know by heart, however popular it is. Long-time favourites therefore sit low or off the chart even when they are played constantly. Songs in a language the listener doesn't understand are over-counted, because there is no lyric to search for instead; that is one reason international songs can look stronger here than on a Hebrew radio chart. Charty's weekly digest measures the Hebrew share of the Shazam top 50 so you can see how this balance shifts from week to week.
Reading the long tail
With 200 positions, the bottom of the chart is volatile: songs enter and leave constantly, and a 60-place jump may be a few dozen extra identifications. The top ten is steadier and worth more attention. Artists often appear several times at once — a single, a remix, a live version — and Charty's digest lists artists with more than one entry because a crowd of entries from one name is a stronger sign of momentum than a single song.
Where the data comes from
Shazam's own site blocks automated access, so Charty mirrors the public data through kworb.net, a long-running archive that republishes Shazam's national charts. That means the chart can lag the original by a little. We say so on the How it works page and in every digest.
A good way to use it
Check the top of the Shazam chart for what is new, then check whether the radio charts have caught up. If a song is high on Shazam and absent from Galgalatz, you may be looking at next month's hit. If it is high on both, it has already arrived. For vocabulary, see how to read a music chart.