We’re all talking about Kate Bush being re-set and whether or not ACR is necessary.

 

If it is not a true reflection of the most popular songs in the UK what would your proposal be for an alternate model?

 

Personally I think we should keep the 3x weeks of decline then ACR rule but I think if any song (old or new) receives a boost in streams of over 25% it should automatically be reset.

Edited June 14, 20223 yr by musicfan97

I think ACR is, generally speaking, fine as it is - it does a good job at keeping a balance between an accurate chart and one that promotes newer, fresher music better.

 

I think the Peru situation needs looking at somehow, I don't really have a solution (I know many here do) but the track is far past its peak but a slight boost in streams every couple of weeks has seen it swerve for months now. The 3 year rule isn't great either as much as I understand why it exists (Christmas songs) - I think the OCC were right to make an exception for Kate Bush and I think they should be more open to making similar exceptions in the future, it's clearly a different case to the Christmas/seasonal/football songs that get regular revivals related to their specific topic.

As much as I love Kate Bush, I do think the ACR should have been kept as it is. The OCC bowed to media pressure on this one and difficult to see how they can regain credibility now.

The OCC didn’t have credibility anyway so this changes nothing.

The suggestion that keeps coming up and does feel like the best response is to have a much smaller streaming ratio (e.g. 10:1) but then have a streaming cap at 5 or 10 streams, which would solve the problem of older songs which continually get boosts charting high up, whilst allowing songs that haven't been 'big' before to do as well as new songs. The fact this hasn't been implemented yet, however, does make me think the OCC have probably given it a go behind the scenes and it didn't work the way we'd hoped, or there is some other complication we don't know about.

Remove ACR completely and treat every track equally. A stale chart is better than an unfair chart.

Remove ACR completely and treat every track equally. A stale chart is better than an unfair chart.

I second that!

I think with songs seeing a resurgence becoming a more common thing the OCC and ACR rules are pretty much a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. You remove ACR it’s unfair, you keep it and all of a sudden it’s not true to what the consumers want. You want to make sure that recently released tracks stay visible and get a fair push but if the GP wants to listen to songs that are older than 3 years old, especially during the holiday season, getting rid of ACR will render these tracks invisible and they’ll peak too early or never take off. No one’s gonna be happy anyway so might as well not tamper with it as to not piss people off :drama:

If anything they should just implement a recurrency system like billboard :P

I’ve made both these suggestions before but:

 

1 My more moderate tweak to ACR is to abandon the 3 consecutive decline rule which obviously isn’t working when streaming fluctuates with the weather and other factors. Instead anything that drops below (say) 85% of its peak streams is ACRed. Anything that climbs back above (say) 95% of its peak streams is auto-reset. No 3 year rule.

 

2 The more radical solution is to dramatically reducing the number of streams that make a sale (say to 25) and cap each user at this number so once they have “bought” the song no more plays will count. Remove the daily cap of 10 per user.

2 The more radical solution is to dramatically reducing the number of streams that make a sale (say to 25) and cap each user at this number so once they have “bought” the song no more plays will count. Remove the daily cap of 10 per user.

Do they have the capability to report these capped streams? If so, that's probably the best suggestion I've heard so far and what they should have done from the start.

Do they have the capability to report these capped streams? If so, that's probably the best suggestion I've heard so far and what they should have done from the start.

I don’t know, but I’m thinking if they can easily report a daily cap of 10 why would a lifetime cap be difficult? But I could be wrong.

If only we could get the OCC to read this thread (although I'm sure they will have sat around in countless meetings and not have been short of suggestions)

Spotify knows absolutely everything you do, so sure they could have used a cap

 

problem is now is too late a cap should have been introduced in day 1, not sow, it's already too late

 

it would have been perfect cos for xmas songs, if you listen to Mariah like crazy on xmas #1, you already reach the cap, you don't count the next xmas... if you just stream it a couple times, next xmas you still count...

with songs like Kate Bush, if you are a super fan and had been listening to the track all the time these last years, you already reached the cap so you don't count, but all the people that kinda know the song but never streamed it, all those streams count

 

so much easier than ACR, but it's too late now

Honestly I feel like ARIA kind of had the right idea with this. Keep the proper chart accurate* and don't fiddle with it, and just make a second bonus chart that exclusively highlights new releases, so you can get a true reflection of consumption as well as a means to highlight newer stuff

 

*HAHAHAHAHAHAHA I can't say that with a straight face

Yeah I’d echo the permanent cap idea. If they can implement a daily one then a lifetime one shouldn’t be hard, although I think removing the daily one might cause issues with certain fan acts taking advantage.

 

I think 100 streams as that’s what’s “equal” to a download should be the new permanent cap then it’s not counted after that, if that still doesn’t improve things then maybe drop it to 50. However this should be what the actual sales units should be derived from too, so we don’t have these inflated sales. Also premium accounts only, not even any reduced free streaming should count.

 

 

My ideal rule is that EVERY song is on "ACR" after it debuts on the chart, but back on SCR if it would reach a new peak on SCR.

 

So every time a song debuts in the top 100 it will be on SCR so its streams are 1x obviously because that's a new peak. Then if it climbs the following week it stays with a 1x multiplier, if it falls then it's now on ACR and its multiplier is based on its position the previous week. If it was at #1 its multiplier is 0.900x, if it was at #51 then its multiplier is 0.950x, if it was #100 then its multiplier is 0.999x. Basically the formula is 0.9**x, where ** is your chart position -1.

 

Then if it falls again then next week's multiplier is multiplied with the song's previous week's multiplier. And then the process goes on until the song reaches a new peak or drops out of the chart (and it sort of sounds complicated but a computer could be made to do this very easily imo).

 

I think this is better because:

 

1. The really massive hits that stick around for years now will eventually fall much further than the 0.5x multiplier of current ACR. Christmas songs as well.

2. You won't get those weird chart runs like where a song is top 10 for 15 weeks and then suddenly drops to #37. It will look more gradual and natural.

3. Big hits won't be almost guaranteed 9 weeks at #1. In fact if you've managed to be #1 for 5 weeks in your 6th week your "ACR multiplier" will already be at about 0.6x, not too much more than current ACR. If you've been at #1 for 10 weeks then your multiplier will be about 0.4x.

4. Basically, I think the charts will look a lot more like the UK singles charts of the past, where 6+ weeks at #1 was quite rare, where almost every new release from a major record label made the chart each week, where songs would have shorter chart runs, debuts in the top 40, top 10, etc, would be more common.

Some interesting suggestions here, especially Julian T's ones.

 

Personally I think the next thing the OC should do is remove the 3-years=permanent-ACR rule for any music that could not be reasonably described as "Holiday Music". This is because this rule doesn't have a place in the current age of tiktok when songs often older than 3 years old get frequently revived (Ginseng strip 2002, Wait A Minute, Tropical, Don't Blame Me, many others....) but don't chart (or at least chart well) because of this, which feels a little counterintuitive considering several of these songs weren't hits at the time.

 

The problem ofc would be having a situation similar to Perfect in 2020, where an old megahit is revived from some event (e.g. an artist releasing new music) and it ends up sticking around. I think this might've happened to Shape Of You when Bad Habits was released and it likely would've stayed on SCR for months afterwards. Therefore maybe they should introduce an adapted rule where after a song spends a certain number of weeks on the singles chart (e.g. 50 weeks), THEN it is permanently on ACR.

I think the best solution is the lifetime streaming cap per user coupled with a much lower amount of streams needed to generate 1 sale.

 

I think with that system a daily streaming cap per user could be removed for paid for accounts but kept for free accounts to limit fanbases from creating hundreds of duplicate accounts to keep their faves high. Every user has (for example 100 or 50 streams) to give to an individual song and once they are used up the streams no longer count towards the chart. ACR and the 3 year rule could be removed. For fairness (and probably easiness) I would say the lifetime cap would start from the date of the rule change so you would probably have a couple of weeks where a load of old shit re-enters the top 40 but then things would level out and start to move at a better pace. You wouldn't be manipulating the chart too much with lots of rules, just re-defining the metrics for a sale which has been done before.

 

If that system could reasonably be implemented I don't see why not? Unless they kept the 3 track rule then first week album bombs would still occur but I don't think that's the biggest issue with the charts right now.

I can't imagine the OCC have a large database with how many times every user of every platform has listened to every song ever and when - it's the streaming companies themselves that have that, and it's they who apply the daily cap on the data they send to OCC on a *daily* basis, so each day is independent of every other. They're clearly on board with this or there was some prior arrangement, as we've seen the same filter applied to some of Spotify's own charts (I don't have a reference but Rush mentioned one in a post some years ago), so it's they who would hold the key to any changes in how that's done and what the effect would be if instead it was a lifetime cap of 20, 50 ,100, or whatever - I really can't see them passing all that data over to the OCC for that decision to be in their hands.

 

Even then, is it not a relevant form of measurement that some songs reach new peaks in popularity, partly as a result of people who were already familiar with the song going back to it en masse? Or that some songs have a higher level of replayability? Dircadirca put this better than I could in the other thread.