I love alternative media.  I feel it's important to bring attention to sources like this.  Gracenote is a very compelling site that I learned about through Alan Cross's radio show.
Often in your music program (Itunes, Winamp, Windows Media Player, Nero, etc) there will be an option to the effect of "Automatically download CD, Artist, and Track details".  It's on by default.  They all contact gracenote's database.  The way it works, is your media player sends the amount of tracks and the length of each track to gracenote, and gracenote determines what CD you are playing (or ripping), and sends the details.  Gracenote has developed an amazing database of what people are really listening to.
This is the link that I want people to check out.  It's a map, where you can view what the most popular music is, updated hourly.  You can see who is currently number one in your country (or state in the US).  At the time I am writing this, The Beetles is Canada's most popular band.
I feel that the potential for this site is immense, and if you check it out, I'm sure you'll agree.