This is my first post here. Probably quite ambitious for a first post. I use the chart run of the latest JLS single as an opportunity for a somewhat lengthy and fundamental opinion concerning chart history and methodology. Apologies if similar points have been raised before and I don't quote them: I haven't been following the discussion thoroughly.

 

Let's look back in time eight years, to 2002. The UK singles chart celebrated its 50th anniversary. But it was in crisis: in intensive care", according to Paul Gambaccini on Radio Two; "dysfunctional", according to Chris Cowey, producer of Top of the Pops at the time. Virtually every single entered at its highest position. Record companies engineered it that way by withholding singles until demand for them had built up, in order to compress as many sales as possible in the first sales week and thus maximise singles' peak chart positions. Yet such a chart was not interesting to the public. After a single's first week, the only question was how fast it would drop down the chart. One proposed cure was an airplay component. I thought this would be disastrous. Therefore, I proposed a different cure: keeping a pure sales chart, but switching to a moving averages basis. Details can still be found today in my archived post to the usenet group uk.music.misc.

 

I also e-mailed it to the people in charge. To Chris Cowey, it seemed like a good idea, at least on first glance. But Omar Maskatiya, director of the Official Charts Company (back then named 'Official UK Charts Company') pointed to a lack of industry support (while also implying it wasn't a new idea) and also already to a big change that was going to happen anyway: digital distribution of music. Indeed, since the inclusion of downloads there is no shortage of climbers on the chart. So, is everything fine now?

 

Far from it. The same "front-loading" practice is still going on. Both last week and the week before, a single entered at No 1 only to tumble to No 5 the next week. After all, front-loading is rational if you want to maximise your single's peak chart position. As for the climbers, many of them are second or third releases from albums, already available as album tracks when the promotional campaign sets in. But that means their chart peaks are not really comparable! In a sense, the situation is now even worse than it was in 2002. As an example, consider the peaks of the four JLS singles that have been released so far. Three No 1 singles and one No 6. Surely one can conclude from this that the No 6 was a flop, relatively speaking? No, one can't, because it would mean comparing apples to oranges. These are the chart runs (first six weeks; data from polyhex.com):

 

'Beat Again': 1 -> 1 -> 2 -> 4 -> 7 -> 12 ...

 

'Everybody In Love': 1 -> 3 -> 6 -> 11 -> 16 -> 25 ...

 

'One Shot': 32 -> 10 -> 6 -> 8 -> 7 -> 14 ...

 

'The Club Is Alive': 1 -> 7 -> 9 -> 16 -> 23 -> 32 -> ?

 

The sales pattern over time was markedly different for 'One Shot', since it was always available as an album track, whereas the other three were withheld until demand had built up. Eight years ago, it was at least usually meaningful to compare different singles' peak positions to each other. Now even that isn't the case any more. Thus, the UK singles chart has now lost what is arguably one of the most important criteria for the quality of a chart.

 

What to do about it, then? The moving averages method would still help, but I guess that in today's mainly digital environment a simpler and better solution is available. Just exclude withheld singles from the chart. That is, any single that is available to listen to (say, on the radio) but not to buy should become chart-ineligible (say, for one year). Admittedly "availability to listen" may be difficult to define, but the OCC could issue guidelines and give (say, a one-week) warning for singles it deems available to listen but not to buy.

 

Obviously, in a free country nobody should be forced to make their product available when they don't want to --- it's just that the product wouldn't get listed in the singles chart otherwise. Yet since chart manipulation is the major reason to delay release, the practice would presumably be abandoned and few singles would actually be lost to the chart due to the new rule. In any case, the exclusion of very popular singles from the chart would not be unprecedented, at least not for specific weeks: remember when 'Viva La Vida' by Coldplay was "invisible" for a while and then entered at No 1 as soon as it became chart-eligible.

 

Why did I not propose this simple solution eight years ago? Because surely it is far easier to make a track available digitally than it is to distribute physical copies to the shops. For shop singles, you could also have tricked such a system by limiting the number of copies to a small amount at first. While one can think of tricks for digital singles as well (for example, giving them to some obscure small online store at first and to the big stores only later), it should be much easier to devise effective rules against such tricks. After all, there are already complicated chart eligibility rules in place that deal with some other issues.

tl;dr

 

Based on title alone: no.

Edited August 16, 201014 yr by BJBB Bray

Interesting post. But what would really be the benefits of this all?

If the goal is to make charts interesting then it's all wrong. Why should charts be interesting? There is loads of drama going on all the time regardless whether songs debut high or not.

Edited August 16, 201014 yr by SKOB

:lol: not another one. No.

Front loaded sales shouldn't be banned but sometimes they have clearly made a mockery (imo) of the UK singles chart.

 

The best example would be:

 

19/05/2007 McFly Baby's Coming Back/Transylvania 1 {1}-20-39-59->4

 

Benefitting from a fairly quiet week of sales (exactly one week before the mighty Rihanna 'Umbrella' took over for an impressive ten weeks), this was a defining front loaded sales. It's just it sold enough to be #1, a bit like some of those pointless Elvis re-issues in early 2005.

 

With download sales increasing these front loaded singles aren't having the same impact anymore on the UK charts which, for me anyways, is a good thing. It's made it far more difficult for the blandfest better known as Westlife from scoring UK no. 1 hits in the way they so easily achieved 10 years ago in the physical age.

 

Last week saw The Saturdays battling for their first UK no. 1 hit but even additional remixes of 'Missing You' and being the no. 1 physical selling single still only got them to #3 at the end of the week.

 

So to conclude, no they can stay because the impact is much less than what it used to be. I'd rather see a song plummet 03-15 than a song plummeting 01-15.

I agree that the front loading of sales is largely due to the long time lag between a song first being played and it becoming available to buy. However, I still maintain that the the chart should reflect what is being sold. Any manipulation, whether it's your suggestion or removing songs from a chart after a set period, would mean the chart no longer shows what it is meant to show.

In short, it's not really necessary as sales are what matters in the long run.

The OP is flawed - the only real JLS single thats been ultra front loaded and dropped like a stone is TCIA - which wasn't well recieved at all.

 

The other 3 all enjoyed lengthy chart runs for pop singles - One Shot bimbling around 6-12 for quite a long time, BA climbed acouple of weeks running and EIL re-entered the top 20 during the X-Mas period.

 

As for front loaded singles - in general it can be quite irratating having a new number 1 and then the single bominb down the charts, however thats what happens in the charts.

 

So in response to the thread title - No

Welcome to the forum

 

but no they shouldnt- yes, some releases are very front-loaded and have abysmal chart runs, but the chart placing is what matters to the artist- it would be unfair to just ban songs that are front-loaded- how would you know anyway?

 

removing songs after a period would not be right- the chart is meant to show what is popular atm, if the OCC did this, it would not reflect popularity

Edited August 16, 201014 yr by chart wizard

I dislike number 1 debuts personally but I don't think you can really just ban these singles from the chart for aesthetic reasons. There's nothing wrong with fans going out to support their favourite group/artist and putting them at number 1.

 

What I DO dislike though is singles being played at radio, but the download held back (often up to and more than a month) to build up demand, and thus gain a high debut - if the song is popular it will get to number 1 eventually anyway!

 

EG. Bad Romance by Lady GaGa. Everybody complained about it being released early saying things like 'it'll miss out on number 1 now' - but lo-an-behold it did what every Lady GaGa number 1 has done so far, it eventually worked its way up there. "Poker Face" even become the biggest selling single of 2009! Front loaded singles may get the number 1 but they won't get the high overall sales if they are not popular enough.

As far as I'm aware, the only times the OCC exclude sales are:

• Multi-downloading of the same version of a song from the same store (eg. buying 'Club Can't Handle Me' twice from iTunes) - this is fair, as multi-downloading is manipulating the chart. If, say, someone buys the normal version and a remix, that should (and does) count as 2 sales because they may have different purposes for the two versions.
• All sales for artists which aren't registered with the OCC - this is also fair because it means the charts aren't overrun by cheap copycat artists like 'Hitmakers' or '#1 [artist] Tribute Band' who release cheap covers of popular songs before their release date to con purchasers, as these 'artists' generally wouldn't register with the OCC/
• Sales of a song via free downloads - this is fair as people don't have to pay for it, so a song could get to #1 when nobody has any interest in buying it and are just downloading it because it's free, so it's not an indicator of the most popular songs.
• On the albums chart alone, if an album was sold to the vendor for less than a certain price its sales go towards the budget albums chart rather than the regular one.
• Back to the singles chart, if on a download store they put up a pre-order album, but make one track available to be downloaded immediately, and the track automatically downloads when pre-ordering the album, all of that track's sales (even if purchased through clicking 'download song' instead of 'pre-order album') are excluded. This is probably the only reason in this list that needs changing - if the song was purchased through pre-ordering the album, fair enough, those sales should be excluded, but not the ones where it was genuinely purchased as a single track. This rule prevented Gorillaz' Stylo and Pendulum's Salt In The Wounds from charting.

But yes, apart from the first four of the above list, I don't think any sales should be excluded. The charts are an indicator of which songs were the most popular within the 7 days preceding, and should stay that way.

I dislike number 1 debuts personally but I don't think you can really just ban these singles from the chart for aesthetic reasons. There's nothing wrong with fans going out to support their favourite group/artist and putting them at number 1.

 

What I DO dislike though is singles being played at radio, but the download held back (often up to and more than a month) to build up demand, and thus gain a high debut - if the song is popular it will get to number 1 eventually anyway!

 

EG. Bad Romance by Lady GaGa. Everybody complained about it being released early saying things like 'it'll miss out on number 1 now' - but lo-an-behold it did what every Lady GaGa number 1 has done so far, it eventually worked its way up there. "Poker Face" even become the biggest selling single of 2009! Front loaded singles may get the number 1 but they won't get the high overall sales if they are not popular enough.

 

In many cases this is true, but you only have to look at the fact that there are ten 350k+ sellers in the top 20 of the year which haven't gone to #1, whereas over half of this year's #1's don't feature in the top 20. A really popular song, i.e. one with the power to command an 100k+ weekly sale, should theoretically never miss out on getting to #1, no matter when it's released, unless some freak charity single/huge comeback blocks it of course before it ever gets there. But obviously there are certain songs that have peaked below #1 this year that would have debuted at the top had they had a pent up demand/held back release. I'm thinking of Love The Way You Lie and Rude Boy mainly. Few would argue that these would have not been huge #1's if held back and released when they were peaking. Both had used up far too many sales before their peak week to make a maximum impact.

I agree that it is very annoying when a song gets its radio premiere, but it's not avaible to buy until 2 months later. I don't think artists should be forced to release their tracks, say, within 2 weeks of its premiere, but I would like to see this change. It's like how most of the world got California Gurls a month before the UK. It's just annoying.

Pardon... Frontloaded is good for single sales.They tend to trail off by the end of the week, its not doing any harm to the charts whatsoever, in fact single sales are pretty good at the moment, anyhow how can you ban frontloaded sales, we be back to sales of absolutely nothing like 25k for a #1 single.

This is ridiculous. If a single sells more copies than any other in a week, it is the number one single. Sometimes songs which don't deserve to get to number 1 make it, but's that how it goes sometimes. In any case, the singles chart is now more reflective of genuine popularity than it has been in years.

In many cases this is true, but you only have to look at the fact that there are ten 350k+ sellers in the top 20 of the year which haven't gone to #1, whereas over half of this year's #1's don't feature in the top 20. A really popular song, i.e. one with the power to command an 100k+ weekly sale, should theoretically never miss out on getting to #1, no matter when it's released, unless some freak charity single/huge comeback blocks it of course before it ever gets there. But obviously there are certain songs that have peaked below #1 this year that would have debuted at the top had they had a pent up demand/held back release. I'm thinking of Love The Way You Lie and Rude Boy mainly. Few would argue that these would have not been huge #1's if held back and released when they were peaking. Both had used up far too many sales before their peak week to make a maximum impact.

 

Aye that's a fair point, but promo could be still focussed into 1 week - just that the download will have been available for a few weeks already to help establish a good solid starting point.

 

For example "Telephone" went 12 -1 when the video was released. If you focussed TV and radio appearances as well as the video debut into one week I'm sure you'd still get enough of a surge to get to number 1.

Wow, thanks for all the responses! Some responses of my own:

 

@SKOB: I agree that changing the chart in order to make it interesting is wrong. My own point is more about chart fairness, and chart meaningfulness. The front-loaders get No 1 hits that they don't deserve; others miss out. But I admit I could have been clearer on this count. (The "not interesting" issue was one for Chris Cowey and others, eight years ago.)

 

@Hitstastic/Doctor Blind: That Lady Gaga made it two times despite not front-loading and the Saturdays didn't make it despite front-loading does not disprove the general trend (a trend that gooddelta has confirmed). If you favour some over others, that doesn't mean that the favoured *always* win.

 

@ElectroBoy: I agree that JLS is not an ideal example, but I wanted to show the effect for different singles of one and the same artist. The effect is more pronounced if you compare different artists (often: British front-loaded vs American not front-loaded).

 

@M!key: I disagree with your assertion that front-loading is good for singles sales. I would suspect the opposite, because people download withheld songs illegally instead of waiting for the release. Front-loading is indeed good for the number of sales of No 1 singles, but only in their one week of glory, as the sales are compressed in that week. Overall sales are probably lower than they could be. (And then record companies complain about illegal downloading and want drastic laws! Ridiculous, but that's a different topic.)

 

@BJBB Bray: You say that "the charts are an indicator of which songs were the most popular within the 7 days preceding, and should stay that way." But in fact at the moment they aren't! Because many popular songs are not available to buy yet. They would become such an indicator, however, if my proposal was adopted. There wouldn't be many (or indeed, any) front-loaded singles actually banned from the chart (that's an important point). Instead, people would stop front-loading. They're doing it now only for chart peak manipulation purposes, and that rationale would disappear. The chart could return to its 1980s glory days :)

@BJBB Bray: You say that "the charts are an indicator of which songs were the most popular within the 7 days preceding, and should stay that way." But in fact at the moment they aren't! Because many popular songs are not available to buy yet. They would become such an indicator, however, if my proposal was adopted. There wouldn't be many (or indeed, any) front-loaded singles actually banned from the chart (that's an important point). Instead, people would stop front-loading. They're doing it now only for chart peak manipulation purposes, and that rationale would disappear. The chart could return to its 1980s glory days :)

 

*which AVAILABLE songs

 

Yeah, I missed a word out.

 

Oh, and welcome to the forum by the way - you can just call me Bray, the BJBB part of my name is just temporary.

Edited August 16, 201014 yr by BJBB Bray

Oh, and just by the way, songs becoming available from the second they get airplay probably wouldn't make them any less frontloaded - Arctic Monkeys for example did this with Crying Lightning and that still peaked in its first week of release and spent just 2 weeks in the top 40.

 

Although, on the other hand, Usher's OMG was released very early, and opened at #13 - it took until its 4th week before it was a #1. So who knows? I stand by my opinion the record labels / artists should be allowed to choose without facing chart disqualification though.

I agree that it would be better if songs aren't played on radio or TV until they are available to buy - or will at least be available soon. I'm old enough to remember the days when it was unusual for a single to be played even a week before it was released. But however much I might want to see a return to those days, I don't think the chart rules should be changed to force it.