Officially all the artistic sensibility of a salted slug
Charts
It Oughta Sell A Million
4It is for most performers the ultimate dream. Something which marks them out as something particularly special, yet at the same time is not so out of reach as to be a wild unattainable fantasy. Selling a million copies of a record, any record. For years it has been a badge of honour for any track, so much so in fact that before the totals were revised down in 1989, the only way to be awarded a Platinum disc for a single release was to ship a million copies of it. In the near 60 year history of the British charts, just 110 different singles have been officially noted to have sold a seven figure total, their numbers swelled just this last week by ‘Party Rock Anthem’ by LMFAO.
LMFAO’s accolade comes just a couple of weeks after million seller #109 was announced to the world, as ‘Moves Like Jagger’ by Maroon 5 and Christina Aguilera inched over the line to be officially certified as having shifted seven figures worth of product. I noted in many places online that this made it one of just a small handful of singles to have reached the magical figure without actually having topped the charts. For years this was the rarest of rare things, famously just one record in chart history had officially topped a million whilst peaking at Number 2, but since then the numbers have grown. Just how many are there? Five, I thought, starting a mad mental scramble to name them all.
Yet I wasn’t actually correct, because there are a handful more.
The waters of “total sales” are these days rather muddied thanks to the effectively constant availability of singles to be purchased. Back in the days when records dropped out of the charts, copies ceased to be pressed and stocks dried up it was possible to call a definitive halt to brand new sales of a record and thus tot up its final total. In the 21st century a single is theoretically available forever, and indeed many older singles whose sales had previously ground to a halt are suddenly finding themselves revived either as brief high end chart hits, or as catalogue product which continually bubbles under.
Therefore we should really draw a distinction between the singles which sold a million during their “regular” shelf-life (or inside a year in the case of more recent hits) and those which have crept over the line some time after their initial success. With that in mind then, this I hope is what is at the time of writing the definitive list of “unsuccessful” singles which have sold one million copies in the UK:
Last Christmas – Wham!
Total UK sale: 1,601,000
For a great many years it was famously the only single ever to sell a million copies and miss the top of the charts (although see below), this thanks to circumstances given that it spent the Christmas period at the end of 1984 locked at Number 2 behind the original Band Aid single. Although it easily passed the million mark during its original chart run, the single has also added to its total with a re-release the following year (upon which it made the Top 10 again) plus naturally an annual topping up of its total as it returns for a brief chart run as a seasonal download.
Stranger On The Shore – Acker Bilk
Total UK sale: 1,145,000
Now this is an interesting one. For years this 1961 single simply did not figure in countdowns of the biggest sellers of all time, the difficulty in pinning down exact sales for singles from that particular era just one of the reasons behind this. I don’t think it was until ten years ago when an attempt was made to compile a definitive list of the all-time biggest sellers in time for the 50th anniversary of the singles chart that it was noticed that the haunting jazz instrumental could be certified as having sold seven figures, and so into the best sellers list it went. It should therefore be noted that Acker Bilk actually beat Wham! to the honour of selling a million copies of a Number 2 single some two decades before they became the “first” to pull off the trick. Before then ‘Stranger On The Shore’ was at least notable for what used to be the longest unbroken chart run of all time, clocking up 55 weeks on the Top 50 chart without a break. All without being downloaded once.
Blue Monday – New Order
Total UK sale: 1,125,000
Another retrospective addition to the list as it is only possible to arrive at this total by adding up the three separate chart runs of the classic single. Its two spells on the Top 40 in 1983 were enough to make it the 18th best seller of 1983, whilst the Arthur Baker remix which saw it released as a seven-inch single for the first time in 1988 made it the 57th best seller that year. A further re-release in the summer of 1995 has further added to the number, yet for all that the single has never climbed higher than a peak of Number 3.
Ghostbusters – Ray Parker Jnr
Total UK sale: 1,080,000
A single which is contemporaneous with the Wham! track but which was actually only awarded its seven figure honour some years later. A Number 2 hit in September 1984, the track memorably dropped out of the Top 40 just prior to Christmas that year only to gain second wind as the popularity of the film for which it was written steadily grew. This led to a renewed burst of interest which saw the track return to the Top 10 early in the new year. For years its sales held film until the arrival of the download era which saw it become one of a handful of “ghostly” themed singles which ensured it shifts a couple of thousand more copies every October. Add these to its original 1984 total and it is an easy million seller.
Torn – Natalie Imbruglia
Total UK sale: 1,075,000
Another latecomer to the party and a prime beneficiary of the download era. Natalie Imbruglia’s most famous hit, a cover of a Scandinavian single which had been doing the rounds for some years beforehand, the track peaked at Number 2 in November 1997. By the end of that year it had sold an impressive 810,000 copies, adding a further 157,000 in 1998 to take it to 967,000 copies in total. The 99,000 it has added since have all been as a result of downloaded sales over the last seven years.
Angels – Robbie Williams
Total UK sale: 1,060,000
Robbie’s most famous single was never a Number One you will note, its eventual chart peak being a mere Number 4 in February 1998. Released at the very back end of 1997 it had shifted 340,000 by the end of that calendar year, adding 467,000 in the following one. Total in its first chart run then, 807,000 which has since been topped up thanks to a constant demand for it to soundtrack funerals and weddings. Nobody listens to this dirge for fun surely?
Wonderwall – Oasis
Total UK sale: 1,050,000
Another track which spread the love across two calendar years initially, the bulk of its sales coming in 1995 when the ballad first peaked at Number 2. 653,000 units of the single were sold by December 31st that year, the track remaining available throughout 1996 when it added 270,000 to its total. Thus it was never going to take much for it to reach seven figures from a starting point of 923,000 and as Oasis’ most famous single ever, it seems certain to steadily add to that total for some time to come.
Love The Way You Lie – Eminem and Rihanna
Total UK sale: undetermined, but was confirmed to be over a million during 2011
The biggest selling single of 2010 is famously the only track ever to outsell all others in a calendar year without ever topping the charts, the track peaking at Number 2 in the summer of that year but hanging around the the Top 10 until well into October. We can argue until the cows come home whether this counts as a single which topped a million during its initial chart life – the track was only confirmed as having reached seven figures during October 2011, 15 months after it was first released.
Moves Like Jagger – Maroon 5 featuring Christina Aguilera
…which is where we came in, the smash hit single selling its millionth copy over the Christmas period after just five months on the charts. Before the holiday it was also reported that Fairytale Of New York had been confirmed as a million seller too, but I think this was based on a miscalculation of its original 1987 sale as the claim has now been withdrawn. Best estimates are that it is about 100,000 copies short, a gap it should theoretically make up over the next couple of years if its popularity remains undimmed.
So it is confirmed. As of January 2012 there are nine of the (so far) 110 million selling singles which never actually topped the charts, of which three (or possibly four) did so during their first chart runs, the rest nipping over the line with downloads or as a result of re-releases some years later.
For those curious, the next million seller is likely to be one of either ‘Price Tag’ or ‘We Found Love’. The Jessie J single ended the year just 19,000 copies short, but may need a boost from something like the Brit awards or a talent show performance to edge over the line ahead of the Rihanna track, currently sitting pretty on about 933,000 sales but for the moment adding to them still to the tune of about 20,000 copies a week. Both, you will note are Number One singles. As for lower charting hits ‘The A Team’ and ‘Rolling In The Deep’ both have 800,000 sales to their name at the present time, but at their present rate it will be a long haul to cross the line.
Smells Like Military Wives
6
Say hello to my little friend on the left. Or rather say hello to the new little friend of the Official Charts Company. From this week onwards, the feat of making it to Number One on the charts will be marked with far more than just a place forever in the record books. Each artist topping the charts will be presented with a trophy like the one pictured here, a clever and in its own way quite inspired move by the OCC to further promote the idea that being at the top of their core product is actually something which should matter a great deal.
The timing of this new award is no coincidence – the first recipient of the trophy will be the act who lands the Christmas Number One of 2011.
I was trying to think back to when I first became aware of the whole concept of topping the charts at Christmas and why we all like to pretend that it matters. I’m fairly certain it was 1986 as I’d researched the history of the Jackie Wilson re-issue ‘Reet Petite’ and its close proximity to the top of the penultimate chart before Christmas and became very excited by the prospect that if it did make Number One for Christmas it would break all kinds of records. Deciding that honour would only be served by doing so, it ranks as my first of very few successful singles chart predictions.
Whatever your own first memory of it all may be, let us not kid ourselves that the Christmas Number One has always represented the pinnacle of pop. For every ‘Earth Song’ that topped the festive charts, there has been a ‘Mr Blobby’; for every ‘Don’t You Want Me’ there is a ‘Save Your Love’; for every ‘Another Brick In The Wall’ there is a ‘Long Haired Lover From Liverpool’ – right back to the dawn of chart history. The problem is now that the whole idea of the “Xmas No.1” has now been elevated to a thing in and of itself, almost totally divorced from the normal reality of the singles chart. The festive chart-topper isn’t ever just the big pop record of the moment which happens to have sold the most before the holiday, it is now a record released with the specific aim of grabbing what is perceived to be the biggest chart crown of all.
Yes, this is mostly down to the TV talent shows. The whole wheeze of aiming a winning song at the seasonal market was dreamed up by the producers of the “Pop Stars – The Rivals” show in 2002 who realised that the best way to resolve the battle of the sexes that they were dreaming up for the show (two groups would be formed by a public vote, one male and one female) would be to release both simultaneously in the week before Christmas and see who came out on top. History records that the final chart of 2002 saw Girls Aloud at No.1 and One True Voice at Number 2, as the series worked its magic but sadly brushed the rest of the chart contenders out of the way as if they didn’t matter at all.
That said, the Number 3 single of the week nine years ago was by the Cheeky Girls (failed auditionees on the show) with the titanic pairing of Blue and Elton John at Number 4, so maybe in a sense we were all done a huge favour.
Whilst the next two reality show winners missed out on top honours for Christmas due to being released just after the holiday, since 2005 it has been a more or less safe presumption that the X Factor winner would put to bed any chance of anything resembling a chart race. When Shayne Ward sold over three quarters of million copies of ‘That’s My Goal’ in Christmas week 2005 you knew this was a juggernaut which was going to be hard to slow down or even stop.
After a few years of this I was bemoaning this wherever I could, making the point that the main reason this “game” of the festive Number One had been invented was to drive the irregular music purchasers into record shops and let them discover the wonders therein. By creating singles which were aimed to be Christmas Number One and nothing else, there was the danger we were programming a set of consumers to buy one CD single a year and to ignore everything else. Hardly a healthy state of affairs for a record industry which at the time was nervously waiting for the digital consumer revolution to catch fire.
Others did share that frustration but elected to take matters into their own hands two years ago, resulting in the now infamous chart ambush which meant that even selling half a million copies of ‘The Climb’ was not enough as the British sense of humour was tickled by the concept of buying a track which was the polar opposite. ‘Killing In The Name’ by Rage Against The Machine duly became the 2009 Christmas Number One, forcing Joe to wait a week for his moment of glory.
To this day there are regular readers who cannot understand why I condemned this in the way that I did, although the point was I thought reasonably clear. It seemed to me to fail to serve the cause of music in any way at all by replacing a single curated to be the Christmas chart-topper with one engineered to prevent it from doing so. People didn’t buy the rock song because of the way it sounded (not in the first week anyway), they were doing so to try to score a social or political point, and I abhor that.
I’ve alluded many times to the fact that ‘Killing In The Name’ only made it to the top thanks to some wholesale cheating by those involved. Much of its sales were mass bulk buys, with some online supporters cheerfully claiming to have shelled out for ten, twenty or even thirty copies over the course of the week. To me that is taking a level of obsession with the idea to frightening new levels. Was it really so important that you had to spend the equivalent of a meal at a restaurant to make it happen? As I noted at the time, the rules designed to maintain the integrity of the singles chart countdown were focused on preventing labels and pluggers furtively trying to drive up registered sales of their product – it was never assumed that the general public would try to hype the numbers up themselves. Since then the regulations are slightly more robust, limiting the number of “gift” copies than an individual can buy of a digital track and still have them count for the charts. Even at the time though, the sales patterns for ‘Killing…’ were triggering alarms which might have normally resulted in the single being disqualified for breach of hyping regulations. I have a suspicion that on this occasion the red flags were manually taken down – the publicity generated from the single remaining on the chart almost certainly worth far more than the publicity which would have resulted from such a high profile single being mysteriously absent come the weekend.
One further piece of outrageous cheating which took place was the exploitation of a loophole which inadvertently allowed people living outside the UK to “buy” singles eligible for a UK chart, all thanks to one online retailer which was offering a free download for new customers but which made no attempt to verify the addresses they were claiming to reside at. I’m firmly of the opinion it was from this source (only discovered by the campaigners at the end of the week) which gave ‘Killing In The Name’ the surge it needed to overcome the X Factor single (which had moved into the lead by the end of Friday). Once again, this technical breach of the rules was almost certainly allowed to slide, but I do know that the store in question found themselves removed from the chart survey until they could show that they were no longer submitting sales for the British charts which had originated overseas.
The 2009 Christmas Number One is now a part of chart history, but don’t for a minute think there was anything legitimate about many of its sales. Without the cheating, Rage Against The Machine would have been nowhere near the top.
Fast forward then to 2011 and the issues all referred to above have now come to a head. In theory this should be a far more equitable race than normal, with the X Factor coronation single by Little Mix having been in the shops for a week already and in the process selling in a rather slower manner than we are used to. 200,000 copies in a week is damn impressive, make no mistake – but compared to X Factor winners of old it is a rather miserable total. Frustratingly though, the main alternative contenders for the Year 10 metalwork project trophy are singles released or promoted with the specific aim of being top for Christmas. The rest of the singles market can go hang.
Leading the way, and at the time of writing looking almost a dead certainty to top the charts is ‘Wherever You Are’ by the Military Wives Choir. Should that be the case, I won’t be all that offended as the track is undoubtedly a very popular and very moving piece of recorded music. But as a charity record, sung by a vocal choir and released at the last possible moment before the holidays, is is at the same time that worst of all worlds – a record that exists to be Christmas Number One rather than an artistic statement of itself.
Just behind are the singles which various interested parties have enthusiastically purchased to try to stage a chart ambush. To my amusement they are all for the moment being bested by Lou Monte’s ‘Dominic The Donkey’ novelty recording from the 1960s, this thanks to the patronage of Chris Moyles on Radio One who without thinking about it has managed in 24 hours to torpedo some chart ambushes that have been weeks in the planning. I’m loving every last moment of it.
Also in the mix (or at least he was briefly) is wannabe pop star Alex Day who has made the leap from YouTube to the iTunes Top 10 thanks to mass purchases of many of the 730-odd different “remixes” of his single ‘Forever Yours’. This is all thanks to an army of teenage girls who worship him online and whilst the single won’t be Number One, I’m welcoming its presence in the charts if only for the fact that anything which persuades the YouTube-watching generation to actually buy copies of the music they see then it can only be a good thing. Ever wondered why Justin Bieber hasn’t had a string of Number One hits yet? It is because the pre-teens who weep lustful tears and acne pus over his posters don’t actually buy his music.
Finally, bringing up the rear in a manner which is quite hilarious are the “worthy” campaigners, the alternative rock crowd who haven’t quite worked out that the 2009 campaign success was a lightning in a bottle moment which will never be repeated. Undaunted by the disaster of their ‘Cage Against The Machine’ chart foray in 2010, the wheeze this year has been to storm the charts with Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ from 20 years ago. Browse the obligatory Facebook page and you will see the old tactics still in use, the encouragement to mass buy (and panting testimonials from those who have cheerfully done so), a “loophole” which they have found with which people overseas will be able to help (clue: it won’t work) and at the time of writing some hugely entertaining foot stamping as they realise they are not in contention. Tonight apparently they have decided amongst themselves that Chris Moyle’s promoting of ‘Dominic The Donkey’ is an advertising promotion which should not be allowed and their are complaining to the BBC in the hope that the record will be disqualified. This you may note a few hours after some expressed frustration that they hadn’t been “promoted” by Radio One as should be their right. Joined up thinking much?
So when the inaugural Number One trophy is presented this weekend, I’ll watch it happen with a mixture of enjoyment and regret. I’ll enjoy seeing the genuine grass roots popularity of the Military Wives single propel it to the top of the charts and raise thousands for charity in the process and I’ll chuckle wryly at the people who have spent a fortune on multiple useless downloaded copies of random singles that never stood a chance of making Number One. At the same time I’ll long for a return to the days when the Christmas Number One was something a pop record became because music fans wanted it to be so – not because it had been foisted upon us with that specific aim in mind.
It’s What I’m ‘About’ After All
1Have you been missing the weekly instalments of what used to be the Chart Watch UK column, absent from the net since Yahoo! Music shuttered its site in the UK? If so it is clear that you aren’t alone, as the enormous amount of traffic that this site has generated since the end of September has proved. My grateful thanks to everyone who has shown an interest in where I might end up next and who has expressed frustration that the chart column had come to temporary halt.
As you might imagine, I’ve not been able to discuss what has been going on behind the scenes over the last few weeks, but suffice it to say I’ve been in conversation with numerous music and entertainment sites about the possibility of picking the column up, impressing on them that an enormous worldwide audience was more or less guaranteed, and one which would return week after week. Nonetheless it has at times been hard work.
I’m still in discussions with some British based websites about appearing on their pages, but for those suffering Masterton withdrawal symptoms I am pleased to revel that I’ve been asked to contribute each week to the Top 40 pages of renowned American website About.com. The first of these pieces went online this week, and by bookmarking top40.about.com you’ll be able to catch up with the main chart headlines of the week every Sunday evening. Given the regular audience of about.com, the focus will be very much on explaining things from the point of view of an outsider, but I hope there will still be enough of the old opinionated me for people to disagree with.
Meanwhile the search for a proper home for the full Chart Watch UK column continues, for the moment keep listening to the weekly podcast for all the facts that don’t fit in the space available on About.
20 Minutes You’ll Never Get Back
11Interest in this little site has never been higher, thanks to the constant flow of people arriving here from the link at the end of the final Yahoo! Music Chart Watch UK column which went online last week. If you are one of those still coming late to the party, hello and welcome, and I promise I’ll keep people updated on any new home that the weekly chart commentary finds for itself online. Discussions are on-going I assure you.
In the meantime if you have an urgent need to find out exactly what I think about the new hits of the week there is no better way to do it than the (mostly) weekly podcast which has been running since 2008 and which for now is the only way to find out my take on the week’s chart news. The podcast is available on iTunes, or via the direct feed link on the right hand side, but for those who find this too much effort, you can listen to this week’s offering below and find out just what the origin of that messy Leona Lewis track is.
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Excuse Me While I Adjust Myself
2So how are we all? Enjoying the two days of holiday this week? Well some people have been hard at work it seems, most notably in the offices of the Official Charts Company who sent an unexpected missive to the recipients of the weekly charts data earlier this afternoon:
DECEMBER 28th: Last night, Millward Brown discovered a bug in the weighting software used to compile the charts, which has affected a number of positions in the charts published on Sunday December 26. As a result, the OCC has decided to re-run all of this week’s Official Charts. In relation to the Top 40 Singles and Albums Charts, the errors are minimal. But if you wish to correct any charts which you publish online, or simply use the attached charts for reference purposes, please feel free.
Millward Brown is conducting a thorough review of the processes and systems in light of this error. OCC and Millward Brown apologise for any inconvenience caused.
Now a word on what the “weighting system” mentioned above refers to. The average market share of each of the retailers reporting data into the chart system is sometimes used to correct anomalies in the data set to compilers Millward Brown. This arrangement dates from the mid-90s when on two occasions just a few weeks apart, one retailer submitted duplicate data following a system error, forcing an embarrassing re-publication of the affected chart countdown when the corruption was discovered earlier in the week. To forestall these kind of problems in future, the chart rules allow for retailers to occasionally fail to submit data for certain days, the weighting rules used to instead calculate what their sales figures for those periods were likely to have been and those numbers used in calculating the bestseller tables. This, incidentally, is one of the main reasons why music charts don’t reveal the actual sales tallies for all the singles in the countdown. Aside from the commercial sensitivity of such information, the numbers used to rank singles and albums often contain fractions of sales thanks to upweighted calculations. To declare that such and such a single sold 53,424.6 copies would be completely meaningless to the general public, hence you normally never get to see the numbers behind the chart positions.
This is also why when I quote sales figures on Yahoo! Music I tend to talk in vague terms unless the numbers have been formally announced by the Official Charts Company themselves. Apart from the fact that the data isn’t really mine to reveal, however I might have come by it, declaring unequivocally that a single has sold an exact number is fraught with danger. For all I know it may not have done in such a precise manner. Steering clear is the best way forward.
So what went wrong this week? Well in the charts published last weekend there should theoretically have not been any weighting applied. The cover sheet for the chart declared “All expected multiples data was received and available for use in compiling these charts”. I’m sure Music Week will have the full story next week, but it seems entirely possible that some upweighting was applied where it was not required and hence some figures were inflated – particularly when you dig down and note how the revised chart differs from the original version.
So what changes took place? Well as it turns out just one single in particular is affected. It is the X Factor charity single ‘Heroes’, originally Number 18 on the published chart, is relegated all the way down to Number 22. In consequence the singles from N-Dubz, JLS, McFly and Jessie J are all promoted one place. That would kind of imply that the error in the data came from a retailer such as a supermarket who would theoretically only be stocking the X Factor single as a one-off. If there was some confusion as to what sales data they had submitted then it is I guess entirely possible that some upweighting was applied when it was not required.
Further clues as to what actually happened can be gleaned from the changes to the album chart. The Ellie Goulding and Barbra Sreisand albums swap places at 23 and 24 respectively whilst Tinie Tempah and Rod Stewart also swap around at 26 and 27. Cee Lo Green moves from 36 to 34, relegating The Beatles’ ‘1967-1970’ down to 35. The Beatles’ ‘1962-1966’ drops 35-38, promoting Mumford and Sons and Biffy Clyro up a place as well. Finally Take That drop to 40 with ‘The Circus’, swapping places with Lady Gaga.
Spot a pattern here? Rod Stewart, The Beatles and Take That are the artists whose sales appear to have been overstated in the original chart rundown – all of them acts who one would expect to be selling in supermarkets rather than specialist music shops. The fact that lower down it is Daniel O’Donnell and the Chelsea Pensioners who slip places only reinforces that suggestion. The data from one (or maybe several) supermarket chains got accidentally scrambled and forced this extraordinary correction.
I’m sure this will all come out on Monday and to the relief of many no significant chart positions were affected, leaving this to be a minor wrinkle in the grand scheme of things. Imagine the horror if it turned out a single had been promoted to Number One in error. Expect questions to be asked though, the OCC pride themselves on supplying one of the most rigorously researched and scrupulously accurate sales reports of any industry in the world. The fact that they have been required to publish a correction, and in the middle of a holiday as well, will cause a fair number of red faces on the South Bank this week.
UPDATE 30/12/10: As the revised chart permeated into various sales databases over the past 48 hours, it has become possible to get more of a picture as to what changes were required. Many albums, several of them in the higher reaches of the chart, have had their sales totals for the week revised downwards, as much as 20% in some cases. Whilst Matt Cardle’s status as performer of the Number One single was never at risk, it too has also seen its reported sales slashed, to the extent that the single actually slipped from 2 to 3 in the year to date rankings and raising the possibility that he may not after all have the legs to overtake ‘Love The Way You Lie’ as the biggest seller of the year.
Now I stress that much of this is guesswork, but what seems likely to have happened is that data from at least one supermarket chain has indeed been revised in error. Thinking it through, the supermarkets would have reported strong sales for the whole of last week and then exactly zero on Saturday – it was Christmas Day and they were closed after all. Rather than this being flagged as an expected sales pattern, the computers compiling the chart interpreted this as “failure to report” and applied an appropriate level of upweighting to sales from the rest of the week – quite a large chunk given that many albums have had a fifth of their sales wiped out. This was such a serious error that you can understand totally why an extraordinary midweek correction was issued. The number of actual chart positions affected may have been few and far between, but such an error in sales totals simply could not be allowed to remain on the database.
Cease and Desist
0A little feedback can be a dangerous thing sometimes.
As you may well be aware, the blog format that Yahoo! Music currently uses to publish my weekly chart commentaries means that people have the opportunity to directly comment on what I have written each week. Much of the time this is very welcome, providing a platform for heated debate when I have said something particularly disagreeable and a most useful way for me to be alerted to any particularly glaring errors in the text. The desire for readers to prove they know more than I do can work to everyone’s advantage here. I always feel I should extend thanks to everyone who takes the time out to respond.
The exceptions are the tiny minority of what I am sure I can be forgiven for regarding as the slightly obsessive and unhinged individuals who tend to dominate the quiet weeks with lunatic conspiracy theories about records that aren’t where they should be. For that reason I rarely ever look at the pages beyond the first couple of hours. Once I know nobody has flagged up any factual errors, the quality of discussion tends to head off in the direction of Venus and there are more interesting ways to pass the time.
This week was different, after a couple of friends wrote to me with amusement about the outbreak of fuckwittery that was dominating the comment pages. Chief protagonist was one resident loon who had in the past been laughed out of town after complaining the singles chart looked nothing like the one in his fantasies (or something) but now was particularly aggrieved about something or other and was convinced I was at fault and “playing God” with the comments – ones you will note, I don’t actually read.
What required me to intervene and read the riot act was one particular piece of invective where he insisted that I had been “told off by the [Official Charts Company] once for publishing information they didn’t like”. Abuse and disagreement is fine by me and fair game, however potentially quite libellous suggestions that I was somehow behaving in an unprofessional way towards the publishers of my source material was another thing altogether. When challenged, the poster came over all indignant and posted the following:
Again I simply found that you had been sent a CEASE & DESIST LETTER from the OCC on the **** website. It’s still there you can check it out on that site all you have to do is type your surname in the SEARCH and you should find loads of people bad mouthing you. Therefore it is the public domain that you had a run in with the OCC, if it be false you had better tell them on that website it is!
I’d never visited the site in question before. but a quick search of their forum threw up the truth. The discussion in question was one dating from 2006 (four years ago you will note) in which the moderators of the site were suppressing the wholesale posting of copyrighted charts data, citing as a cautionary tale an occasion in 1995 (FIFTEEN YEARS AGO) when… well, we’ll come to that in a moment.
After instructing Mr Loonspud that his contributions were no longer welcome and that any further comments from him would be deleted on sight (using “God” powers that I have but rarely have the energy to use) it did strike me that the full tale of the summer of 1995 is actually one I haven’t told online for some time. It used to be a part of the original “live CV” incarnation of this site about ten years ago, but no longer. What better opportunity then than to recount it all here and put things in their correct context?
<<<<< wavy lines indicating trip back in time >>>>>>
I’d begun writing weekly commentaries on the goings on in the UK Top 40 in October 1992, posting them initially to rec.music.misc on usenet, newsgroups being the primary means of publishing and distributing your work in those pre-browser days of the internet. By the start of the following year there was a mailing list as well, prompted by a request from one reader for a direct copy of the text following a network breakdown in the January which meant that one posting in particular took a full week to propagate its way around the world. Hard to believe now, but this was indeed an era when a message posted online would typically take several days to travel around the globe.
By late 1994 the thing was growing like Topsy. Internet connectivity had gone mainstream that year as the next big thing in personal communication and I was regularly being listed as one of the most interesting musical resources on the net. Over my little 28k dialup connection at home I was regularly sending copy out to over 1,000 different email addresses, as well as posting the copy up on usenet. By that time, again in response to reader requests, my semi-accurate words of wisdom were interspersed with the full Top 40 rundown to put each comment in its proper context.
Inevitably it was only a matter of time before someone in authority noted that I was merrily reproducing what was at the end of the day someone else’s copyrighted data. It wasn’t deliberate theft, just a fact of life that the net was all about the distribution of information across national boundaries. It was all done for the greater community good – but legally there really was no defence for it.
Hence it was no surprise that one day in late June 1995 I received a polite but sternly worded email from one of the two people who at that time ran the Chart Information Network, the publishers of the UK charts and the forerunner of today’s Official Charts Company. In it she noted that having just hooked up an internet connection it had been discovered I was reproducing the singles chart, and that given they owned the data would I be so kind to cease my activities immediately and to make sure it was all removed from view. After a day or so of soul searching I wrote back apologetically and assured them that no harm was meant and that I would be happy to do as they said. I also contacted the chap in Russia who was at the time hosting the latest column for me on some webspace he owned and asked him to take the page down. He was amused by the fuss, noting that where he lived people would stand on street corners with tables full of pirate software and music. International copyright wasn’t really something they bothered with and he was sure nobody would be able to do anything about his website. Nonetheless he complied and removed the page.
This then was the great “telling off” the lunatic commenter believed demonstrated the full extent of my personal misbehaviour. So relevant that there are singles being bought today by people who weren’t born when it all first happened.
Back to 1995 though, and the next stage was to tell my eager audience just why the flow of information had dried up so suddenly. I still have the original posting I made to the newsgroup a few days after the first email had arrived:
From: james@prefade.demon.co.uk (James Masterton)
Subject: CHART: No more chart analyses?
Date: 25 Jun 1995 00:00:00 GMT
Message-ID: <19950625.221429.84@prefade.demon.co.uk>
distribution: world
x-nntp-posting-host: prefade.demon.co.uk
reply-to: james@prefade.demon.co.uk
newsgroups: rec.music.miscYou may have been puzzled by the lack of a Top 40 Analysis posting from me this week. Unfortunately I have to inform you that I am unable to write any further articles.
On Wednesday June 14th I received an email from Catharine Pusey
<xxxx@xxxxxxxxx.xx.xx> who is the Chart Director of CIN Limited, the
organisation in charge of compiling and distributing the UK charts. In it,
she informed me that she had just joined the internet and had come across my article. She also informed me that my usage of CIN charts as a basis for that posting, without the appropriate licence was a breach of copyright and that I should cease to do so immediately. I have to confess a feeling of great disappointment to receive a directive of this nature, but under the circumstances I appear to have no option but to comply, paticularly as I have no wish to abuse the copyright of an organisation whose work I admire and respect.In the first instance my disappointment stems from the fact that I am
clearly unable to continue to provide to both you and the net the service I have been trying to offer. I have been trying to promote to others is the
vibrancy and life that exists in the music scene in this country and to
enhance the reputation of British charts and British music in general. White I have been writing these articles I have been repeatedly and pleasantly surprised at the respect and admiration that exists worldwide for the music we have in this country, hence my disappointment that CIN should instruct me to discontinue this service.The compilation and production of charts is a commercial enterprise but I had not thought there would be a problem using information which receives such wide publicity and in circumstances which do not involve money. I produce my articles at my own expense and have never required or received any remuneration for this.
I must also express disappointment at the way the net is clearly about to be deprived of one of its resources. I suspect I have been unfortunate in that I am probably the most prominent user of chart information on the net and so I am the first one they have noticed. Many others contribute information in a similar manner and I am certain that CIN face a long uphill struggle if they want to remove all unauthorised use of their material in every corner of the net, as appears to be their stated aim.
Sadly it appears there is little I can do. Over the many years I have tried
to share my enthusiasm for the British charts with you I have been pleased and flattered at the positive response I have received and I would like to thank everyone who has taken the time to write to me with questions and comments, or even just those who have read with interest and I am sorry I have not had the time to reply to you all in as much detail as I would have liked. I hope this is not the last you will hear from me, I am keen to be able to continue the work I have been doing. I have asked CIN if it might be possible for me to legally continue the service but obtaining some form of authorisation. Whatever the outcome, I can promise that this will not be the last you will hear from me. I firmly believe that as the net is an interactive medium, in order to be a good citizen one must contribute as well as receive information and I shall be actively searching for my next opportunity to make that contribution.James Masterton
Incidentally the blanking out of the email address did not exist in the original. Rather naughtily I chose to reveal the address of my admonisher (a lady who now, incidentally, is the General Manager of the National Trust) to the world at large, maybe in the back of my mind wondering how they would react when word spread of what some would regard as an outrageous act of censorship. You would not get away with it today naturally, but I worked on the basis that should they complain, I could have innocently explained that such things were commonplace online.
24 hours later after returning from work I fired up the modem and logged on to the net. Whereas typically I would have six or seven emails waiting for me to download, this time there were close to 300. Even more would arrive over the next few days. Each one said the same thing, expressing emotions ranging from disappointment to anger and even heartbreak. People were offering to donate legal advice, instigate letter-writing campaigns and to contact the authorities – anything to prevent me having to stop. It seems almost surreal looking back, but it was a level of response that was all at once extremely moving and incredibly humbling. As I suspected many people had indeed contacted the CIN email address directly and copied me in on the text. Amongst the more sensible ones there was a common theme – advising them that really they should be hiring me, not suppressing me.
Amongst that first batch of emails was a name that I recognised from in print. Steve Redmond, the then editor of Music Week saying he had become aware of my work, was impressed by it and wondered if I would give him a call. One quick conversation later, I had an appointment to visit him at their offices to discuss a new project they had coming up.
The magazine was at the time based in Ludgate House, affectionately referred to by Private Eye as “the grey Lubyaka” and perhaps better known as the Daily Express building. It sits on the bank of the Thames near Blackfriars Bridge in London, a building that is oddly enough just around the corner from where I work now.
The recent development of the station has changed the area nearby beyond recognition but before it happened I would often smile with nostalgia when I had cause to exit the station. I’d flash back to being 21 years old again, on my first ever trip to the big city. I’d walk past the sandwich shop on the corner, walk across the bridge and approach the towering grey block that to this day houses United Business Media, tracing the very footsteps I made on that hot July morning. On entering the building I was directed across the lobby and invited to use the special express lift that stopped exclusively at what at the time were the penthouse offices of Lord Hollick himself, and one floor below the offices of Music Week. After assuring the lift attendant that I wasn’t heading for his Lordship’s domain I stepped out into the busy offices of the music industry’s trade bible to be greeted by a smiling secretary who guided me to the editors office.
Steve Redmond and I had a long conversation where I waxed lyrical about the online world and how people viewed British music overseas. How people all over the world were fascinated by the UK charts and the unique way the market worked here. “Only in this country,” I explained, “could two actors from a TV series (Robson and Jerome) record a straightforward cover of a 40 year old song and wind up with one of the 10 biggest sellers of all time”. Trust me, back in 1995 that was a very big deal.
The offer Redmond made was simple. The next week they were launching a new website, bringing some official Music Week content to the online world for the first time. Crucially they were to be the first website to carry the official chart listings and he realised that my commentary would be the perfect complement to this. We agreed a fee (a professional rate for a professional job after all) and shook hands on it. In the space of one week I’d gone from internet pirate to freelance writer for one of the most well known trade magazines in the country. Before I left I was taken to say hello to the CIN team and so came face to face with the lady whose email had started the ball rolling. Very nice she was as well. The rest I guess is history.
So that is the story of my great “telling off” which is not only completely irrelevant as a piece of criticism of my present day work but which actually turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me in life and the makings of what I might laughably at times call a career.
Never mind, better ludicrous comments from the socially disturbed than no comments at all I guess. My next challenge is to work out what to make of this one that appeared at the bottom of the Yahoo! feed of the podcast last week:
I can’t wait to see how that one pans out.
…and at the halfway stage…
4
Well it isn’t every day you wake up to the news that the Official UK Charts Company has done something bold and unusual.
For a great many years, the Holy Grail for dedicated music fans who were not directly connected with the music industry was to catch a glimpse of the midweek figures. As data collection moved into the digital age, the music industry was no longer restricted to waiting until the end of the week to find out exactly how well their product was performing at retail and charts compilers began to produce informal data tables to provide a midweek update – a tantalising glimpse of what may or may not be the state of play come the weekend.
I remember my first indication that there was a deeper story behind the weekend chart countdown came in January 1989 when Alan Jones’ Record Mirror chart column recounted the progress of ‘Somethings Gotten Hold Of My Heart’ by Marc Almond and Gene Pitney towards its eventual berth at Number One. He revealed that at the start of the week in question, Kylie and Jason led on Monday and Tuesday, Mike and the Mechanics took the lead on Wednesday but following their performance on Wogan that evening, the Almond/Pitney duet stormed ahead and was comfortably the Number One single by the weekend. If you had the information, day by day the it was possible to see a story develop.
By the mid-90s the midweek information could always be obtained if you had the right contacts, and it wasn’t uncommon for fifth-generation faxed copies of the secret earlier sales flashes to be circulating by Thursday of each week. I remember being sent a copy of the sheet in May 1995, one which revealed that ‘Back For Good’ by Take That had sold more copies in three days than most singles did in a week and that by the weekend it would be Number One by a country mile.
It was always important to remember that these listings were as raw and unofficial as it was possible to be. Virtually no filtering of the data had taken place with missing reports taken into account and before security checks had been applied to the figures. One or two of the more famous chart deletions of the mid-90s were exposed when records which had shown up on the midweek sheets were nowhere to be seen on the published chart when it arrived on Sunday. So you had to be careful when relying on the data. More than once I’d been caught out badly by preparing a lovingly constructed column on the significance of a particular act reaching Number One, only to have to discard it completely when the proper chart came through and it turned out the midweek numbers had been completely wrong.
Hence officially the midweeks didn’t actually exist. You couldn’t request a copy or a licence to publish them, and anyone trying to be “helpful” and release them online was slapped down with extremely stern legal letters complaining of copyright breaches.
Recently this attitude began to soften. In an information led age, it was almost perverse to assume that even trivial information about which records were outselling each other would not circulate in any form. Hence even Music Week began making the data readily available to its subscribers, with midweek information published on their website each lunchtime from Tuesday to Friday. Hence whenever you see press stories recounting that “early reports suggest” such and such a record is in the lead (stories which appear everywhere from tabloid pop pages to the BBC News website) they are sourcing the data from these Music Week tables. Nonetheless the information was still raw and unsorted, the “Top 40” would habitually only contain 38 singles, and tracks would often appear twice as sales of different versions had not been properly merged in the database. These were details that would be corrected in the “official” chart at the weekend, so attention to detail didn’t matter at the start of the week.
The other spanner in the works came with the rise to prominence of the online stores, outlets which had immediate access to their sales data and which in time honoured tradition made the rundown of their biggest selling singles of the moment a focal point of their front pages. Hence it is possible to get an up to the minute picture of what is selling by simply firing up iTunes on your computer. Not that this too isn’t without its pitfalls, as not only is the chart just the data from one store alone but its methodology remains a closely guarded secret (it is a 24 or 48 hour rolling average according to most popular theories) and it is subject to quirks of the iTunes database. Hence if a song is temporarily deleted and then re-added to correct a listing problem, it immediately vanishes from the online chart and has to spend the next 24 hours or so climbing back to its true position in the rankings.
Then there was the relaunch of the commercial radio chart show, the Big Top 40 which made a virtue of basing its Top 10 rundown on the “live” iTunes rankings. With new singles arriving online on Sundays, it meant that very often a popular new releases would be at or near the top by the end of the day, allowing the upstart chart show to showcase next week’s Number One immediately and leaving the Radio One show looking dated. Chart purists may loathe its illogicality and disregard for the facts, but in programming and promotion terms it remains a masterstroke.
The culmination of this all is the announcement today that Radio One is to broadcast an official midweek update for the very first time. It is a move that even the OCC notes is the “biggest change to the chart in almost 60 years”. For the first time ever, the midweek data becomes official and public and in the process now allows everyone to follow the internal narrative of the weekly race to become Number One.
Note that this doesn’t mean we end up with two charts a week, as the Sunday countdown will still be based on Sunday-Saturday sales, it is just that on Wednesday afternoon we will officially know what the Sunday-Tuesday sales data looks like. Lest anyone things this somehow ruins the surprise, it is worth noting that in a close race a great deal can change in just a few days. The Music Week piece linked to above notes the race a couple of weeks back between Sidney Samson and Iyaz when both singles spent the week in a neck and neck race with the lead changing hands several times. The Christmas Number One race also had hidden twists that only the full day by day figures exposed, with the Joe McElderry single closing the gap between it and the RATM track almost hour by hour, taking the lead by Saturday morning only to be denied at the last by some blatant cheating from the campaigners and a surge of sales proxied in from overseas purchasers which technically should not have been allowed.
Personally I welcome anything that drags the industry’s most useful promotional tool back to the prominence it needs to have and to see if being shown some attention and care after being abused and taken for granted by the industry over the last decade and a half is very good news indeed. I’ve long maintained that the singles chart’s main problem is a lack of visibility with no record stores to pin the listing up in, no Top Of The Pops to use it as a narrative and a flagship radio show presented by a man whose lack of familiarity with his source material is sometimes uncomfortable to hear.
Midweek data can sometimes tell you things that make you happy after all. At the moment iTunes is telling me that Jedward are trailing Owl City and if they keep that up won’t be Number One at the weekend. That might be the best news some people hear all week.
Spread The Word
2
My name pops up in the most unusual places doesn’t it? The clipping on the left is taken from the current (at the time of writing) edition of The Word magazine which as part of its “end of the decade” retrospective features an interesting three page article on the music charts and their continuing relevance in the new century. It came about when the article’s author Peter Robinson got in touch with me and asked if he could talk to me as part of the research. In thanking me for my time he made it seem as if it was almost an imposition. I was talking to the man who writes Popjustice for goodness sake, it ranked as one of the highlights of the year.
For the record however, my “dubious baking analogy” was a dubious cake analogy, so once again the press have TWISTED MY WORDS.
Actually it seems only appropriate to highlight the article this week given that just for a change the activities and contents of the singles chart are suddenly one of the biggest entertainment stories of the week. This is all thanks to the rather unexpected two way battle that has developed between X Factor winner Joe McElderry and the 1993 Rage Against The Machine single ‘Killing In The Name’. Where previous “let’s randomly buy this single and get it into the charts” stunts have fallen short, this one appears to have tickled the fancy of a rather worryingly large number of people, to the extent that on early sales figures the presence of the X Factor winner at the top of the charts for the fifth Christmas running is by no means a foregone conclusion.
Officially I still find it objectionable. As I’ve written in the column this week and ranted extensively on the podcast, there is something rather unsavoury about people buying a record not because they have heard it or like it, but because they are being encouraged to by somebody else to prove a dubious point that doesn’t really need proving in the first place. Call me a purist if you will, but “I joined a Facebook group that told me it was a good idea” is not for me a valid reason to buy music – particularly given the unlikelihood of you actually listening to or appreciating the music at the end of it.
That said, this does appear to have had the neat side effect of making the race for Number One a mainstream news story for the first time since – well, I guess since the great Truesteppers/Posh Spice race at the start of the decade. Far from being a rather dull foregone conclusion, the identity of the Christmas Number One is now a matter of some speculation and if you believe the news channels actually worthy of some comment.
That much is amusing, although not half as amusing as seeing Official Charts Company boss Martin Talbot propped up in front of the Sky News cameras last night to talk about the race and what it all means. It is also further entertaining to read the pontificating online in various forums, people who at ordinary times would not dream of giving a damn what was Number One talking about how important it is to break Simon Cowell’s monopoly on the seasonal favourite or for people who have enthusiastically embraced the file sharing age offering advice on the best place to actually spend money on a piece of music.
So on the one hand I’m on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand it is something of a joy to see people scrutinising the music charts, giving a shit about what would be Number One and spreading the word about how best to race a song up the rankings – this especially after I told Peter Robinson on the phone that the biggest problem for the official charts was a lack of visibility given that Top Of The Pops didn’t exist any more and record shops had no need to display them or use them as the inspiration for their shelf stacking. On the other hand, hyping a record that has no particular cultural reference point, is being neither played nor performed nor which has any particular relevance to anyone’s life is still somehow to me wrong and a grotesque distortion of what the weekly musical popularity contest is supposed to be about. In years to come the random arrival of ‘Killing In The Name’ in the Christmas Top 10 (and its near instantaneous exit in the new year) will require a very large footnote to explain the circumstances. Just like the Bloody Diana Record it has nothing to do with the music and everything to do with symbolism. I dislike it for that simple reason.
Never mind. Despite the numbers so far, like most people I’m still fairly certain that the race will ultimately be decided in favour of the X Factor single, although the lead accumulated by mindless idiots buying the other record has caused a few people to examine their convictions and prepare to have an open mind.
In the meantime, whilst watching my tenner on Lady Gaga to be Christmas Number 2 vanish down the toilet, I can make my peace with the fuss. As people flock to Amazon and fret as to whether the 29p download is chart eligible (it is), as music industry experts are wheeled out on television to explain what it all means, as even the OCC themselves start Twittering the midweek information and as come the weekend millions scour the internet for the early news of the final sales totals, there is now more than enough ammunition to approach the “the charts just don’t matter any more, who buys singles anyway?” argument and be able shoot it down in flames for pretty much the whole of 2010.
The Holy Grail – Republished!
0Well, I never thought we’d see the day.
I’ve written many times in the past about the fabled “Guinness Book of Top 40 Charts”, last published in 1996 and how the out of print book has been a source of frustration to many a hardcore fan of the music charts. You’d be hard pressed to explain to a neutral observer just why a tome which lists week by week the Top 40 singles chart with the odd footnote to provide background is so useful, so interesting and such a source of constant surprises – but it is.
It is therefore with fear that I open my own copy of the 1996 version every time I need to refer to something, simply because the ageing volume will inevitably fall apart from age and overuse. For a long time the chances of a replacement looked slim. As I’ve mentioned before, this is a book which theoretically can never be profitable, targeted at a niche hardcore market with limited potential sales, yet at the same time costing a great deal of money due to produce due to the need to licence the data it contains.
Yet the closing months of 2009 have seen something of a miracle occur – because the book is back on the shelves. Having seized the mantle of chart books publishers after an unseemly interregnum when none were available by publishing the welcomed yet rather badly designed and at times misfiring British Hit Singles volume, Virgin Books have now grasped the nettle with both hands and responded to what appears to have been enthusiastic public demand. Available now at a bookshop near you is the chartwatchers holy grail – “The Virgin Book Of Top 40 Charts”.
Reviewing such a work is a near impossibility, for this is truly the most Ronseal of publications. Inside its 1000 plus pages, you will find nothing less than a complete account of every Top 40 (or nearest equivalent) singles chart dating from the first weeks of the Record Retailer chart in March 1960 right up to the present day, the book climaxing with the very first chart of 2009 featuring Alexandra Burke nestling at the top. All present and correct are the markers from previous versions, allowing easy noting of the chart debuts of particular acts as well as the moment a disc reached its own particular chart peak.
If you are reading this wondering why on earth anyone would want to own such a thing, then chances are you won’t ever need to. If, like me, you’ve somehow found reason in your life to want to refer back to just what song entered at Number 22 on the day you met your significant other and have tired of filling in the decade and a half gap since the last such document with various Excel spreadsheets and carefully filed away emails of old rankings, then chances are you’ve already located a copy and bought it for yourself enthusiastically.
The Virgin Book Of Top 40 Charts is a co-publication of Virgin Books and the Official Charts Company and is priced at £20. Just mind your copy carefully, who knows when it will ever come out again.
Meanwhile, what to do with my battered copy of the 1996 edition which once upon a time could have fetched huge sums on ebay. It just shows how the value of your book collections can go down as well as up…
Pesci Phart
2It is all change as far as the world of commercial radio charts is concerned, something that I kind of predicted in the Counting Down The Hits podcast lat year (you can still find it at the bottom of the podcast feed). That said, I originally anticipated the network of stations taking an alternative to the Radio One chart show on a Sunday afternoon to fall apart gradually. Instead the whole show has been taken in a radically new direction.
We should have guessed something was afoot when Lucio was suddenly “future endeavoured” by Capital Radio and simultaneously binned from the Hit40UK show. His immediate replacement by “Rich”, no disrespect to the guy, was hardly the kind of big name you can sell an existing brand on, and it now turns out this was just a holding pattern, preparing him to be the brand new face at the launch of what is being billed as a brand new chart property.
Not that the commercial radio chart show hasn’t been taken in a series of different directions ever since its inception as “The ILR Network Chart” back in 1984. The original version was an aping of the US Hot 100, combining sales reports (sourced from a different survey to the “real” chart show) and airplay tallies from the stations taking the chart. For many people, the first they became aware of this rather different chart was when it was used by the ill-fated ITV rival to Top Of The Pops – The Roxy – for their onscreen countdowns. Much was made of the fact that the differing methods of compilation would often result in a difference of opinion as to what was the Number One single, something that rather served to diminish the Network Chart and call its credibility into question.
Consequently in August 1993 the opportunity was taken to bring things slightly more into line. Neil Fox was parachuted in to take over the newly rebranded Pepsi Chart Show (subsequently shortened to the simpler Pepsi Chart when an even bigger sponsorship deal was signed a few years later). Airplay would still be a factor, but only as far as Number 11. Most importantly the Top 10 would exactly match the Official BBC chart, based on sales only. Crucially this did mean that the only point of difference between the climax of the two shows was who got to announce the Number One first and when I worked for a time at Unique who produced the show, I saw first hand the timed to the second running order that ensured the final reveal took place at the earliest opportunity.
This method of compilation did mean the chart could exhibit some strange behaviour, with hot new pre-releases charging up the chart and then sticking firm at Number 11 until they became eligible for the “proper” chart and could advance to the Top 10. Better yet were the hardcore dance hits that most commercial stations would not touch with a bargepole but which would spend a week or two in the Top 10 and then charge straight out to Number 38 when the airplay factor kicked in. Most memorably a strange golden oldie invaded the listing in the week following the death of Princess Diana. News that Elton John was going to redo ‘Candle In The Wind’ at the funeral meant that many stations placed the original in heavy rotation during the week when they shunned their usual playlists. It meant that the following Sunday the 25 year old track was listed inside the commercial radio Top 40 – all this ten years before old singles invading the chart became commonplace thanks to the download era.
I was privileged enough to be there when the chart celebrated its tenth birthday in that form, a celebration only blighted slightly by the fact that the entire print run of the company’s quarterly newsletter had to be pulped due to nobody spotting that a mischievous Neil Fox had subtly rearranged the icing on the obligatory birthday cake so that the letters spelled “PESCI PHART”. It is to my lasting regret that I didn’t keep hold of a copy of the vandalised newsletter, a subsequent reprint featuring a photo that had been photoshopped back to a more respectable form.
I think part of the problem that the Hit40UK show that replaced the Pepsi Chart when the sponsorship ended was that it never was able to demonstrate that level of consistency. Presenter lineups were chopped and changed and the methodology used in its compilation was tweaked several times, first changing the radio of sales to airplay used, then restricting the 100% sales aspect to the Top 3 before finally winding up with a Top 10 based completely on download sales and thus finally breaking the link with the Official Number One. Naturally none of this really mattered to the producers. As was revealed on the podcast last year, the purpose wasn’t really to create a credible chart that people would follow avidly. The show was there to create an entertainment brand to be sold nationally.
It therefore came as something of a surprise last week when the announcement of the brand new Big Top 40 Show was made, as the approach to the show represents something of a volte face. The gimmick of the new show – the top end of the chart will not be set in stone from the start of the broadcast. Although the lower end will be the traditional mix of sales and airplay, the Top 10 will be based on the “live” iTunes chart, with the audience being sold on the concept that they can affect where their favourite song lands while the show is still on the air.
I can’t help but be reminded of the way Radio One sold their brand new chart show way back in October 1987 when the singles chart began to be revealed live on the air during the Sunday afternoon show. I’ve still got the tapes of those early shows which featured Bruno Brookes hyping up the fact that the chart was being revealed to them line by line, suggesting things like “looking at our computer, this song has moved around a bit in the last 20 minutes, but finally settles at…”. It was an act they gave up on within a few months when it became common knowledge that the chart was delivered to them on Sunday lunchtime and the positions of each song was a mystery to neither the producers nor Bruno himself.
I’m kind of cynical as to how much of an effect last minute downloads of big selling songs on a Sunday afternoon is going to affect chart positions, although it should be noted that the iTunes chart that you see on the front page of the application is generally believed to be a 24 hour rolling average of the most popular tracks, so in theory the gap between positions may not be as pronounced as it can be on the weekly sales tally. Nonetheless this raises some interesting questions as to how the numbers for the Big Top 40 will be arrived at. If the lower end is based on a weekly survey and the Top 10 a daily one, the chance surely exists that a song which has either sold slowly to begin with or has been granted a weekend release may wind up featuring twice. Doubtless they have thought of this, but the chance of this messing up must surely be there.
Still in a way I’m actually rather cheered by this approach, for it moves the show away from its showbiz cul-de-sac and back to what this chart purist thinks it should be. Suddenly the chart itself, and not the big name interviews becomes the focus, each broadcast building up to the climax of playing the songs in the order that you, the public have chosen. With the Radio One show plunging to such desperate levels that the presenters forget to even announce what a new entry is before they play it, this back to basics approach to a radio chart show can only be a good thing.
I can forsee just one crucial flaw here however. The iTunes store as we customers see it tracks each tune as a separate database entry. Occasionally tracks can be misfiled or are deleted and re-added for whatever reason, and when that happens it means the sales of the old entry are automatically wiped, leaving the “new” produ
ct to climb the listings again under its old steam. We saw this last week with the Radio Edit of ‘Bonkers’ vanishing from iTunes for two days and consequently going missing from their bestsellers chart. Will the Big Top 40 be able to take this into account, or could errors in Apple’s database mean that a big selling Top 3 single on the official chart is missing from the commercial radio equivalent altogether. Enquiring minds wish to know…
