I'm not convinced it's a good idea. I enjoy the UK chart as it's based on sales only - what people like enough to buy. I think, had streaming been included, novelty hits like "The Fox" etc would be far bigger than what they were (although I did like 'The Fox'), I don't think it gives an accurate representation of popularity - interest and curiosity don't always mean people like the track enough to buy it; just to see what it's about. How long will it be before airplay gets included too? It's going to make it increasingly difficult for acts who aren't able to actively promote and are more independent to get respectable places in the chart IMO - it all seems to be going far too corporately based, to benefit the big companies and labels - which I think is going the wrong way personally.

 

Also, I don't like how, say, if someone bought a CD album, and then streamed a song from the album online just out of convenience, it would count, when listening to a track from the CD wouldn't, when in theory it's a similar thing.

Edited February 21, 201411 yr by Parallel Reality

Also, I don't like how, say, if someone bought a CD album, and then streamed a song from the album online just out of convenience, it would count, when listening to a track from the CD wouldn't, when in theory it's a similar thing.

Because it's impossible for the OCC to know when you listen to a track from a CD, but when you stream a song then the streaming service gets told that you listened to the track and they send that data to the OCC. Nothing that the charts do will ever give a 100% true representation of a song's popularity, since you'd have to take into account how often people play a song that they've downloaded, how often they request it on the radio or pay money to listen to it in a pub, and how much they've talked about a song, which would be incredibly difficult to track down. However, they CAN track down how often you listen to a song on streaming services. So what is more accurate - only counting sales into the charts OR counting sales and streaming?

 

And yes, sales are still healthy. But they are not as strong as they were in 2011/2, and this is possibly because of the increased popularity of streaming, so it makes sense to add streaming as soon as possible so that we don't get another situation where the charts look irrelevant, like they did when they didn't count downloads.

 

Yes, if you play a song out of curiosity and end up not liking it much then it will count towards the chart. But if you don't like a song then you probably won't play it again, will one stream really make a huge difference? It's not as if one stream is equivalent to one sale. (well I don't actually know but I'd be surprised if it would be).

 

And for those of you who are really opposed to the idea, it's likely that the OCC will continue to make a sales-only chart, like how at the moment they make a streaming-only chart, so you could still follow that.

In America I think it's either 1000 or 100 streams = 1 sale, In fact I'm pretty sure it's 1000... That's not too bad, I just hope Youtube doesn't count like it rather stupidly does in America :drama:

As long as they still have an individual sales chart, I don't really mind. I agree on the point about ignoring YouTube. I do NOT want to see a similar situation to America with the next viral vid like 'Harlem Shake'.

The sooner they include it the better quite frankly.

 

I am sick of record companies manipulating the chart with their held-back release strategies. It has killed sales and made the chart an embarrassing mess.

The sooner they include it the better quite frankly.

 

I am sick of record companies manipulating the chart with their held-back release strategies. It has killed sales and made the chart an embarrassing mess.

 

But OAOS hasn't helped either - after an initial surge of sales, some radio stations see them falling & prematurely drop them before airplay really has a chance to build up.

Yes but in a world where streaming dominates, radio will become increasingly irrelevant IMO.

I am sick of record companies manipulating the chart with their held-back release strategies. It has killed sales and made the chart an embarrassing mess.

Songs are only released on Spotify when they are officially released to buy anyway so if they don't include YouTube, then it'll only mean songs take even longer to peak from their première.

I am not particularly a fan of OA/OS. Songs being released two weeks after they've premiered has always seemed sensible to me, unless it's a BIG RELEASE

My point actually was that with streaming included held-back releases wouldn't have the same debut impact and therefore would be dropped as a strategy for getting easy #1 hits.

Yes but in a world where streaming dominates, radio will become increasingly irrelevant IMO.

That's ironic because it's BBC Radio One that are pressing for its introduction in the chart!

^Ha! Radio 1 being the station that is targeting a younger audience as radio audience average age continues to increase. Their business model is so flawed they even make George Osborne look like a competent Chancellor.

To be fair to Radio 1, they are being told by the BBC Trust that they have to keep on attracting younger audiences and reducing the average listener age, and they're still being told now even with all the controversy surrounding it.

But OAOS hasn't helped either - after an initial surge of sales, some radio stations see them falling & prematurely drop them before airplay really has a chance to build up.

 

That's the reason why OAOS fell out of favour with the record companies. The case in question that caused this issue was undoubtedly the Nicola Roberts single. She entered low in the chart, a Radio Station used it not to playlist it calling it a flop, so it didn't sell. After that record companies backed out of OAOS. The trouble is that the UK radio is not like USA radio, where national stations do not dominate the airwaves. I suspect that in most of the rest of Europe too, a few Radio stations do not pick up large parts of the radio audience. So OAOS doesn't make any difference to the sales of a record being stopped because a single radio station boss says it's entered a 49, so we are not going to playlist it.

 

Also the chart is not a popularity chart. It's a sales chart. If you simply want a popularity chart, you could ask the public which records they like each week. This site could simply put a list of all the available records and people vote for them. I dare say it does already. The trouble is nobody would make any money from such a chart.

 

And that's the problem with streaming sites. How much money is each record getting for being played by a member of the public. With what I see for the amount a streaming site charges for listening to records, then the amount a record "sells" for - for one play is too low to measure, so you have to add lots of plays together. But I still think that it would not come to much, plus don't the OCC chart have rules about the minimum price of a sale? So would a stream track have to meet the minimum sale price? Perhaps that would be so high that a streamed record would need 5,000 + to match just one download.

 

 

The sooner they include it the better quite frankly.

 

I am sick of record companies manipulating the chart with their held-back release strategies. It has killed sales and made the chart an embarrassing mess.

 

So am I but streaming companies don't have advance tracks before sales release, so it won't make a great deal of difference, though some may chart at 2 or 3 instead of 1, and we can look forward to a Bryan Adams-ish 4 months at number one run, I would expect, before long, as we get sick to death of records hanging around at the top forever.

 

Less artist turnover, less new acts breaking into the chart, great for big record companies and big stars who will dominate even more. Which, of course, is what they want. :(

That's the reason why OAOS fell out of favour with the record companies. The case in question that caused this issue was undoubtedly the Nicola Roberts single. She entered low in the chart, a Radio Station used it not to playlist it calling it a flop, so it didn't sell. After that record companies backed out of OAOS.

 

Are you sure about that? I doubt it was just Nicola Roberts that would have caused it to fall out of favour lol. There were other situations similar to that, for example Chipmunk/Keri Hilson. Also there were songs like Do It Like a Dude by Jessie J around the same time which did the opposite (that song in particular was cited in loads of articles about it).

 

Another thing about it was that they assumed songs would always climb to their peaks (as I followed the US charts, I knew that wouldn't happen, lots of songs still peak first-week). I remember The Saturdays on the radio when their song charted #8 or something, and they were saying they were so happy to "already" be so high on the chart, and excited to get higher, but they never got any higher than that.

Are you sure about that? I doubt it was just Nicola Roberts that would have caused it to fall out of favour lol. There were other situations similar to that, for example Chipmunk/Keri Hilson. Also there were songs like Do It Like a Dude by Jessie J around the same time which did the opposite (that song in particular was cited in loads of articles about it).

 

Another thing about it was that they assumed songs would always climb to their peaks (as I followed the US charts, I knew that wouldn't happen, lots of songs still peak first-week). I remember The Saturdays on the radio when their song charted #8 or something, and they were saying they were so happy to "already" be so high on the chart, and excited to get higher, but they never got any higher than that.

 

The Jessie J track was the inspiration for the use of OAOS by other record companies, I believe the Chipmunk record suffered from being delayed. The Roberts single was after them, people that know me know that I'm not a fan of James Masterton, but he also sited the Nicola Roberts track as being affected by being OAOS, he should know he works in radio!

Mind you he did say that the Zedd record wasn't affected by the cover version in his last podcast. So he does get things wrong from time to time.

 

On the chart peaks, the record companies like to think that holding back and gaining lots of airplay helps a record to enter higher, so letting it start slow would be wrong.

The Chipmunk track was IIRC thrown onto iTunes whilst his current single "Champion" was still selling well with zero promo and then when it sold next to nothing first week out the record company turned around and said 'see, it doesn't work' and acted as if they were surprised that it flopped on its arse.

 

Almost like they wanted it to fail...

The Chipmunk track was IIRC thrown onto iTunes whilst his current single "Champion" was still selling well with zero promo and then when it sold next to nothing first week out the record company turned around and said 'see, it doesn't work' and acted as if they were surprised that it flopped on its arse.

 

Almost like they wanted it to fail...

 

I think Chipmunk's song actually climbed to its peak and spent a couple of weeks in the top 40? It doesn't matter if Champion was still big, since when songs are released on air, on sale, they'll always be released when the previous single is big. For example Airplanes got released when Nothin on You was still big (both the songs were even the top 2 on iTunes), What's My Name got released when Only Girl was still big (so much it got to #1 before it!), and so on. A UK example is Price Tag's release being brought forward to when Do It Like a Dude was still big.

 

It was nothing to do with the release in Chipmunk's case imo, Capital simply wasn't playing the song, so it wasn't going to sell anything. But my point is, it's probably not only because of Nicola Roberts that they stopped doing it, there were dozens of other "casualties" which were as or more significant than hers. I don't think the music industry is going to change just because of one of her singles. There were lots of successes at the time as well though (Party Rock Anthem, Give Me Everything, Born This Way, etc.), but labels probably thought it's mainly US artists that have success with it, not UK artists.

Just to throw some artist perspective on this, this is a very interesting article where Zoe Keating breaks down her income in 2013 from sales and streams and 92% of her income comes from sales still. Streaming pays artists very little. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014...youtube-payouts

 

"it would take 160 Spotify streams to generate the same income for Keating as a single track sale on iTunes" so for me judging by that you would have to weight it 160:1 ratio when it comes to counting for the charts.

Edited February 26, 201411 yr by sammy01