From OCC:

 

Reaching one million sales of a single in the UK is one of the greatest and rarest pop music milestones; and for the first time the Official Charts Company is redefining the established milestone to include streams.

 

This major change in chart history means the exclusive UK ‘Million Sellers Club’ opens its doors to showcase the mega hits coming through in the 21st Century - a selection of which are featured on a newly announced album Now That’s What I Call a Million.

 

The compilation, released on October 13, showcases a selection of the “millionaires” of our time in a new way, with streams and sales combined, shining a spotlight on the huge smash hits occurring in this truly unique period in history, where there have never been so many ways to access our favourite music.

 

Hitting a million sales has long been a highly sought-after landmark; only 169 tracks from some of the greatest musical artists of all time such as The Beatles, Elton John and Queen have achieved this marker in terms of pure sales in the 65-year history of the Official Chart. But with music consumption constantly evolving, and streaming now a dominant force in the singles market, so must the traditional Million Sellers hall of fame modernise in tandem.

 

The updated milestone enables the industry to continue drawing a parallel between the hit singles of today with the historic successes of the past, and welcomes the cream of today’s artists to this exclusive club, which under the new sales and streams formula expands to just over 300 songs.

 

The Killers' 2004 hit Mr Brightside, which opens the compilation, perfectly embodies this new era of modern musical millionaires. Originally released in 2004 to moderate chart success, The Killers’ Mr Brightside has seen its popularity soar extraordinarily in the digital age.

 

Through the explosion of downloading in the mid-noughties and the coming of age of streaming in recent years – Mr Brightside has steadily gone on to become a genuine modern classic that continues to be discovered by subsequent generations of music fans. The ever-popular indie anthem still enjoys a constant presence on the Official Singles Chart more than a decade after its release, so far racking up 182 weeks on chart across its lifetime, 30 of those in 2017 alone..

 

Six tracks on the updated 'millionaires' list were released in 2017, including Ed Sheeran's Shape Of You, Clean Bandit's Symphony ft. Zara Larsson and Rag'n'Bone Man's Human. According to Official Charts Company data, in the last year alone 98m singles have been sold in the UK and music fans have generated an extraordinary 44 BILLION audio streams.

 

Full sales & streams breakdowns at link: http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/t...evealed__20459/

 

1 SOMETHING ABOUT THE WAY YOU LOOK TONIGHT/CANDLE IN THE WIND 97 ELTON JOHN

2 DO THEY KNOW IT'S CHRISTMAS? BAND AID

3 SHAPE OF YOU ED SHEERAN

4 BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY QUEEN

5 UPTOWN FUNK MARK RONSON FT BRUNO MARS

6 HAPPY PHARRELL WILLIAMS

7 THINKING OUT LOUD ED SHEERAN

8 ONE DANCE DRAKE FT WIZKID & KYLA

9 RATHER BE CLEAN BANDIT FT JESS GLYNNE

10 SORRY JUSTIN BIEBER

 

Edited September 20, 20177 yr by AcerBen

OMG YES!! *.*

Amazing to see the all-time list updated and with streaming included too! *.*

 

Good to see the OCC finally accepting songs with streaming tipping them over the million sales mark into their million sellers club (I see they've re-named 'millionaires' to get over them not selling a million actual copies, which is a good idea).

Great news. The OCC did the right thing here. Now I'm going to be busy nerding out on this new million sellers list.

Is it the right thing combining them rather than just having two lists? At least they have broken it down for complete transparency, but I don't feel that the list means anything anymore.

All the streams are at 1:100 ratio btw

Re-sorting the data by streams is a really interesting way of seeing which songs have stood the test of time!

What a truly awful top ten.

'Sexual' is the only real surprise for me. I know it stuck around for a while, but I had no idea it'd done this well. It seems pretty forgettable among this list.

So thankul for this list!

I can only agree with this decision if they continue to produce a separate million sellers list - or at the very least the ratio should be 150:1 for the purposes of this list. Seeing Shape of You above Bohemian Rhapsody is just insane, the total sales of tracks from the last 2 years are too inflated to reflect their true popularity.

 

(I realise the list was never a perfect indicator of popularity due to sales being higher or lower in certain periods, but it was at least fair)

 

On the other hand, it's a very interesting read :P

181 STRANGER ON THE SHORE MR ACKER BILK AND HIS PARAMOUNT JAZZ BAND

182 MARY'S BOY CHILD HARRY BELAFONTE

183 THE LAST WALTZ ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK

184 STARSHIPS NICKI MINAJ

 

Only legends in this section *-*

 

Lovely to see an updated list of this even if 'millionaire' isn't really all that exclusive anymore. Shape of You does feel massive but third of all time looks crazy :o

Some surprises in here! Shape Of You in the top three of all time...! :lol:

 

Way too many 'quite big' hits from the last few years above gigantic classics from decades ago but that's the beauty of different sales eras and compilation methods.

All of these figures :cheeseblock:

 

This seems to highlight that the 100-1 ratio is pretty massively out as an approximation, the list is already crazily skewed to more recent hits - with seemingly every even moderately big hit of late managing to make the million mark - and that will only increase over time. But there's no perfect solution to that. Just good that the OCC are still tracking sales and streams separately in the list and dropping the term 'million seller'.

 

Quite impressed at how high the pure sales of 'Shape Of You'/'Sorry'/'Love Yourself' are actually! Especially the latter as it didn't have a big first week like the other two.

Had no idea Unforgettable, Adventure of a Lifetime and One Last Time were there already :o

 

Great to see this list updated, though I can only see it getting more biased towards recent songs as we go along which is a shame for some all time classics, but at the same time, we can really see which songs stand the test of time the best despite their peak (Mr Brightside being a very good example here).

Madonna still doesn't make it :(

So the last 'million seller' in the old sense is still “Uptown Funk” (released in 2014).

 

Only “Hello” (released 2015) looks like it may get there one day, although that could be some time yet.

 

 

Should just add that by last I mean latest released not last ever... especially as “Sexy and I Know It” by LMFAO is just 920 copies away. *.*

Edited September 19, 20177 yr by Doctor Blind

Kyla of all people being the highest woman on the list tho...

It's incredible to see such a detailed list, including sales vs streams breakdown! :o More of this sort of content please, OCC! *.*

What a ridiculous list.

 

A million DELLERS list should be about copies, not streams.