Oricon Chart

Oricon Inc. (株式会社オリコン, Kabushiki-gaisha Orikon^?), established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics and information on music and the music industry in Japan. It started as Original Confidence Inc. (株式会社オリジナルコンフィデンス, Kabushiki-gaisha Orijinaru Konfidensu^?), which was founded by Sōkō Koike in November 1967 and became known for its music charts. Oricon Inc. was originally set up as a subsidiary of Original Confidence and took over the latter’s Oricon record charts in April 2002.

The charts are compiled from data drawn from some 39,700 retail outlets (as of April 2011) and provide sales rankings of music CDs, DVDs, electronic games, and other entertainment products based on weekly tabulations. Results are announced every Tuesday and published in Oricon Style by subsidiary Oricon Entertainment Inc. The group also lists panel survey-based popularity ratings for television commercials on its official website.

Original Confidence Inc., the original Oricon company, was founded by the former Snow Brand Milk Products promoter Sōkō Koike in 1967. That November, the company began publishing a singles chart on an experimental:basis. Entitled Sōgō Geinō Shijō Chōsa (総合芸能市場調査^?) (it means "surveys of total entertainment markets"), this went official on January 4, 1968.