Top 2000

During the 6 to 7 day broadcast, the station broadcasts a set of 2,000 songs that have been voted on by the show's audience via Internet voting to be the "most popular songs of all time". The first year of voting was limited to a set list of 2000 songs that the users ranked themselves. Radio 2 changed the format in 2005 to allow voters to nominate their own suggestions.[10] In 2008, Radio 2 used a different voting format: the votes from the previous nine years were compiled to create a "jubilee list" for the tenth anniversary of the radio show.[11]

People can choose as few as five to as many as thirty-five songs. The voting period lasts one week, starting late November or early December. People can vote through the radio channel's website on any Internet device during this period. Hosts of the radio channel tour the Netherlands in a bus ('stembus', which means 'ballot box', but literally translates to 'voting bus') during the period of voting to promote the show. People who visit the bus can also submit their songs there.[12][13]

Voters can choose which version of a certain song they prefer. These include covers, live performances or full versions whose running time exceed mainstream radio standards. The eventual lineup of the program can contain multiple versions of one song.

For listeners to know if or when their favourite songs get aired, the running order, which includes the date and time songs are set to air, is revealed at least a week prior to the start of the show's broadcast. Since the show is aired all day and night, it's not uncommon for some people to set their alarms to listen to certain songs on the show.[14]

Top 2000 sign at the Beeld en Geluid Museum, Hilversum

Inside the temporary studio called Top 2000 Café during the 2018 edition

In 2002, Radio 2 added the television show Top 2000 a Go-go to the broadcast.[15] The show contains quizzes, live performances and clips of various songs on the list, as well as interviews with performers and artists featured in the all-time charts. The following year they added Top 2000 in Concert, where various Dutch artists are invited to sing one of their favorite songs, along with one of their own songs.[16] The concert is typically broadcast on New Year's Eve, right after the end of Top 2000.

"Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen has traditionally been voted the most popular song on the countdown,[17] with Boudewijn de Groot's "Avond" achieving the top spot in 2005 (as the first Dutch and currently only Dutch-language song to do so) and the Eagles' "Hotel California" doing the same in 2010 and 2014.[18]

Up until 2018 The Beatles consistently occupied the most spots in the list, but in 2019 Queen took over the role as the Top 2000's main supplier with 37 songs.[19]

The song with the highest position in its debut year in the list (from 2000 onwards) is "Roller Coaster", from Dutch country singer Danny Vera in 2019, entering in fourth place.[20][21] The highest-scoring foreign newcomer was Adele with "Someone Like You" in 2011, placing sixth.[22]

Some songs enter or get a higher placement because of certain events. On 27 November 2015, it was announced that John Lennon's song "Imagine" was voted number one for the first time, in association with the piano act of Davide Martello after the November 2015 Paris attacks.[23] In 2019, farmers across the Netherlands protested against regulations limiting nitrogen emissions. In support of those farmers, a farmers' alliance called people on social media to vote for "De Boer Dat Is De Keerl" (The Farmer, That's The Man) of the Dutch band Normaal. This resulted in the song entering the list that year in ninth place.[24]

Social media are also used by voters to get a song into the list of all lists. A notable example is the Pokémon Theme.[25][26]

• Serious Request — another annual Dutch radio marathon in the month of December that reaches over half the population.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Top 2000 (Netherlands).

• Statistics of Top 2000 (in Dutch)
• nporadio2.nl Official website of the hosting radio station. (in Dutch)