You can only download a song once from each provider unless he buys loads of physicals but there was ways of stopping that back in the day I think!

Hi!

 

What's the criteria for crediting artists on a remix? Cause for example Ariana was never credited on Save Your Tears or DaBaby was never credited on Levitating. Meanwhile Ed Sheeran was credited for Peru. The 3 songs charted before the remix release date but only Peru got the credits changed after it.

 

My theory is that once the song enters the Top 40 the credits can't be changed but idk, I say this just cause I know OOCC loves the Top 40 and it matches the situation but I would love to know if there was ever an official statement regarding it.

The credit for 'Goosebumps' was changed from HVME to Travis Scott & HVME partway through its run (although strangely it appears they have retroactively added Travis to the credits for the earlier weeks in the archive now which they have not done for 'Peru').

 

Fairly certain it's just up to the label whether they bother to ask for credits to be changed or not, it's just that they don't most of the time.

I disagree

Sure some label would have asked in the last 4 years

Like Beyonce for Savage

 

Its just that Ed has the Occ wrapped around his finger

Just like the Brits 😂

Are you just going to ignore the example I gave that has nothing at all to do with Ed xx

Despacito's credit was changed a few weeks into its run to include Justin Bieber, and Maroon 5's Girls Like You credit was changed midweek to include Cardi B (the early mids didn't include her).

 

The OCC use whatever credit the labels give them, this was confirmed in Music Week, but obviously it fits someone's narrative better for the OCC and Ed to be in cahoots lol

Just album chart pray get new rules clog up old album and greatest hits

Can anyone answer if these retailers count for Official Charts please?

 

For streams:

- Apple Music. Not listed in the OfficialCharts FAQ under streaming. ""To date, the services contributing span Spotify, Deezer, Napster, O2 Tracks (Musicqubed), rara, Rdio, Blinkbox Music and XBox Music. " - But the website also says it catches 99% of singles sales (presumably including streams), and last month Apple Music was estimated to have up to 20% of the streaming market in the UK.

- Tidal

- Amazon Music

 

For digital downloads (again, these aren't listed as partners or accounted for in FAQ):

- Tidal

- Qobuz

 

Thank you!

Edited August 11, 20223 yr by Saaranghaeyo

^ Yes to all of the above, though I've never heard of Qobuz so I can't say for definite there. You can see the impact Apple, Tidal and Amazon have on the chart through certain songs doing well (Alesso & Zara charting right now proves the case for Apple, Beyoncé's Lemonade tracklisting charting proves Tidal and the Amazon exclusives each Christmas such as Ellie Goulding's River proves Amazon). I assume Tidal downloads will count too if Tidal streaming does.

Thank you, I'm very grateful for your response! Have a great day!

Just wondered if the OCC actually state publicly anywhere that Thursday streams are estimated for platforms that don’t report on time or whether it’s just something Buzzjack has learned through interactions with them? I was challenged on it earlier today and asked to produce evidence. :lol:

I think it has been mentioned in Music Week sales reports a few times (though I can't immediately recall any specific example).

Hello! OCC has posted one article (Jan 2021) about "Specialist #1 Award", including a trophy. I'm not allowed to post a link because I don't have enough posts, but if you google "officialcharts specialist award" you'll see the article I mean.

 

Can anyone confirm if this "Specialist #1 Award" and trophy apply to all of the charts, including things like Physical Album Sales, Video Streaming, Single Downloads, etc? eg. does Taylor Swift get the main #1 album trophy, and a Specialist #1 Award trophy for Physical Album Sales, another specialist trophy for Album Downloads, etc?

Going back to the ‘10 streams’ rule - how do we know this to be true?

 

Spotify counts all the streams of a track (I know - I experimented and found that when a song was getting ~5-20 streams a day, I could increase it to well over 100 by playing it on repeat).

 

I know OCC doesn’t like to be pinned down to an answer about the maximum number of streams - (I emailed them and they were vague) but if there is a cap of 10 streams, who removes the others? Does Spotify remove them after counting them? Or do they provide OCC with data about who has streamed what?

On 14/04/2026 at 21:40, Juranamo said:

You can't though, you can only have 3 in total (hence why two of Chappell's vinyl variants were excluded)

On 14/04/2026 at 21:37, Juranamo said:

Only 3 physical variants count, regardless of the format, for singles. Chappell Roan released 5 vinyl variants of 'The Giver ', 2 of those had their sales excluded.

So in @jszmiles case, you would usually see the highest selling 3 variants out of the 5x vinyl, 5x CD, 5x USB, and cassette (so 13 variants would be excluded), plus all of the MP3 downloads and streams counted as normal.

If the release is staggered, they could potentially allocate sales to other variants on the different weeks though. Examples of this include 'Padam Padam', which had a vinyl released later on (a CD and 2x cassettes had already been released - so one of those would have been "deleted" for chart purposes to allow the vinyl to count), and 'Angel Of My Dreams' which had a later 12" Dreamixes variant released (a CD, 7", and cassette had been released previously).

For albums, I'm not aware of any limitation to the number of variants that can be eligible at any one time!

In Alex Warren and Chappell Roan's cases, I wonder if they were looking to bolster sales in other countries where the same limitations on variants don't apply?

On 14/04/2026 at 21:37, Juranamo said:

Only 3 physical variants count, regardless of the format, for singles. Chappell Roan released 5 vinyl variants of 'The Giver ', 2 of those had their sales excluded.

So in @jszmiles case, you would usually see the highest selling 3 variants out of the 5x vinyl, 5x CD, 5x USB, and cassette (so 13 variants would be excluded), plus all of the MP3 downloads and streams counted as normal.

If the release is staggered, they could potentially allocate sales to other variants on the different weeks though. Examples of this include 'Padam Padam', which had a vinyl released later on (a CD and 2x cassettes had already been released - so one of those would have been "deleted" for chart purposes to allow the vinyl to count), and 'Angel Of My Dreams' which had a later 12" Dreamixes variant released (a CD, 7", and cassette had been released previously).

For albums, I'm not aware of any limitation to the number of variants that can be eligible at any one time!

In Alex Warren and Chappell Roan's cases, I wonder if they were looking to bolster sales in other countries where the same limitations on variants don't apply?

On 14/04/2026 at 21:38, 777666jason said:

Thats literally what I said 3 formats but you can have multiple variants of each format 🤔

I will continue this discussion here, to sum-up.

If I have 2 different (lets say by colour which probably is also different catalog #) CDs, 2 different vinyl and 2 USB sticks and 2 cassettes which officially sold like:

1st CD - 1000

2nd CD - 1500

1st vinyl - 800

2nd vinyl - 700

1st USB - 900

2nd USB - 1000

1st cass - 800

2nd cass - 800

Physical sales sum-up will be 3500 units? and 4000 units excluded? So there was no-chart-wise-point of releasing vinyl and cassettes?

Why did they actually make that stupid rule? in 90s all CDS versions counted no matter of the number of versions

3 minutes ago, jszmiles said:

I will continue this discussion here, to sum-up.

If I have 2 different (lets say by colour which probably is also different catalog #) CDs, 2 different vinyl and 2 USB sticks and 2 cassettes which officially sold like:

1st CD - 1000

2nd CD - 1500

1st vinyl - 800

2nd vinyl - 700

1st USB - 900

2nd USB - 1000

1st cass - 800

2nd cass - 800

Physical sales sum-up will be 3500 units? and 4000 units excluded? So there was no-chart-wise-point of releasing vinyl and cassettes?

Why did they actually make that stupid rule? in 90s all CDS versions counted no matter of the number of versions

This is correct.

I think the rule was implemented to prevent chart manipulation, whilst also allowing choice for the consumer. In the 90s, cassettes and CDs were both popular, and vinyl wasn't completely dead. Most songs would be released on one of each of the formats, and theoretically people would buy the song on whichever medium they had (assuming they only had a cd player, or a record player, or a tape deck).

Later on, artists would release perhaps 2 CDs and a vinyl, or 3 CDs to encourage multi buying. It was pretty rare for singles to have 4 formats available (and usually that would be 3 widely available formats, plus a limited edition vinyl [one example of this being Feeder's 'Seven Days In The Sun' released on 2x CD, 1x cassette, and a limited vinyl which would obviously have been the one they excluded the sales from])

I imagine it was trickier to implement the rule on digital downloads though as people could easily and cheaply buy from different retailers anyway, so they just didn't bother. 🤷‍♂️

I guess now the singles chart is very focused on songs rather than ‘singles’. People don’t generally buy physical products because they like this song, but because they are a fan of the artist, so releasing multiple products manipulates the chart away from what is popular.

So even though there are issues with streaming, at least streaming reflects the popularity of a song far more than the sales of physical products.

However, on the album chart, it could be argued that, sales of an album reflect its popularity on a par with the streams of individual tracks - and allowing multiple formats gives opportunities to those artists who aren’t able to gain the streams sufficient to chart. But anyway, in recent years the albums chart has reflected sales more than the singles chart.