At least the album charts represent what people actually consume and not just tracks chucked on a playlist that folks will leave on shuffle.

Every few months or so with almost timely frequency these sort of articles come along, usually from a chinstroker at The Guardian.

 

Whilst I do agree to the principle of a Catalogue Chart for anything older than the last three years - which the OCC did actually do at one time. You look at any issues of Music Week from around the mid 00s and it was something they did - fundamentally, however people are choosing to consume an album, physically or digitally, for better or worse it's a good measure.

 

It's essentially operating the same way the singles chart used to before streaming had a stranglehold on certainly the very top end of the chart and how much slower that moves now.

 

This debate will run and run until there's some major shake up rules wise, but for many artists, especially the ones I love who still release new music regularly or semi regularly, but aren't considered to be current streaming wise or are considered - though I bloody loathe this term - "a heritage act", it forms a key cornerstone of their campaign and thus being able to tour with regularity and all the other things that come with that.

They need to create a separate album chart for Greatest Hits albums. They had no problem removing soundtracks when they were dominating and the Greatest Hits problem is way bigger.

I actually think the best solution would be to implement ACR in the albums chart (as Jay suggested), rather than separate it into different, additional charts. We don't want to neglect old albums & greatest hits compilations completely.

I actually think the best solution would be to implement ACR in the albums chart (as Jay suggested), rather than separate it into different, additional charts. We don't want to neglect old albums & greatest hits compilations completely.

While I agree in principle, that would be a very tricky thing to implement with compilation albums. Do they focus on the songs and cap those older than a certain period of time? They don't want a newly released hits collection to automatically be handicapped. Or do they put a date on when a greatest hits release gets relegated to ACR after being out for a period of time? What is to stop the label releasing a new hits collection every few years to get around this and still have a high 'selling' release in the charts.

 

I hope they do implement something, but based on Martin's response, I don't see any change being made anytime soon. When the high turn over at the top peters out due to catalogue releases blocking #1s, then we might see some change. Will get worse before it gets better.

I don't get why some on this forum don't like streaming in terms of its importance for albums. We live in a world where the vast bast majority of people listen to music through streaming as its more cost effective. Buying a physical album is largely done as a collectors item for hardcore fans - and those fans will still mostly to the album via streaming anyway as access to physical CD palyers is pretty difficult and people arent bothered to burn a CD to an mp3 when you can just stream and save memory on your phone/computer.

 

Also streaming is the purest way we have of knowing what people are listening to. Physical sales are completrly manupulared by multibuys. Playlist plays don't impact album sales much as the biggest songs are downweighted.

 

Solutions to Greatest Hits albums have been presented in this thread and with a bit of tweaking would work.

 

Situations where the number one album drops out of the top 100 are because in those cases the physical sales have more correlation with people actually listening to the album and are more about supporting someone from your hometown. The Lottery Winners for example got number 1 with 200 streaming 'sales' which is ridiculous and means the number 1 spot was meaningless that week.

 

Could someone explain to me where I might be going wrong with this, as for me streaming should be even more heavily weighted as that's how people listen to music.

 

*Also as a side note the whole thing of converting streams into sales is outdated now. The primary way of listening to music is streams so really sales should be converted to streams

Edited May 19, 20232 yr by platinum

Nothing will change all the while the major record labels are happy - as soon as they demand a change then we will see one.

Instead of a brand new chart they should just remove the streaming sales from the GH records and only add them to the parent album. Stupid them getting counted twice anyway.

Nothing will change all the while the major record labels are happy - as soon as they demand a change then we will see one.

That sums it up. The labels are happy with high first weeks, as it gives them headlines. Then they simply don’t care. Neither will that head of OCC. Maybe if ‘The Highlights’ becomes the multi-week #1 they will think (because it will deny them these headlines). But it is not strong enough. Maybe once Ed releases his Greatest Hits… imagine :D surely it would easily grab 10k+ “sales” each week?

Maybe once Ed releases his Greatest Hits… imagine :D surely it would easily grab 10k+ “sales” each week?

Definitely.

 

There are several artists who could take advantage of the current situation and release a Greatest Hits for easy streaming sales: Ed, KT Perry, Lady GaGa, Rihanna, Taylor, Adele, Lana, Coldplay...

 

I wonder why they haven't done it yet. :thinking:

Edited May 19, 20232 yr by Voodoo

Instead of a brand new chart they should just remove the streaming sales from the GH records and only add them to the parent album. Stupid them getting counted twice anyway.

They don't count them twice. They put them onto the album that otherwise has the most streams, so of course a Greatest Hits album is going to do better than a studio album since the former has more well known hits on it. But like for instance, there's some tracklist overlap between Fleetwood Mac's Greatest Hits and Rumours, but no track is contributing to both of them simultaneously. The latter is charting on the strength of the non-GH portion of the tracklisting (and I imagine it's a perennial seller of course).

Double counting *does* happen, as per the chart rules:

 

9.3

Multiple Albums

Where a track is credited to more than one artist – streams of that track will count equally towards each artist’s studio albums.

Where a track appears on more than one album by an artist, streams of this track will be attributed equally to each studio album and a maximum of one greatest hits album (the hits title with the highest sales DUS for that given week, or other hits title nominated in advance by label).

 

which is why you get Rumours and the GH album both charting and same with Morning Glory and Oasis' GH

Oh my bad completely! I swear every other chart in the world I know does it the way I described. Completely agree with that being a mistake.

And does the track itself get the same streams - is that not triple counting?

That sums it up. The labels are happy with high first weeks, as it gives them headlines. Then they simply don’t care. Neither will that head of OCC. Maybe if ‘The Highlights’ becomes the multi-week #1 they will think (because it will deny them these headlines). But it is not strong enough. Maybe once Ed releases his Greatest Hits… imagine :D surely it would easily grab 10k+ “sales” each week?

 

Probably because they know the OCC will change the rules if they do that

 

All this discussion looks to have broken the album chart even more though and the OCC have decided to double count all albums instead now:

 

 

:lol:

So good are these albums that they have to be mentioned twice?

That's the worst thing they could do. We don't need "fake" hit albums that are driven by one or two popular tracks.

 

The current formula is great & quite clever, actually.

 

But surely hit albums in the past were driven by one or two hits on them?

But surely hit albums in the past were driven by one or two hits on them?

There were many one-hit-wonders who couldn't shift albums. Single success didn't always translate to album success.

Like Bebe Rexha currently.