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[paulgilb]

A few points to note (some of which have been alluded to above):

1. It isn't as big a deal as several years ago, as now we have Youtube, illegal downloads, fake versions, streaming etc, whereas in (say) the 1990s you pretty much had to wait until the record was released (unless you could get an expensive import copy).

2. Making everything on-air-on-sale would slow down the chart (and lead to many songs not charting as high), which would lead to people moaning that the chart is too slow and wishing things would go back to the old days.

3. A lot of held-back releases do still hang around on the chart for a decent amount of time, suggesting that they don't lose too many sales due to the release delay.

4. It is somewhat harsh to blame this situation on 'UK record companies', given that most of the (mainly non-UK) artists involved are signed to global record companies/labels.

If the current situation is to change, I believe at least one of the following will need to happen:

1. I-Tunes announces a strict 'no discrimination' policy i.e. any track available in one country will also be made available in every other country.

2. I-Tunes removes all pre-orders from their chart. Perhaps they could even promote fake versions of unreleased tracks, especially if those who download fakes generally download the 'proper' track on release (I-Tunes would get 2 sales instead of 1 this way).

3. The OCC disqualifies pre-orders from the chart (especially those that are downloaded automatically on release).

4. Artists allow another record label to release any song that their main record label does not wish to release. This situation is slightly similar to what happened in 1969 (yes, I know things were somewhat different back then!) when Fontana deleted Je T'Aime ... Moi Non Plus just before it was set to hit #1 (possibly because they were embarrassed), at which point Major Minor said 'thank you very much', released the track on their label, and got a #1 in 2 weeks.