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I'm talking about the iTunes chart you see on the iTunes store in the iTunes window:

http://i.imgur.com/frntb8l.png

 

It's sorted by chart position as seen by the ^ marker. Let's sort it by Name:

 

http://i.imgur.com/rwHeqef.jpg

 

Notice the points after song 'positions' in red circles? What do they mean? They aren't the actual top 200 positions, and most of these aren't even in the top 200! The dot positions vary by sort type:

 

http://i.imgur.com/QWLC6PE.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/HpcJepP.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/47bpkDY.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/WtyUVSP.jpg

 

WHAT DO THOSE PESKY DOTS MEAN?

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I've noticed this before too, it's pretty annoying. But you do realise you've just given everyone here your email address, right? :lol:
they mean that the track is entering the Top 200 but the position isn't defined yet!
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I've noticed this before too, it's pretty annoying. But you do realise you've just given everyone here your email address, right? :lol:

 

I don't use it/have access to it anyway, so please, spam all you like! :lol:

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they mean that the track is entering the Top 200 but the position isn't defined yet!

 

So what do the numbers before the dots mean then? :lol:

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Nothing

 

So they're just put their randomly with no method of why they are that particular number? :unsure:

I've noticed this before too, it's pretty annoying. But you do realise you've just given everyone here your email address, right?

 

 

And the email address indicates the very school I went to, a long, long time ago!

Are those numbers (that aren't the chart position) the song's track number? For example is the Pink Floyd song track #11 on its album? And all those X Factor songs are 1-track singles and are therefore track #1 of 1. I haven't checked but I guess this is probably the case.
Are those numbers (that aren't the chart position) the song's track number? For example is the Pink Floyd song track #11 on its album? And all those X Factor songs are 1-track singles and are therefore track #1 of 1. I haven't checked but I guess this is probably the case.

 

omg you're correct! I remember Carrie Underwood's I Know You Won't showing up at "7." after Kerianne performed it on X Factor, before the top 200 was fully updated - only just clicked now that it's track 7 on the album!

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Are those numbers (that aren't the chart position) the song's track number? For example is the Pink Floyd song track #11 on its album? And all those X Factor songs are 1-track singles and are therefore track #1 of 1. I haven't checked but I guess this is probably the case.

 

Very interesting theory there Ryan. Checking now :P

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Your theory seems correct :) :cheer:

 

One of them i checked for Wicked Game didn't work though :(

 

Anyone welcome to suggest why they only show up when changing the sort!

Ah I just checked and the version that's high on iTunes isn't actually from the album of the same name you linked to, but from a Greatest Hits compilation - and on that compilation 'Wicked Game' is track 3 so the theory works! :D
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Ah I just checked and the version that's high on iTunes isn't actually from the album of the same name you linked to, but from a Greatest Hits compilation - and on that compilation 'Wicked Game' is track 3 so the theory works! :D

 

That's great! If you could figure out why they appear that would be über great! :D

The only thing I can think of, as someone mentioned above, is that clicking one of the other columns (not the chart column), sometimes provides a more up-to-date feed than the chart numbers-sorted chart does. This is possibly for the same reason that LivePopBars sometimes updates before iTunes itself does (which it does sometimes in my case), so therefore iTunes hasn't properly processed the chart numbers-sorted feed yet and therefore just shows the track number.

 

I suggest that the reason it shows the track number rather than anything else is that iTunes has to "grab" the song preview from the single or album page, and to get that on those pages you would click the track number to listen to the preview.

 

In conclusion I'd suggest that iTunes goes through certain stages when updating its chart:

- The most up-to-date feed can be found when sorting by artist (or another non chart number column).

- This feed therefore shows the track number of the new top 200 entries so that the song preview is in place.

- The feed then updates again and replaces the track number with its chart position - and the preview is already in place from the previous update stage.

 

That's purely based on what I think happened with Carrie Underwood's 'I Know You Won't' a few weeks ago, I don't know if it's possible that it applies to the example you've given above as I haven't examined where they've come from - but in general I imagine that it's just the process iTunes goes through to update its chart and sometimes it updates for us without the update being fully complete.

 

Hope that makes some sort of sense or gives us something to work with!

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Ryan, thanks for explaining it all. Looking at the other examples your theories seem correct.
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It's probably just a bug in the iTunes software?

 

It's happened several times so surely it isn't? :thinking:

Ryan, thanks for explaining it all. Looking at the other examples your theories seem correct.

I agree with Ryan and also with Mango that it is an error on iTunes sise which they either aren't aware or just cannot/don't want to do against it.

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