Ceylo 20
How the chart works
A chart is only worth something if you can trust it. So here is exactly how ours is counted — the same rules for every artist, written down where anyone can check them.
What counts as a play
A play counts toward the chart when someone actually listens to at least 30 seconds of it in one sitting — or, for a track shorter than a minute, at least half of it. Skipping ahead doesn’t add listening time. Our servers work this out from the player’s own progress reports while the song is playing, and check them against the clock. An app or a browser can’t simply announce “this was played”.
Three a day, per listener
Each listener can add at most three counted plays per track per day. Play your favourite song twenty times today — we hope you do — and three of them count toward the chart. Artists still see every play in their own stats, alongside the chart-counted number, so nothing is hidden from them.
Previews don’t count
Visitors who aren’t signed in hear a 30-second preview. Previews are never counted — otherwise anyone could open endless anonymous sessions and push a song up the chart. Only signed-in members’ full plays count.
One chart now, language charts later
We start with a single Ceylo 20 across every language. When Sinhala or Tamil songs reach 40 chart-eligible tracks — songs that clear the 25-listener bar below in the same week — that language gets its own chart, and keeps it from then on. A milestone we’ll celebrate, rather than three thin charts on day one.
A song needs real listeners
To enter the chart a song needs plays from at least 25 different listeners that week. Until songs clear that bar there is no chart at all — never a leaderboard of songs a handful of people have heard. If a quiet week has no song over the bar, the last published chart stays up. And the very first chart waits until at least 10 songs clear that bar in the same week, two weeks running.
Computed weekly, revealed on Friday
The chart is worked out once a week from the counted plays and saved as a fixed snapshot. The new chart goes live on Friday evening, Sri Lanka time, and stays exactly as published until the next one.
Keeping it fair
The rules above — real listening time, the daily cap and the listener bar — apply to every play automatically. Nobody is banned by a machine: if listening on a song ever looks manipulated, a person looks into it.
If an artist replaces the audio of a song after it is released, the new recording starts its chart count afresh. The plays from before stay in the record, but they don’t carry over to a different recording.
Withdrawn songs
If a song is later removed — by its artist or after a rights complaint — past charts keep its place and show it as withdrawn. We never quietly renumber an old chart, so a shared “#4 this week” always still points at the chart it came from.