Ultimate is an automated, cloud based system that allows National trade organisations such as IFPI to prepare authentic and verifiable national music sales charts with a minimum of manual intervention.

Ultimate accepts contributions from physical, digital and streaming retailers and compiles charts based on actual sales numbers. Built-in components adjust different types of media for comparable sales equivalent rankings, allowing combined charts containing both traditional and streaming consumption to be included in combined charts.

Detailed measurement of the ‘long tail’ (full depth catalogue well beyond top 1,000 titles) allows precise market share calculations to be carried out in near real time, whilst robust security policies allow contributors access to only their own data, and not that of anyone else.

A further sub-system allows Ultimate to present ‘combined’ album charts containing both traditional sales and streaming consumption, making it the first automated system to be able to do this, back in 2011.