REGGAE icon Bob Marley broke into the top 10 of Billboard’s Social 50 chart last week.

The Social 50 ranks the most popular artists on electronic media YouTube, Vevo, Facebook, Twitter, SoundCloud, Wikipedia, Myspace and Instagram.

Bob Marley

The chart’s methodology blends weekly additions of friends/fans/followers along with artist page views, song plays and reactions as measured by music analytics company, Next Big Sound.

According www.billboard.com   Marley, who died in May 1982 of cancer, ascended from 34 to nine. The article, written by William Gruger, attributed the movement to a recent partnership with television sports network ESPN.

Since July, the sports network has been showcasing Marley’s music and will make his catalogue a major part of ESPN’s upcoming X-Games programming. This gesture has allowed the late musician to strive on the Social 50 for the second week in a row. His closest ranking was 12 in June of 2011.

“Marley has one of the largest followings of any deceased musician. With 44 million Facebook fans, only Michael Jackson has a larger audience (61 million fans) among deceased artists,” the article said.