But how do you know people aren't actively listening to the follow-up songs too? For example, my current Spotify playlist that I've made and update regularly, I'll press play on track 1 and often keep it playing after that if I'm in the car, or the bath, or whatever. I'm actively listening to these songs and enjoying them, but only the first song would count? I could also do this on a Spotify-curated playlist. Just because you don't specifically press play on a song, it doesn't mean you're not an active listener in the same way as the very first song you selected. Using this logic, only track 1 on an album would count...

 

We don't, but it's definitely more accurate to add plays as 'sales' if we can definitely say, yes you've clicked on that track, you're actually listening.

 

Even when I've created my own playlist with say 40 tracks. The order there in isn't necessarily what you wanted to listen to at that time. Just because you and I might want to play track 2 after track 1, there will be millions of tracks 'played' but not actually listened to by others and indeed not even liking the song playing (People do create their own playlists, but there must be thousands, maybe even millions of people who throughout the day won't and will just play a pre-created playlist by Spotify) such as 'Feel Good Friday', 'TB Thurs' or 'Summer Tunes'. I don't think these plays can be relied on to be an accurate reflection of the likability of a certain track/s?

 

But I get your point. I'm just not a fan of adding 'sales' for songs you can't back up with data to show that they are actually being played/listened to. IMO, as the rules of adding songs stands currently, it kinda cheapens the chart and I guess that's why I stopped paying attention to the official charts a few years ago. It's getting worse now with songs going 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-2-OUT-3-4-OUT-3-4-OUT-3-15 etc....

For Q4 all I want really is for Louise to do well with her album Heavy Love :cheer:

 

I expect it will have an ok first week and then freefall. But would like if it hung on to the charts even a little bit (i.e. more than the last albums by Alexandra Burke or Emma Bunton for example)!

 

And after that, for Eternal to reform!

We don't, but it's definitely more accurate to add plays as 'sales' if we can definitely say, yes you've clicked on that track, you're actually listening.

 

Even when I've created my own playlist with say 40 tracks. The order there in isn't necessarily what you wanted to listen to at that time. Just because you and I might want to play track 2 after track 1, there will be millions of tracks 'played' but not actually listened to by others and indeed not even liking the song playing (People do create their own playlists, but there must be thousands, maybe even millions of people who throughout the day won't and will just play a pre-created playlist by Spotify) such as 'Feel Good Friday', 'TB Thurs' or 'Summer Tunes'. I don't think these plays can be relied on to be an accurate reflection of the likability of a certain track/s?

 

But I get your point. I'm just not a fan of adding 'sales' for songs you can't back up with data to show that they are actually being played/listened to. IMO, as the rules of adding songs stands currently, it kinda cheapens the chart and I guess that's why I stopped paying attention to the official charts a few years ago. It's getting worse now with songs going 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-2-OUT-3-4-OUT-3-4-OUT-3-15 etc....

I really don't think it's more accurate though, in fact it's actually much less accurate! It's only registering a selection of songs that were listened to, and as there's no way of proving just how active the listener was during that song, you're effectively ignoring sales for no reason. Of course, the curated Spotify playlists are going to benefit a song that would perhaps not get click plays on its own, but people can still skip if they don't like a song. If it continues to rack up streams, it's obviously popular. I know if a song I dislike comes on if I'm listening to Best New Pop for example, I'll skip it within 3 seconds, let alone the allotted 30 seconds before it counts to the chart. I really don't see the benefit of only counting click-streams when genuine streams quite easily occur from playlists too.

 

As for that chart run example, I Don't Care has been the only song to have a chart run anything like that so far - one song in the 2 years that the 3 track rule has been in place! And even then, it got unlucky to go to ACR in the week the album came out, because otherwise it wouldn't have dropped out at all. If that's the price that we need to pay to stop 500 Ed Sheeran tracks clogging up the chart, I'm good with that (and I say that as an Ed fan, I just appreciate a chart where other songs are able to continue their progress).