There was the famous case in 1990 when Steve Miller Band's The Joker was given number one even though it apparently sold the exact same number as Deee-Lite's Groove is in the Heart.

Apparently this is not correct and The Joker sold just a couple more than Groove Is In The Heart (I think Gezza mentioned this somewhere?).

Wasn't there a ridiculously small amount of sales separating Example's Stay Awake and Maroon 5's Moves Like Jagger last year? Around 300 if I remember correctly but I could be wrong.

Apparently this is not correct and The Joker sold just a couple more than Groove Is In The Heart (I think Gezza mentioned this somewhere?).

The difference was said to be just 8 copies. However the way this was calculated is a throwback to how sales figures were compiled pre-1997.

 

Alan Jones, in his Record Mirror days before he joined Music Week explained how the 8 copies difference was calculated:

 

"Controversy raged last week over the tussle for the Gallup Chart’s Number One spot between Steve Miller’s ‘The Joker’ and Record Mirror favourites Deee-Lite’s ‘Groove Is In The Heart’. The latter’s record company issued a press release last week attacking the fairness of the Gallup Chart for placing the Miller track at Number One, despite both records achieving the same “panel sales” – the first time it’s happened with the Number One spot. Here Alan Jones, Record Mirror’s chart statistician and a chart consultant with Gallup, explains the complexities of the situation from the chart compilers’ point of view, while on page 31 News Plus looks at the music industry’s response to the affair.

 

The reality of the situation is that according to Gallup’s best guess, the Steve Miller Band single actually sold eight copies more than Deee-Lite’s and only the way in which Gallup presents the information to suit record industry tradition conceals the fact.

 

The “panel sales” of 2595 mentioned by WEA in its press release are a distillation of a very complex mathematical logarithm. A panel sale represents about one in every 17 actual sales, even though Gallup actually monitor a good deal more. The notion of a panel sale exists because from when the British Market Research Bureau (BMRB) started to compile the chart in 1969 to when Gallup took over in 1983, the panel of shops used to compile the chart was 250 strong. Gallup immediately set about strengthening the panel for the good reason that a larger panel makes hyping very expensive and difficult, and provides statistically significant samples from which they can (and do) extrapolate a mass of marketing information for record companies. The chart is only the tip of the iceberg.

 

Today more than 900 shops are equipped with the Epson machines into which they key, or more frequently ‘wand’ their sales by passing a light pen over a barcode. Gallup’s computer collects data from them all. The problem is that the record industry needs to see sales represented by a constant base of shops, so all the sales are distilled back down to a typical sample of 250 every week.

 

Gallup breaks the UK record market down into small “cells” to analyse its sales. If for the sake of argument, there are 104 medium sized independent shops in London and Gallup has Epson computers in 26 of them which register 59 sales for a record, the assumption is that the record would sell 236 copies in the 104 shops as a whole. Similarly, if Gallup has established the fact that there are, say, 30 small Woolworths branches selling records in the South East, of which the 12 on the panel sell 18 copies of a record, they wouldn’t be far wrong in estimating that a total of 45 would be sold by the 30 Woolies together.

 

Sales from the shops on the Gallup panel are all “grossed up” in this way until the company has an estimate of the total number of sales for each of the 20,000 or so different titles on which it detects sales every week.

 

It could represent this information to the industry as an estimate of actual sales. For example, last week’s number three by Bombalurina sold an estimated 40,596 copies. The problem is, as I said before, that the industry knows where it is with its weighted average of 250 shops so everything has to be reduced to represent the wider picture in microcosm. Two hundred and fifty shops represent about a 17th of the actual UK total. All sales are therefore reduced to a 17th of their grossed up totals. Bombalurina thus ended up with 2388 panel sales.

 

‘The Joker’ and ‘Groove is In The Heart’ you will recall both had published panel sales of 2595. But these are “rounded” figures. The Gallup computer actually adjudged that ‘The Joker’ sold 44,118 copies and that ‘Groove is In The Heart’ sold 44,110 copies, which equate to panel sales of 2595.2 and 2594.7 respectively. So either way you look at it, ‘The Joker’ was Number One".

 

credit: Alan Jones, Record Mirror, 22/09/90

 

In 1997 Millward Brown dropped the "chart panel" method for calculating sales and went to a more straightforward measure of calculating sales for each single.

Another close amount separating singles at the top end of the chart was in the chart dated 11/07/09, the first full week that the chart was affected following the death of Michael Jackson. "Man In the Mirror" climbed to number 2 on a sale of 56,151 while "Bulletproof" by La Roux fell from number 1 to number 3 on a sale of 56,150 - 1 copy less than MITM had sold.

Yes way back in Jan 93- that's some memory! :D

 

 

I remember Roxette and Oceanic had joint number 21 in Aug/Sept 1991 - or something like that.

And I think Leona would have been number one if the OCC stuck by the rules from a couple of years before and combined the download sales that Footprints in the Sand sold!

 

If that was ever a rule it was a stupid one. Why on EARTH would you combine the sales of two different songs?

If that was ever a rule it was a stupid one. Why on EARTH would you combine the sales of two different songs?

 

Maybe because Better in Time and Footsteps in the Sand was a double A side? I'm not sure, I'll have a look what Music Week said that week, as I'm sure they said something.

 

EDIT: Here we are:

 

The record books will say that Duffy’s Mercy was the best-selling single in the UK for the fifth week in a row with sales of 40,778 this week, pipping Leona Lewis’s Better In Time/Footprints In The Sand by 302 sales, but the download era poses some problems for chart compilers, which have been resolved, rightly or wrongly, by hitching physical sales of singles to the main song’s digital deliveries.

 

That solution is not usually problematical, but when the single concerned is a double A-side that means that download sales of the second track are discounted – or, at least, excluded from the main release while qualifying for a chart position in its own right. Lewis’s Footprints In The Sand sold 7,525 copies as a stand-alone download last week and moves 63-25 in its own right. Overall sales for the physical single and its two download components, therefore, are 48,001. Should Lewis be number one?

 

Check my new blog at for more on the problem – and some possible solutions. We should note at this point that Lewis’s single is the fourth issued to aid the Sport Relief charity. The biennial event launched in 2002 when Elton John & Alessandro Safina’s update of the former’s Your Song reached number four; in 2004, Rachel Stevens reached number two with Some Girls; and in 2006 McFly’s Don’t Stop Me Now/Please Please doubleheader reached number one

Edited April 9, 201213 yr by liamk97

By early 2008 double A sides were already a thing of the past. Some people downloaded one song but not the other. It wouldn't be fair to combine all those sales.

Chico - It's Chico Time beat Black Eyed Peas - Pump It to #2 by 5 copies in March 2006.

 

411 - Dumb beat Maroon 5 to #3 by 6 copies in September 2004.

 

Art Brut - Emily Kane missed out on a top 40 position by 2 copies IIRC shortly after the inclusion of downloads (they would have been top 40 without downloads).

Chico - It's Chico Time beat Black Eyed Peas - Pump It to #2 by 5 copies in March 2006.

 

411 - Dumb beat Maroon 5 to #3 by 6 copies in September 2004.

 

Art Brut - Emily Kane missed out on a top 40 position by 2 copies IIRC shortly after the inclusion of downloads (they would have been top 40 without downloads).

 

 

Looked in to the Haven archives for these.

 

 

 

September 2004

 

40978 Natasha Bedingfield

34300 3 Of A Kind

26765 The 411

26759 Maroon 5 (Just 6 copies short )

 

11600 Sugababes (8)

10900 Mousse T (9)

10000+ Dizzee Rascal (10)

4300 Faithless (22)

2300 Kane (38)

1900 Gretchen Wilson (42)

850 Deepest Blue (57)

 

March 2006

 

17694 Orson

17365 Chico

17360 Black Eyes Peas

15350 Pussycat Dolls

13210 Corinne Bailey Rae

11720 Girls Aloud (6)

10943 Sugababes (7)

10381 Kanye West (8)

9634 Madonna (9)

9269 Meck (10)

 

5571 Kelly Clarkson (21)

Edited April 9, 201213 yr by smiffj

Cheers for the info on SMB / Deee-Lite. We were all disappointed at the time because GITH was a much better song and it wasn't tied to a blinkin' advert!

Cheers for the info on SMB / Deee-Lite. We were all disappointed at the time because GITH was a much better song and it wasn't tied to a blinkin' advert!

 

 

Excuse me? "The Joker" has endured far better than "Groove Is In The Heart" although I did buy both singles at the time.

Excuse me? "The Joker" has endured far better than "Groove Is In The Heart" although I did buy both singles at the time.

I think not, Groove Is In The Heart is widely considered to be a 90s classic, unlike the Joker!

I think not, Groove Is In The Heart is widely considered to be a 90s classic, unlike the Joker!

 

Completely agree. I've never heard 'The Joker' yet still hear GIITH quite a lot even now.