I used to listen to the charts religiously during my younger years, throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s regardless of whether I liked much in the list (often not) but it always seemed like something important to be aware of and pretty much everybody knew what was at the top.

 

The addition of downloads didn't change that either but for some reason sometime in 2010 I just lost interest. I don't quite know why either. It wasn't because of the music really, although there was little I cared for in the the top 40, that had often been the case anyway. I just no longer seemed to care what was happening in the chart and whilst I can recognise every number one from the late 50s onwards (regular music quizzer too - both setting and entering for years) once I get to 2010 I only know a few here and there for each year. And it seems in the wider world that's very much the case. I work with people of all ages and have two 20 something kids, one who is particularly obsessive over music, but neither have any interest in the charts.

 

For that reason I can see exactly what the article is saying. I don't think the charts are any better or worse - how could it be it's just a data list at heart - but it does seem that it's no longer an important part of everyday society. It's like going to Church these days, everybody knows it's still there but hardly anyone does it anymore.

I don’t see anything wrong with the article really. The charts are boring, people are less interested and it was more interesting in the past. That’s nothing to do with the music in the charts but when you base something around listening habits, it’s always going to be boring. People are generally boring in what they listen to.

 

I know people will claim that people always look more fondly on things from the past and that there were always issues in the chart. All of that is true. However, it’s hard to imagine anyone looking back on the last 5-10 years of the chart with lots of nostalgia because of the fact that people aren’t paying much attention to any of it now.

 

It’ll never get back how it was but you can’t blame people for missing those days. More variety and movement in the chart, Top Of The Pops every week, acts regularly promoting on TV. It’s not the done thing anymore but it was great. It’s not snobbery to point that out.

 

On this board, it’s not a real representation of how people view the charts. I can’t really understand why so many still follow them as religiously as they do particularly when they’re able to so fairly accurately predict what will happen in them. Even this week I’ve seen someone say they’re disappointed Jade isn’t in contention for no.1 and then been ridiculed because they don’t understand how these things work. It feels like a lot of people follow the charts purely for numbers and statistics rather than music. It’s hard work for anyone to follow and understand the charts these days. I gave up following closely a long time ago.

Even this week I’ve seen someone say they’re disappointed Jade isn’t in contention for no.1 and then been ridiculed because they don’t understand how these things work. It feels like a lot of people follow the charts purely for numbers and statistics rather than music. It’s hard work for anyone to follow and understand the charts these days. I gave up following closely a long time ago.

It's not about how things work, it's about being popular enough for being #1 on a certain week. It's always been the case - songs that feel #1 might not be. Like Wonderwall by Oasis or Angels by Robbie Williams. Surely there are people who THINK Wonderwall is a #1 hit. Or Mr. Brightside. It doesn't make the real charts any less valid.

Edited July 25, 2024Jul 25 by Sour Candy

Well, here’s the thing. If you asked 50 year olds in the 80’s and 90’s if they still followed the charts or knew what was number #1 I’m almost certain most wouldn’t. From my own personal family experience I know for a fact they didn’t yet they were big into music and knew the charts well ‘in their day’ so a lot of it is just that. The natural cycle. Most people(not everyone) get to a certain age where they are very uninterested in new music. You listen to your era or what you liked and recycle that. That’s really what the article appears to represent. Top of the pops I don’t even remember that being relevant growing up if it even existed so how long ago was that even a thing. This guy seemed to be thinking Ed Sheeran is dominating. That’s why it just appears like the “in my day” type of commentary. What if it wasn’t better in that day, what if there was far less choice and music moguls controlled almost everything. What if there was far more manipulation and radio had too much control. What if songs and artists seemed bigger purely because it’s all you heard and had no other avenue to hear anything else. The reality is that streaming has left a lot of people behind but you simply have to get with it because it’s the best invention for music ever. 1 billion songs right there anytime you want from any era and any artist. Then it’s a true reflection of what people are listening to rather than what is manufactured to them. Not to be off-topic but I’ve seen people get nostalgic about being beaten up by their parents as kids and it’s terrible you can’t do that these days. Nostalgia is a confusing psychological thing. Nostalgia can make people think things were better than they were. I think the charts are doing good and chart accounts on social media are always heavily active and interacted with. I’m sure lots of people didn’t care before too. This article just seemed like someone saying I once did now don’t so I reach this conclusion then looked for others who supported that conclusion yet 30 years ago I’m sure tons of people went through that same cycle too.

 

 

It's not about how things work, it's about being popular enough for being #1 on a certain week. It's always been the case - songs that feel #1 might not be. Like Wonderwall by Oasis or Angels by Robbie Williams. Surely there are people who THINK Wonderwall is a #1 hit. Or Mr. Brightside. It doesn't make the real charts any less valid.

 

Thanks for explaining something I didn’t need explaining to me and completely missing my point by also proving it.

Edited July 25, 2024Jul 25 by T Boy

Well, here’s the thing. If you asked 50 year olds in the 80’s and 90’s if they still followed the charts or knew what was number #1 I’m almost certain most wouldn’t. From my own personal family experience I know for a fact they didn’t yet they were big into music and knew the charts well ‘in their day’ so a lot of it is just that. The natural cycle. Most people(not everyone) get to a certain age where they are very uninterested in new music. You listen to your era or what you liked and recycle that. That’s really what the article appears to represent. Top of the pops I don’t even remember that being relevant growing up if it even existed so how long ago was that even a thing. This guy seemed to be thinking Ed Sheeran is dominating. That’s why it just appears like the “in my day” type of commentary. What if it wasn’t better in that day, what if there was far less choice and music moguls controlled almost everything. What if there was far more manipulation and radio had too much control. What if songs and artists seemed bigger purely because it’s all you heard and had no other avenue to hear anything else. The reality is that streaming has left a lot of people behind but you simply have to get with it because it’s the best invention for music ever. 1 billion songs right there anytime you want from any era and any artist. Then it’s a true reflection of what people are listening to rather than what is manufactured to them. Not to be off-topic but I’ve seen people get nostalgic about being beaten up by their parents as kids and it’s terrible you can’t do that these days. Nostalgia is a confusing psychological thing. Nostalgia can make people think things were better than they were. I think the charts are doing good and chart accounts on social media are always heavily active and interacted with. I’m sure lots of people didn’t care before too. This article just seemed like someone saying I once did now don’t so I reach this conclusion then looked for others who supported that conclusion yet 30 years ago I’m sure tons of people went through that same cycle too.

 

Of course people fall out of love with chart music as they get older but none of this is about that. The charts are not just uninteresting for 35 year old me, but they’re uninteresting to young people outside of this forum too. Most kids I teach at school couldn’t tell you who was no.1, some aren’t even aware the chart is a thing. They’re all still very into their music-some listen to chart music a lot and some actually prefer to listen to older stuff.

 

This isn’t about music and nostalgia for music. It’s about the fact that the chart is just pretty irrelevant now. The chart show itself is pretty much the only time it gets mentioned these days. The interest in the concept of the chart is waning despite the fact that interest in music is a strong as ever. It’s insulting to say it’s just a load of old people nostalgic for the olden days-it’s actually really dismissive but that’s hardly anything new for the Chart forum or Buzzjack as a whole these days.

 

The fact is that the chart is less relevant to people and their lives than it ever has been. And it will continue to go that way. People don’t need it for music enjoyment anymore and that’s not necessarily a good or a bad thing. But my point is that whilst people will be nostalgic for the charts of old, they probably won’t be for the charts of recent years because they’ve had no impact on their lives. There’ll be nostalgia for the music, but not the charts.

 

Are there actually any verified listening numbers over time? Like how many more millions of people were listening to the charts in the 80s/90s compared to today?

It's interesting when we have specific perspectives repeated to us. I feel you can get a bit of selective hearing that makes them sound more profound. Like I don't doubt that there are many people with experiences of discussing the latest charts with their schoolyard chums but it's always just a totally foreign concept to me. In real life I never encountered any such enthusiasts, even from people who lived & breathed top 40 as a genre. I found many more when I went online in my adult years which just makes that the point in time that feels like the most 'significant' time in charts, but deep down I know it's totally arbitrary. There probably are way more people invested in charts nowadays anyway, just that they don't fit that neutral observer archetype like they once did. I feel like that's a slowly dying breed in online subcultures and it's not necessarily a bad thing, it just means vagabonds have found their calling and are sticking with it. Or everyone's too busy binging TV shows online to give their 2 cents on everything else, something like that.

 

Something I find though is that there's a wholesomeness into continuing to ascribe passion to something that in the grand scheme of things...isn't important. Like, even if there is less interest in music charts overall, that's totally fine, and you're totally valid for finding interest in it. When something has morphed over time, it can lose popularity but that doesn't necessarily mean there's something fundamentally wrong and we're all inevitably abandoning ship. It can mean that it serves a more niche audience, who might be more interested than ever.

 

When I was younger, I was effectively bamboozled into finding significance in a weekly (non-official) music chart. I say bamboozled because I read into it far more significance than it ever warranted. Bands and artists that very few people ever heard of, and far fewer still remember felt like titans to me. In a time when I was desperately lonely, directionless and otherwise high on anxiety, a music chart gave me something to look forward to, something to speculate on, something to think about when I was waiting 40 minutes every morning at school to enter the classroom because my mum dropped me off super early. All this while being something I spoke to practically no one about. You do not need the often astroturfed artificial feeling of significance to feel it for yourself. I say more power to the people who do feel the weight of the world with all chart happenings, even if it is just a 5% increase in week on week streams for a song that's charting at #865. It's really neat.

The main off-putting thing about the charts now for me is how complicated it is to work out how streams convert into "chart sales" and the whole business about ACR, SCR, VCR etc......

 

 

It's too much of a headache personally. To me something that is fun or enjoyable shouldn't be complicated, that's the main reason why I stopped following the UK charts closely years ago. It used to also be fun when big songs would get released on the same day/week and go head-to-head to see who could go for #1 or chart higher than the other, that became less of a common occurrence in later years.

 

 

Such an interesting exchange of views about the charts - mostly let's face it the singles rather than albums - which for all its perceived faults I'm grateful to this article for kick-starting.

 

Yes, we've all read similar-sounding pieces of throwaway media before, and we've all entered into debates that inevitably ensue among music lovers as to how worthwhile, relevant, necessary or accurate the charts are, to both the modern consumer or industry insider, especially given the amount of massaging the official Top 100s have nowadays. But broadly, I think this one does capture the dilemma about charts quite effectively, both for those of us 'in the know' and the vast majority of its readers who are not, and the content that wrongly or rightly occupies them (which is always such a subjective matter and one which is seldom borne out by sales/streams tallies or weekly chart performance). One should dismiss all the indulgent journalese nonsense, but not necessarily the underlying supportable points that it actually seeks to underscore. For example, the over-exaggeration of what are perfectly valid points about occasional chart domination due to en-masse and often 'passive' streaming and the dwindling of traditional sales, as we've seen with Ed Sheeran on several occasions (in 2024 his chart white-outs might seem less prevalent, but after all, the man's the reason why we have the tiresome but arguably relevant rules now in play that manipulate chart rankings into something the industry would rather see, as opposed to the real but more stagnant reality), and the pseudo-vox-pop pap of citing two randoms from N Ireland's current take on music that do in fact lay out two worthwhile perspectives on the issue, if looked at in more generalised terms.

 

I'm no 'Guardian' reader, but this is by far not their worst bit of copy on the topic we all share some interest in, however much we've fallen in or out of love with it and the music/artistry it represents; to my mind at least its positives outweigh its negatives. It is not the laziest (it at least cites the key distinctions that did affect its fortunes, such as the bungled iterative integration of download sales alongside those of physical singles, and later the hurried and fundamentally arbitrary combining of two entirely different modes of track consumption - sales and streams - both concisely and accurately) and does set out for the layman the general difference between what is classifiable as 'chart' music in the 2020s and what preceded it, hitting upon some very salient developments along that journey. Its text certainly doesn't anger me or make me feel as if it's not a wide-scale likely representation of how charts - and therefore what passes for 'popular' music - are perceived by different demographic cohorts now, as opposed to the simpler situations that perhaps prevailed in decades past when the concept of 'pop' - and of 'charts' - were newer, and still that bit more vital, individual, straightforward, and so relevant (though critically not necessarily more accurate as a barometer of what product was actually being most monetised).

 

If I had the perfect balanced and sensible 'answer' to how to resolve the chart's inherent clash between wanting to mirror reality in market terms and needing to present a more 'rationalised' rundown which airbrushes out or paints-down the less-desirable by-products that integrating one form of consumption alongside another has caused, I'd be touting it far and wide and probably asking the OCC for a job! However, like most of us, I don't have that ideal solution; what's done is done, and in many ways I think things have gone too far now to rectify, almost irrespective of who really knows or cares about the faults. The charts will endure for many years to come, but I fear the wider public's indifference to them will only deepen too. And that's before we even start to debate the relative perceived merits of current acts and tracks, inevitably versus those of the past.

 

What I find interesting - even amusing - is how individuals' own recollection of the music of their youth (good or bad by objective metrics) and the way the charts reflected this (right or wrong depending on validity of compilation methodology etc) seeps through into their comments on the way these things operate today. That's not to say any of those views herein expressed are 'incorrect' or even 'irrelevant'; far from it. Yet, while we all can see music and its measurements slightly differently, in general, it has to be said that many people tend towards seeing what prevailed in their childhood or adolescence as being somehow preferable to what rules now. Maybe that is often very arguable, but in a world where a lot rests on opinion rather than scientific fact, it doesn't insulate their viewpoints and ways in which they express these from easy pot-shots by those who disagree or don't recognise them who allege that they're merely donning the rose-tinted spectacles when it comes to this subject, and sadly that can in some eyes reduce credibility or validity of those narratives. That doesn't render them 'wrong'. But the fact is, however people of many different age groups might now reject or criticise the current charts, or the material that makes up their rather arbitrary positions, the truth is, they still care, even if it is because they believe fings ain't wot vey used t'be! They - we - hold a view that somehow what is current is lesser, and what was past (at least in selective parts) is greater. Thing is, if one could speak to any chart or music fan from the last six decades, they'd probably all proclaim likewise, to greater or lesser degrees.

 

Someone might wish to make a note to bump this thread again in another ten, 20, 30 years, as its contents will almost certainly be just as relevant!

It's really not just a nostalgia thing - Years ago people would comment on the UK chart vs the US chart and hold the view that we never wanted airplay to be included in the way our chart was calculated because it would make it so stagnant like the US one became... and that's exactly what we've got as a result of the change in the way music is consumed, it's akin to an airplay element... and I don't think it's wrong that the chart is what it is these days, it's a fair reflection of the way people are interacting with music in the absence of people paying for it any longer after all, but the official weekly chart is unquestionably more boring now because there is so little actually happening within it.

 

Yep I've gotten older and that probably influences whether I like as much of the music in the chart as much (although I far from dislike it all and I'm very aware that there has always been bad music in the charts as well as tracks I like) - but the nostalgia arguments I'm my opinion are limited to what people think about the standard of music, which is a completely separate point to whether the chart itself is actually interesting.

As a counter to the chart no longer being interesting to follow point, yes the turnover of music is much less. However this week we have songs climbing to numbers 2, 3 and 5 on their 10th, 16th and 11th week in the chart respectively. OK having 10+ new entries each week was arguably more exciting but the fact that a song now has opportunities to gain popularity over time and can get a 2nd or 3rd wind (won’t just be removed from the shelves as soon as it’s dropping) is interesting for me.

I can see that - but I do think that is the sort of thing that is probably only truly interesting to proper chart geeks (meant as a term of love, not insult!) as it's more about chart runs and stats than whether the content of the chart is likely to be as interesting to a wider demographic.

 

 

As Toby said before me, to compound the lack of new content and energy, there are other reasons why the chart isn't as relevant - big music chart shows such as Top of the Pops don't exist these days, plus the sheer amount of alternate choice of what people have access to for entertainment has naturally diluted most markets.

As a counter to the chart no longer being interesting to follow point, yes the turnover of music is much less. However this week we have songs climbing to numbers 2, 3 and 5 on their 10th, 16th and 11th week in the chart respectively. OK having 10+ new entries each week was arguably more exciting but the fact that a song now has opportunities to gain popularity over time and can get a 2nd or 3rd wind (won’t just be removed from the shelves as soon as it’s dropping) is interesting for me.

 

It may be interesting to you, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but the point the article is making is that this kind of chart isn’t interesting for those who may once have had a casual interest in it. Most people won’t be aware that the current no.3 is peaking on its 16th week in the chart because a lot of them were probably over that song at least six weeks ago and it’s now just background music on a popular playlist to them.

 

You can paint the chart as interesting but you can’t paint the people as interested.

I stopped listening to the charts about ten years ago. I remember in the 80s and 90s, the charts used to be exciting seeing who was number one every week and where your favourite track ranked. Nowadays, things are a lot more predictable and the charts just appear boring and stale due to lack of movement and tracks hanging around for weeks on end. Overall, the quality of music just isn’t as good or appealing as it used to be.