Chapter one: the founding (1964)
Walt Grealis, a promoter and scene-builder with a conviction that Canadian music needed its own scoreboard, launches RPM Weekly in 1964. The premise is deceptively simple: chart the records Canadians are actually buying and hearing — a national data layer the industry had never had. In an era when Canadian acts were invisible to American chart compilers, RPM's pages were the first place a domestic hit was visible as a hit — the national proof that a Canadian record mattered at home. The charts multiplied over time (singles, albums, genres), and the magazine added the industry functions a growing scene needed: news, label directories, columns, the infrastructure of a trade press.
Chapter two: the chart as national scoreboard
Through the CanCon era's birth (1971) and the golden decades that followed, RPM's charts functioned as the industry's official memory. Gold and platinum certifications were reported there; the Junos' early processes leaned on its data; radio programmers set their playlists against its rankings; and generations of Canadian fans read its charts the way American fans read Billboard's. The magazine chronicled everything — the Yorkville folk years, the first CanCon hits, the new wave explosion, the 90s alt boom — and its pages remain, to this day, the primary source historians use to reconstruct the Canadian charts' history.
Chapter three: the end — and the archive
The industry RPM served changed out from under it: deregulation, consolidation, and the internet eroded the trade-magazine model everywhere, and RPM ceased publication in 2000. But the story has a happy epilogue: the magazine's archives — decades of charts, editorials, and industry record — were preserved and made accessible through Library and Archives Canada, where they serve as the foundational data source for Canadian chart history. The magazine died; the scoreboard lives on.
Why it matters
RPM matters because measurement is culture. Before you can celebrate a scene, you have to be able to see it — and for thirty-six years, RPM was the lens through which Canada saw its own music. Every "first Canadian act to chart" story, every certification, every year-end countdown from 1964 to 2000 runs through its pages. The country's music has a written history. Walt Grealis wrote the first draft.
Frequently asked questions
What was RPM magazine?
A Toronto-based weekly music trade magazine (1964–2000) that published Canada’s national record charts and industry news — the country’s chart authority before Billboard’s Canadian charts.
Who founded RPM?
Walt Grealis, who launched it in 1964 to give the Canadian record industry its own chart and trade press.
Where are the RPM charts archived?
Through Library and Archives Canada — the preserved archive remains the primary source for historical Canadian chart data.