Well, we meet these instant grats weirdos more and more often lately, and it does really affect the charts quite a lot, while the rules provided by the Official Charts Company don't solve all the problems these instant grats cause.

 

Bray did the FAQ about it and I want to bring my 5 cents in a separate thread, not to mix the FAQ with the discussion, serious Bray let me in there.

 

FAQ IS HERE

 

And these are my 5 cents:

 

1. Most of us consider the current OCC rules as unfair to the songs, and the reasons for this are clear: you can buy a song as an instant grat without downloading/pre-ordering the whole album, and that sale won't count, unless it's the first "instant grat" track.

 

2. Essentially, what is the difference between the album charting tracks and these instant grats? With an album track you can buy it, and then use "complete my album" function, and that will still count as a 1 sale for a single + 1 sale for an album, but you only pay for one album. That's basically a single given for free AND counted to the charts. But OCC don't do anything with post-album singles, yet give those ridiculous restrictions towards the already available tracks from yet to be released albums.

 

Yes, if you pre-order the album, you will be charged the sum for instant grats immediately - but that basically equals to buying these songs and using "complete my album" function. No BIG difference to me.

 

3. You can break this cycle in two ways:

a) counting only those sales that come through single downloading and NOT through album pre-ordering.

Pro:

- it will make the genuine sales eligible and you can count them everywhere officially;

Contro:

- it will not solve the "complete my album" problem properly, because you still can raise the single sales count by 1 for free, firstly buying the single and then completing your album, all for the price of the whole album.

 

b) counting ALL the sales from instant grats but EXCLUDING the sales once the "complete my album" feature is used or when a formerly pre-order album becomes available.

Pro:

- it will accurately count the total sales without any overcounting;

Contro:

- it will negatively affect the sales of the songs once the album is available.

E.g. if an instant grat song genuinely sells 40k in a week which is enough for #6 BUT because it's the release week of a parent album and of the former instant grats sales are being excluded (which are, say, 50k), it will sell -10k and will fall out of the charts for one week. Which is, you know, weird, when the song actually sells and is popular. The chart-run may look like 7-6-4-x-8-10-etc...

 

This won't reflect the weekly sales of the song accurately

 

Taking into account all of the above, I'd make the following rules:

1. to make only those sales of instant grat songs that aren't cumulated by the "complete my album" function;

2. once a "complete my album" feature is used towards any of the songs - NOT to discount the sales from WEEKLY chart, but

3. to take them from the total song(s) cales. And this applies to any of the songs, whether you buy a single and use "complete my album" function, or buy a song off yet unavailable album and then decide to pre-order the whole album.

 

What do you think of all of it and with what option of solving this curious paradox would you prefer?

Edited October 29, 201311 yr by Arrs

I'd just discount ALL instant grat sales, but allow any sales where the purchaser has deliberately bought the invidividual track.

Seeing that iTunes is the only one that has these pre-release albums with few tracks available to buy (I think?), maybe they should find a way to make them count and find out the way people got the tracks (cherrypicking, track purchased from pre-order, etc.) and maybe a bit of tweaking to the system (?) so that it's clear to know if someone bought it individually, if that sorta makes sense.

 

And I think I can agree with subtracting the total sales instead of the weekly sales for the tracks, when it comes to the 'Complete My Album' feature.

 

I bet OCC and Apple are having a discussion about this. :heehee:

Edited October 29, 201311 yr by FM11

I do think it's unfair to exclude a song from the chart because of this. As the above poster pointed out, it's only iTunes that does this special deal thingy. You can still purchase the song separately on iTunes and from other sites like Amazon. Therefore, they just need to negotiate with iTunes to distinguish the single sales from sales made through pre-ordering.

 

With a little bit of effort, I doubt it would be THAT hard!

2. Essentially, what is the difference between the album charting tracks and these instant grats? With an album track you can buy it, and then use "complete my album" function, and that will still count as a 1 sale for a single + 1 sale for an album, but you only pay for one album. That's basically a single given for free AND counted to the charts. But OCC don't do anything with post-album singles, yet give those ridiculous restrictions towards the already available tracks from yet to be released albums.

 

Yes, if you pre-order the album, you will be charged the sum for instant grats immediately - but that basically equals to buying these songs and using "complete my album" function. No BIG difference to me.

That sums up the problem with the current system. I don't particularly mind if there is just one pre-album single. However, releasing one track per week for four weeks or more and then allowing people to complete the album for a couple quid is taking the piss.

Right, so I've just read this. The last bits kinda explain the problem:

 

Why is it so complicated? Can’t you just let all instrant grat tracks chart?

 

No, not if the Official Singles Chart is to retain its integrity and continue to reflect genuine actively purchased singles.

 

Multiple ‘instant grat’ promotions work in such a way that each successive ‘instant grat’ track is delivered to EVERYONE who has pre-ordered the album up to that point. So, as a shopper, you might only actually want to buy the album, but in buying the album this automatically triggers four track downloads that you hadn’t intended to purchase as singles.

 

And so the distinction between ‘proper’ single purchases, and bonus ‘instant grat’ downloads becomes difficult to identify.

 

Yeah but, if I buy one of these tracks outright as a single but don’t actually pre-order the accompanying album, surely my purchase should count towards the Official Singles Chart?

 

Yes, absolutely! We agree whole-heartedly with this, and that’s why the chart rules state that regular purchases (a la carte purchases) are perfectly eligible to chart.

 

For this to happen though and these sales to be counted, retailer sales data need to be delivered to the Official Charts Company in a way that breaks these down and differentiates between ‘instant grat’ tracks, and regular singles purchases which are bought outside of the album pre-order incentive. Retailers haven’t supplied it in this way to date.

Wow, the OCC just flat out stealing my idea. I demand credit!

Wow, the OCC just flat out stealing my idea. I demand credit!

I wouldn't be surprised if they actually did steal it. They do know of our existence.

OCC to be taken over by ostriches by the end of the week. :o

I wonder if there's a maximum number of tracks you can buy where the 'Complete My Album' feature ceases to work. That doesn't make much sense so to explain, I've bought all of Emma Stevens' EP's, and went to buy her 14 track album last week, 6 of the featured tracks of which were already on my iTunes as part of purchased EP's. So 'technically' surely I should've saved the cost of 6 x 99p towards the album? But instead I only got a reduction of a couple of quid, which I didn't really understand. So will the people who have bought all 4 Eminem downloads actually get £3.96 deducted from the cost of the album, or like I experienced, is there a limit to the number of pre-release tracks that you can download before a minimum price threshold or something similar sets in?

'Ostrich Chart Company' *.*

 

(btw Doctor Blind, the ostriches are gone now. I demand Cumulonimbia to debut!)

I wonder if there's a maximum number of tracks you can buy where the 'Complete My Album' feature ceases to work. That doesn't make much sense so to explain, I've bought all of Emma Stevens' EP's, and went to buy her 14 track album last week, 6 of the featured tracks of which were already on my iTunes as part of purchased EP's. So 'technically' surely I should've saved the cost of 6 x 99p towards the album? But instead I only got a reduction of a couple of quid, which I didn't really understand. So will the people who have bought all 4 Eminem downloads actually get £3.96 deducted from the cost of the album, or like I experienced, is there a limit to the number of pre-release tracks that you can download before a minimum price threshold or something similar sets in?

 

I think if the 'album version' is even slightly different to the single version it doesn't count. Either that or it's a very buggy feature. It often doesn't recognise all the songs I already own when I use it (most recent example being 'Pure Heroine', which only gave me 99p off for 'Royals' even though I already owned 'Tennis Court' as well).

Wow, the OCC just flat out stealing my idea. I demand credit!

 

 

OCC have been reading Buzzjack :D

 

 

 

I think if the 'album version' is even slightly different to the single version it doesn't count. Either that or it's a very buggy feature. It often doesn't recognise all the songs I already own when I use it (most recent example being 'Pure Heroine', which only gave me 99p off for 'Royals' even though I already owned 'Tennis Court' as well).

 

I think it must be a bug because it stated 'purchased' next to the 6 tracks I'd already downloaded elsewhere. Admittedly, I've had other problems with the feature in the past too!

 

Yeah but, if I buy one of these tracks outright as a single but don’t actually pre-order the accompanying album, surely my purchase should count towards the Official Singles Chart?

 

Yes, absolutely! We agree whole-heartedly with this, and that’s why the chart rules state that regular purchases (a la carte purchases) are perfectly eligible to chart.

 

For this to happen though and these sales to be counted, retailer sales data need to be delivered to the Official Charts Company in a way that breaks these down and differentiates between ‘instant grat’ tracks, and regular singles purchases which are bought outside of the album pre-order incentive. Retailers haven’t supplied it in this way to date.

 

I find this interesting in the OCC article, so if iTunes were to offer split sales (didn't they in fact to this with David Bowie's Where Are We Now, which would have been higher than #6 if 'pre-order' purchases were counted too) then we'd see the singles in the chart with any ineligible sales discounted. I have no idea what the split might be but I'd hazard a guess that 90% of people buying Lady Gaga's Do What U Want are buying it as a standalone track, with only maybe 10% or even fewer buying it as part of the album pre-order, seems a bit crazy that those 90% of eligible sales aren't counted because retailers can't be bothered to separate the data, which would no doubt be quite easy to do.

Is the instant grat/complete my album feature available with all download sites, or is it specific to itunes?

As far as I know, iTunes is the only major download site that offers instant grat tracks, or Complete My Album. I did get one once when I ordered an Eels album from their official store though - I got one track when I ordered, the full digital album on the release date and the physical album when it was pressed. Which turned out to be three months later.

 

Yes, in the Bowie case they did get split sales, and since the standalone sales were enough for it to go T10 they must have been a big proportion of the total. Obviously it's technically possible (indeed necessary) for iTunes to know which sales are tied to pre-orders and which aren't, but either they or the labels must generally be unwilling to divulge it.

What if you pre-order. get your tracks and then cancel your pre-order? (apologies if this has been asked)

Strange how iTunes separated sales for the OCC re: Bowie, but have either been unable or unwilling to do this since.

 

From their explanation, I'm still not sure why the OCC don't wish to count the 2nd/3rd/4th instant grat tracks, if they're happy enough to count the 1st, which is still under the same conditions. I don't see the difference? The first instant grat isn't a completely "genuine actively purchased single" anymore than the other tracks. The fact that a track can now be "nominated" as the instant grat with the ability to chart (i.e. 'The Monster') makes it all seem rather manipulated.

What if you pre-order. get your tracks and then cancel your pre-order? (apologies if this has been asked)

 

You just wouldn't get charged for the price remaining on the album preorder, but you'll have already paid for the instant grat track(s).

Also people are still downloading Survival, Rap God and Berzerk, so where are these sales are going for this week, will they be added next week when the singles re-enter the chart once again. :drama: unless I'm missing something.

 

Currently Eminem has got 4 singles in the top 16 on Kworb.