That's what I mean, it just happens that unmemorable non-#1 singles don't usually spend many weeks in the chart

That is very subjective what is unmemorable and what is not. Dominick The Donkey will definitely be memorable for me for instance :D

That is very subjective what is unmemorable and what is not. Dominick The Donkey will definitely be memorable for me for instance :D

 

which didn't even get to #1 :mellow: Of course, MW will be remembered for beating X Factor to Christmas #1 in 2011 even if they only spend 3 weeks T40 - DTD will be remembered every year at Christmas as long as Chris Moyles stays on the air :lol: But most the general public won't remember songs like Loca People, Stay Awake and Don't Go whereas people will remember 2011 for songs like Party Rock Anthem, Someone Like You, We Found Love, What Makes You Beautiful etc.

which didn't even get to #1 :mellow: Of course, MW will be remembered for beating X Factor to Christmas #1 in 2011 even if they only spend 3 weeks T40 - DTD will be remembered every year at Christmas as long as Chris Moyles stays on the air :lol: But most the general public won't remember songs like Loca People, Stay Awake and Don't Go whereas people will remember 2011 for songs like Party Rock Anthem, Someone Like You, We Found Love, What Makes You Beautiful etc.

 

I think a great deal of the public didn't even know Don't Go, Stay Awake, etc. in the first place (which is probably why they had shorter chart runs).

Woah, 23 singles over 500k and the entire top 40 over 400k, this beats even 1997/8 surely? :o HUGE year for sales, I wonder if it will happen again in 2012 or if the singles market will dip a bit this year...I didn't even think that 2011 was THAT great for music but I guess the majority of the top ten could go down as 'classics' in the long run!

Vidcapper- Why are your sales estimates different from the ones posted on the OCC website just out of interest?

 

LMFAO at No 3 for example are 3k higher on the OCC website.

I know I'm not Vidcapper. But you answered your own question. :P They are sales estimates, Vidcapper works them out using what limited info he has, so the would be some discrepancies. :P

I know I'm not Vidcapper. But you answered your own question. :P They are sales estimates, Vidcapper works them out using what limited info he has, so the would be some discrepancies. :P

Aah fair enough- I thought he might have altered them from that list but no worries. :D

Vidcapper- Why are your sales estimates different from the ones posted on the OCC website just out of interest?

 

The simple answer is : the OCC know all the real figures - I don't, hence my use of the word estimate. :P

 

In any case, the difference iro LMFAO is less than 0.25%, which I'm pretty pleased with, myself. :)

Edited January 6, 201213 yr by vidcapper

Woah, 23 singles over 500k and the entire top 40 over 400k, this beats even 1997/8 surely? :o HUGE year for sales, I wonder if it will happen again in 2012 or if the singles market will dip a bit this year...I didn't even think that 2011 was THAT great for music but I guess the majority of the top ten could go down as 'classics' in the long run!

 

Sales levels bear no relation to the quality of the music. Do you think a year with great songs mean that sales will be up? I'm just a bit confused by your statement. :huh:

Edited January 6, 201213 yr by tonyttt31

Mind you, I still have the onerous task of setting up the 2012 spreadsheets / copying over data from 2011...

 

That part's done now, at least. :yahoo:

45 - 42 - 369000 - Katy Perry - Last Friday Night - 369000 - 25/06/11 - 9

 

Just a quick question, but how can the 2011 total and the overall total be the same, when Last Friday Night peaked at #101 in the charts in 2010 iirc. Surely its total sales must be a few thousand higher at least?

 

And thanks for all your hard work last year for the weekly YTD charts. I really appreciate it. :)

Sales levels bear no relation to the quality of the music. Do you think a year with great songs mean that sales will be up? I'm just a bit confused by your statement. :huh:

Sales levels indicate how many people find an act 'quality' enough to buy thier records. If that differs to your idea of 'quality' then so be it, but it's just personal subjective opinion.

 

 

Sales levels indicate how many people find an act 'quality' enough to buy thier records. If that differs to your idea of 'quality' then so be it, but it's just personal subjective opinion.

 

Yes, but there's many other factors you have to take into account. For example, music used to cost much more in the past than it does now. So a song of lower quality could sell now because it's "cheap", whilst in previous decades it was more expensive, so back then people would be less likely to buy songs that were just "okay". Another example is that radio stations have the same songs in rotate endlessly now, which wasn't as much a problem before. The entire year-end top 10 has been played so much on the radio, so of course they will sell a lot. In the past, it would be incredibly rare for songs to get such support from radio stations, since they would change their playlists more frequently, and have more songs in them apparently. There's many, many other factors too.

 

I think you can compare sales of songs within a year, but comparing the sales of a song from 2010 to a song from 1973 doesn't mean much, since things were too different then for the comparison to be fair.

Yes, but there's many other factors you have to take into account. For example, music used to cost much more in the past than it does now. So a song of lower quality could sell now because it's "cheap", whilst in previous decades it was more expensive, so back then people would be less likely to buy songs that were just "okay". Another example is that radio stations have the same songs in rotate endlessly now, which wasn't as much a problem before. The entire year-end top 10 has been played so much on the radio, so of course they will sell a lot. In the past, it would be incredibly rare for songs to get such support from radio stations, since they would change their playlists more frequently, and have more songs in them apparently. There's many, many other factors too.

 

I think you can compare sales of songs within a year, but comparing the sales of a song from 2010 to a song from 1973 doesn't mean much, since things were too different then for the comparison to be fair.

Whilst what you say is not without merit it doesn't naturally follow. Back in the day (i'm speaking from experience sadly) you used to get record tokens and if you got say £20.00 then you would go in and buy four singles you loved and as you never got change you would top it up with two that perhaps were ok but you wouldn't have bought through clear choice. Also independent record shops used to package up say four of five singles in a sealed bag (you couldn't see what was inside) and you could buy them- then be surprised (for bad or good) :lol:

 

This was the same if you were teenager like me back in the early 90s, money you got xmas was spend in the record shops in January buying stuff that you probably wouldn't have bought if you had access to everything like you do now.

 

The charts operated differently in the differing decades it's true, people are never happy, when we had the high turnover of the late 90s/ early 00s people complained and now they complain about the static nature of the charts, the "Golden" period of the charts in terms of how it ran seem to be the 70s or 80s in most people's opinion. :)

Sales levels bear no relation to the quality of the music. Do you think a year with great songs mean that sales will be up? I'm just a bit confused by your statement. :huh:

 

I was just thinking out loud and really they were two separate comments that were unrelated in my mind so perhaps I could have been more clear but certainly this is the most representative end of year top ten we've probably ever had. If ten songs from 2011 WERE likely to go down as classics then it would be the songs in the top ten. How often can we say that the ten songs that had actually felt like they had the most enduring cultural impact actually all finished in the end of year top ten? Usually sales were so low for everything apart from charity singles and reality TV related singles that the EOY top ten didn't represent the enduring hits at all. Whilst 2011 wasn't great for music overall, I'd personally say that it had more potential future classics than any year for a good few. Do sales make a song more classic? I don't know, but there aren't many/any? million sellers that have been completely wiped out of the public consciousness over time...

 

But for the first time since the 90s, we're in a position where the genuine huge hits can quite feasibly pass the million mark now, which is a great thing, regardless of how one personally perceives the quality of the music around.

^ The only song in the year-end top 10 that had any notable cultural impact is probably Party Rock Anthem, because of the shuffle dance. I just can't think of any other ways in which the other songs impacted culture. They all just sold a lot. You make it sound like we have a year-end top 10 full of Hit Me Baby One More Times, In Da Clubs and Barbie Girls, but we don't really.

I'd say Someone Like You and Moves Like Jagger quite definitely did have a cultural impact! You don't need to have a dance going alongside a big track for it to have a cultural impact...

^ The only song in the year-end top 10 that had any notable cultural impact is probably Party Rock Anthem, because of the shuffle dance. I just can't think of any other ways in which the other songs impacted culture. They all just sold a lot. You make it sound like we have a year-end top 10 full of Hit Me Baby One More Times, In Da Clubs and Barbie Girls, but we don't really.

I'd argue that the Top 4 all had massive cultural impact:

Someone Like You had THAT Brits performance that connected so many to the song, hence the prime reason for it selling so well!

Moves Like Jagger was practically related pretty much entirely to an 'in thing' (Jagger) so much that people couldn't get enough of it! (See Will.I.Am shoeing in Mick Jagger into his latest single...)

Party Rock Anthem obviously had the shuffle.

Price Tag had everyone feeling fresh and free. I heard it everywhere and it clearly connected with the public.

We Found Love may have been an "I'll buy it cause it's a club banger song" but I doubt it very much!

45 - 42 - 369000 - Katy Perry - Last Friday Night - 369000 - 25/06/11 - 9

 

Just a quick question, but how can the 2011 total and the overall total be the same, when Last Friday Night peaked at #101 in the charts in 2010 iirc. Surely its total sales must be a few thousand higher at least?

 

I didn't realise it had charted in 2010, so I assume the figure I saw for it somewhere was YTD sales, when it must have been total sales. That means I accidentally incorporated her 2010 sales into her 2011 total.

 

Incidentally, that neatly explains an anomaly I found a couple of weeks ago, where Bruno Mars's 'Marry You' had apparently gained 10.7k sales from nowhere to overtake LFN unexpectedly. But if KP had sold those 10.7k in 2010 rather than 1011, then that explains it. :)

 

KP's 2011 total adjusted down by 10.7k in YTD T100 list.

Edited January 7, 201213 yr by vidcapper

^ The only song in the year-end top 10 that had any notable cultural impact is probably Party Rock Anthem, because of the shuffle dance. I just can't think of any other ways in which the other songs impacted culture. They all just sold a lot. You make it sound like we have a year-end top 10 full of Hit Me Baby One More Times, In Da Clubs and Barbie Girls, but we don't really.

 

I disagree, there are at least four songs in that top ten that imo made a huge cultural impact - Someone Like You, Party Rock Anthem, Rolling In The Deep and Moves Like Jagger for certain and The A Team at a push as well, how many songs about that go on to be played on Heart and sell over 800k? If a song makes enough of a mark on the public for its lyrical content to be forgotten about enough to be playlisted by Heart then you know you've made an impact!

 

Although you make a good point in your latter statement, and perhaps the basis of my original statement came from the fact that I personally deem 1997-1999 (when singles sales were last this high) to be amongst my three favourite ever years for music, so perhaps in some ways I am surprised that 2011, which I found quite average overall, is level with these years. I know it's all subjective but high sales mean that a lot of people like these songs and it will be interesting to see how many are remembered in the future. But for comparisons sake I'm going to personally bold what I consider are 'enduring classics' from both the 1997 end of year top 20's and then the 2004 equivalent (when sales were at their general lowest). This is all in my own opinion and note that I don't consider being a classic the same as having cultural impact - Eamon and Frankee definitely made an impact at the time but as soon as 2004 was over everyone most people had completely forgotten about their existence :lol:

 

1997

 

1. Elton John - Candle In The Wind 1997 / Something About The Way You Look Tonight

2. Aqua - Barbie Girl

3. Puff Daddy & Faith Evans - I'll Be Missing You

4. Various Artists - Perfect Day

5. Teletubbies - Teletubbies Say Eh-Oh!

6. Will Smith - Men In Black

7. No Doubt - Don't Speak

8. Natalie Imbruglia - Torn

9. Spice Girls - Spice Up Your Life

10. Chumbawamba - Tubthumping

11. Hanson - Mmmbop

12. Oasis - D'You Know What I Mean

13. All Saints - Never Ever

14. R Kelly - I Believe I Can Fly

15. Spice Girls - Mama / Who Do You Think You Are

16. Eternal featuring Bebe Winans - I Wanna Be The Only One

17. Gala - Freed From Desire

18. No Mercy - Where Do You Go

19. Dario G - Sunchyme

20. Ultra Nate - Free

 

11/20

 

2004

 

1. Band Aid 20 - Do They Know It's Christmas

2. Eamon - F**k It (I Don't Want You Back)

3. DJ Casper - Cha Cha Slide

4. Eric Prydz - Call On Me

5. Usher - Yeah

6. Michelle McManus - All This Time

7. Anastacia - Left Outside Alone

8. Peter Andre - Mysterious Girl

9. Britney Spears - Toxic

10. Frankee - f*** You Right Back

11. Mario Winans, P Diddy & Enya - I Don't Wanna Know

12. 3 of a Kind - Baby Cakes

13. Kelis - Milkshake

14. LMC vs. U2 - Take Me to the Clouds Above

15. Destiny's Child - Lose My Breath

16. D12 - My Band

17. Natasha Bedingfield - These Words

18. Eminem - Just Lose It

19. Britney Spears - Everytime

20. Busted - Thunderbirds/3am

 

5/20

 

There's a sales gulf yes but personally I think that there's one HELL of a quality gulf too, of course it's all down to personal taste but what a diabolical EOY top 20! I know singles sales and quality have little correlation but I don't think it's fair to say that there's NO correlation, perhaps if the big hits had been a bit more decent, given people a reason to buy them, they'd have been a little bit better, obviously big sellers were still possible if the public bought into them at the time like with Eamon but I just don't ever hear any of these songs around now apart from those that I've bolded, and the Anastacia one is at a push...

2004

 

1. Band Aid 20 - Do They Know It's Christmas

2. Eamon - F**k It (I Don't Want You Back)

3. DJ Casper - Cha Cha Slide

4. Eric Prydz - Call On Me

5. Usher - Yeah

6. Michelle McManus - All This Time

7. Anastacia - Left Outside Alone

8. Peter Andre - Mysterious Girl

9. Britney Spears - Toxic

10. Frankee - f*** You Right Back

11. Mario Winans, P Diddy & Enya - I Don't Wanna Know

12. 3 of a Kind - Baby Cakes

13. Kelis - Milkshake

14. LMC vs. U2 - Take Me to the Clouds Above

15. Destiny's Child - Lose My Breath

16. D12 - My Band

17. Natasha Bedingfield - These Words

18. Eminem - Just Lose It

19. Britney Spears - Everytime

20. Busted - Thunderbirds/3am

 

5/20

 

There's a sales gulf yes but personally I think that there's one HELL of a quality gulf too, of course it's all down to personal taste but what a diabolical EOY top 20! I know singles sales and quality have little correlation but I don't think it's fair to say that there's NO correlation, perhaps if the big hits had been a bit more decent, given people a reason to buy them, they'd have been a little bit better, obviously big sellers were still possible if the public bought into them at the time like with Eamon but I just don't ever hear any of these songs around now apart from those that I've bolded, and the Anastacia one is at a push...

 

I would argue that Cha Cha Slide had a big cultural impact. The dance is very easy to learn :lol: