Interesting article here

 

 

https://metro.co.uk/2024/11/30/uk-charts-br...yKNtys2DCXjKU4g

I read that article the other day. There's nothing new there to any of us Buzzjackers, we know all the reasons the chart is "broken" and we've discussed them on these forums at length... sadly what the article doesn't do is suggest any kind of solution.

We get these articles semi-regularly, always the same kind of thing, it's quite tedious to see them continue to pop up.

It's one of those biannual articles that you get from an various newspaper bemoaning about the charts, The Guardian one year, then the Metro, probably the Daily Fail or The S*n in a few months time.

It is tedious for us chart enthusiasts but I'm sure the average Joe Public casual music fan would find it an interesting read.

I think it should be talked about more, the charts are representative of what is being listened to, but with Jack Saunders acting shocked when a song falls to ACR the public are clearly not well informed. If more publicity is given to it people will realise it is doing a decent job with an imperfect system.

 

It would be great for more songs to break through - so many which would have been big hits a few years ago, even by artists who are not that long in the tooth - but we are never going to be back in the 90s/2000s position where you had songs entering the top 10 and then a 4 week chart run and out. Still happens occasionally but very rare.

 

Things have changed but the same happened with downloads, it was a sea-change and took a while for people to catch on. Streaming is here to stay and it would be wrong for them to ignore it, and I think despite its faults they are doing a good job of representing what is being listened to.

Just lift time ban on me bright side

Great quote in this article.

 

"At present, the UK singles charts resemble an empty carousel, spinning in an abandoned theme park in the dead of night, only performing its rudimentary function because someone forgot to unplug it after everybody went home."

 

My English teacher would be pleased with that sentence.

Edited December 5, 2024Dec 5 by ben08

Great quote in this article.

 

"At present, the UK singles charts resemble an empty carousel, spinning in an abandoned theme park in the dead of night, only performing its rudimentary function because someone forgot to unplug it after everybody went home."

 

My English teacher would be pleased with that sentence.

 

Now this quote has me thinking, what are the ratings of Radio 1's chart show nowadays? Can't be that low

 

There should be double ACR

I do wonder if more people would follow the charts if they were done differently, which I doubt. Even if they did amend the chart to boost turnover, most people don't check the charts for new music and just put on popular playlists. The charts might look more exciting but that wouldn't change the fact most people don't care about finding new music and getting long term support for new artists. That needs to come from spotify, apple, amazon etc + labels investing more in new artists.

Alright I'll give it a go.

 

A few months later, Drake’s One Dance stayed at number one for 15 consecutive weeks. It was a big hit, but definitely not the fourth biggest of all time in the UK.

Is the problem that it's this particular song or that it's a modern song at all? If you're going to use immediate touchstones a la weeks at #1 as your basis for what's the biggest of all time, then it's inevitably going to be something that hasn't yet stood the test of time, and if you're not willing to give new music a fair chance, you're probably not going to be happy about it.

the introduction of mp3 downloads in 2005 quickly restored some balance...Then 2014 happened...the top 10 from each week of the last decade proves one thing: the UK charts are almost frozen still

The article is about the way the charts are compiled rather than the flow of popularity in general, but they don't mention ACR at all. Looking at polyhex, there's a dip from 2014-2016, but after ACR comes in, the flow of entries isn't much different to the download era. It's like they don't realise that the 'solution' they want is already there.

Replacing yourself at number one was once the mark of otherworldly legendary status.

An arbitrary achievement. If it was a practical goal to be chased in the '50s & '60s it would be, but the shelf life and release schedules of the past weren't designed to facilitate it. Really no point getting worked up that people are comparing Justin Bieber or Sabrina Carpenter to Elvis Presley. In the AFL, the all time leaders in disposals, tackles, inside 50s & hit outs are all current players, but the top 28 goal scorers are all retired. You can acknowledge a changing tide, where some old benchmarks are frivolous and others are unobtainable, without concluding that it must be worse than before.

More troubling for OCC is that Gen Z and Gen Alpha are barely paying attention – they love pop just as much as any generation before them, but they couldn’t care less about the competition of the charts.

A crazy assertion to me. I feel like I'm constantly seeing artists & projects trivialised through chart performance receipts, and the associated backlash to this perspective of judging music. Yes, younger generations don't listen to the radio as much, but chart discourse is very fervent.

It could, and should, be so much more than that.

Give me some ideas.

 

In all seriousness, this has always felt like a uniquely UK perspective driven by the sheer juxtaposition of the rapid moving '90s charts to now. Those '90s charts to me feel just as askew, with no sense of consistency, and a diminished value of high peaks given the sheer amount of songs that manage it. I don't think I've ever seen anyone ever say that 1999 is the absolute pits of the charts, but in Australia it still stands as the year (after 1948) with the least songs hitting #1: 9 (or 8 if you don't count the '98 incumbent). Even 2019 when "Old Town Road" and "Dance Monkey" held the top spot for 34 weeks between them, had more #1 hits. If you look at arbitrary metrics like this, you're gonna chuck up all kinds of things. The beauty of the charts is that these things just happen, largely through the activity of people who aren't actively thinking about the chart as they do it. If you want something to change, then normalise the idea that new music is great and worth exploring. And really explore it. This article's mere mentioning of the biggest names in current music is only reinforcing their exposure over the artists who aren't famous enough to warrant a mention. Also the top of the article's assertion that the 2020s are better than the 2010s because Taylor Swift has usurped DJ Khaled is an absurd equivalence.

Now this quote has me thinking, what are the ratings of Radio 1's chart show nowadays? Can't be that low

 

About 1.3 million I believe

These articles are a bit tedious but ultimately the charts just reflect consumerism so streaming is broken not the charts. It’s not like billboard is any different. How do you fix peoples lazy streaming habits? How do you expose people to new music without the old school promo? That’s what people have to figure out

Edited December 5, 2024Dec 5 by Liam sota

there are no UK charts without Westlife Robbie Williams etc

there are no UK charts without Westlife Robbie Williams etc

Yep, there's nothing like an objective opinion

These articles are a bit tedious but ultimately the charts just reflect consumerism so streaming is broken not the charts. It’s not like billboard is any different. How do you fix peoples lazy streaming habits? How do you expose people to new music without the old school promo? That’s what people have to figure out

Yeah streaming habits are lazy but if you think about it, people passively streaming a playlist is the modern equivalent of people passively listening to songs on the radio, so it's not that different really. My issue is the way streaming is used to feed the chart, but I just don't think there's any easy solutions to fix that. Maybe we just have to accept that today's charts represent something different to what the charts used to represent and we stop comparing apples with oranges.

exactly in the past the chart reflected what you bought

you bought a single, counts once for the charts even if you keep listen for 6 months

now they represent what you listen to

so you don't even buy it but it keeps counting for the 6 months or whatever time you listen to it

Earlier charts represented sales (a person needed to invest in the product). Now they mostly represents consumption and USE of the product. It is a bit different and mostly affects the longevity of songs and albums on chart, but I don't think the songs and albums on charts would be much different. If the sales were the primary way of counting AND people actually bought music in general, Sabrina Carpenter would still have had her #1s this year as charts have always been an indication of popularity.

I have always thought for a while that the 1st thing that should be done is to remove playlist plays from streaming numbers (or at least put them on a low count).