The UK charts (and other charts around the world) have been incredibly stale this year. These days, it is incredibly hard for old songs to leave the charts, and for new ones to achieve a decent peak. The Billboard Charts has changed its recurrent rules. Songs will no longer be spending as many weeks in the chart due to these rules.

Should the OCC introduce recurrent rules?

I'm a firm no on this - ACR already serves this purpose and I think it largely does it well (and we've endlessly discussed how it could be tweaked). The charts are obviously somewhat artificial as a result of this but I think they'd be even more artificial if you were to outright exclude hits for being too big for too long.

Things have been a bit staler this year, but 2024 felt like one of the most exciting years for chart music in the streaming era! (so much so that we're still seeing 2024 hits lingering lol)

No - not because I'm against meddling with the charts, but because it wouldn't go far enough and would be a blunt instrument. I'd rather they used the streaming data in a far more intelligent way. e.g. rather than having songs suddenly disappear from the chart, I'd apply an ever-increasing version of ACR so that they faded away gradually. I don't need to understand the methodology. Just want a chart that works more like it used to.

I've said it before, I'll say it again, they should consider double ACR!

Double acr, after 5 weeks decline once hits acr, the double double acr if still lingers 🤭

They should put @777666jason in charge and hand out free cakes on weeks when Drake or Central Cee steal a Top 40 position to make up for It. 🧁

7 minutes ago, awardinary said:

They should put @777666jason in charge and hand out free cakes on weeks when Drake or Central Cee steal a Top 40 position to make up for It. 🧁

As long as I dont have to bake, youd end up with Free food poisoning 😅😅

Should put old songs like fleetwoid Mac mr brightside in own classic chart clog up chart not make room new music. Album chart worst

For the first time ever I think I'm leaning towards 'yes' on this question - watching from a distance there are so many songs that would probably be classed as 'big' to a general audience but end up stalling in the 40s and 50s, when pulling out the songs which have been in the chart for 30+ weeks and are just hovering would at least get some of them up into the Top 40.

Of course a way of counting which actually makes the chart naturally faster would be preferable, but given it's been suggested numerous times and not happened makes me think they've probably tested it and it just didn't work.

10 minutes ago, Dj Cheeky magpie said:

Should put old songs like fleetwoid Mac mr brightside in own classic chart clog up chart not make room new music. Album chart worst

What would be the 'classic chart' cut off? 5 years?

The worry would be that it would just be the same songs all the time though right? Like the Rock and Metal Chart is mostly the same 20+ years old songs at this point

1 hour ago, DanielCarey said:

The UK charts (and other charts around the world) have been incredibly stale this year. These days, it is incredibly hard for old songs to leave the charts, and for new ones to achieve a decent peak. The Billboard Charts has changed its recurrent rules. Songs will no longer be spending as many weeks in the chart due to these rules.

Should the OCC introduce recurrent rules?

I think they should and introduce a catalogue chart. As well as this, scrap ACR.

I think transparency is really important - and already can be a little lacking from the OCC in some areas. Therefore I’ve always been against having multiple levels of ACR: at least with one level everyone who really wants to understand what’s going on can. Maybe 2 levels would be just about OK before the whole thing became too hard to track. But what purpose would double ACR really serve? It might turn a #50 hit into a #45 hit here and there but wouldn’t affect much above that.

I suppose another question is how much of a leg up does a fresh song deserve if it’s struggling to even make the Spotify Top 200 say? Even now a song on SCR at #40 might be around #100 in the level playing field chart. A song at #100 on SCR would be waaaay down on a level playing field, maybe even #4-500. The existing system does actually do a lot more for that type of song than many realise.

I just want them to tell us how free streams/paid streams are calculated together and tell us how many free and paid streams a No.1 song got. I very much miss the times when you would know that 3.4 million streams for e.g. would equal 34.000/22,000 sales

Honestly if there's something that could potentially be done, it's tweaking the ACR system in the other way. Perhaps make it a little easier to attain (I'm not fussed though), but I think it comes into play far too soon. 20 weeks or even more before it comes into play, because something that's only been charting for 2 months still feels pretty fresh to me ("Man I Need" and "12 to 12" do not feel like the ancient hits that they're going to be consigned to living alongside soon). Sometimes it balances out with songs that seem to skirt the rules, but often the difference between an instant ACR hit and a hanger-on feels pretty superficial. You're screwing over some hits either way, may as well put more consistency to it.

13 hours ago, gasman449 said:

I've said it before, I'll say it again, they should consider double ACR!

At least for Christmas songs.

2 minutes ago, Last Dreamer said:

At least for Christmas songs.

More ridiculous manipulation imo, distorting the chart completely, rendering its measurement of popularity meaningless. Might as well move christmas classics altogether and have a catalogue christmas chart.

I'm a firm no on this, and I would also go the other direction and completely remove ACR (and the 3 song rule). Personally I value the charts being accurate far more than I value them being exciting. I don't think anyone is owed any chart position, if a track gets a low chart position because a bunch of older songs are still above it then the song simply wasn't popular enough to warrant a higher chart position in my view.

In Australia, songs up to 2 years since its release are eligible for main charts otherwise it counts as legends charts

I'm sure you'll all point out the flaws but I'd like to see a more 'sales' driven model that would closer match those before streaming took hold

Back in 80s, 90s, 00s etc a person would buy the cd single, maybe both versions, perhaps a vinyl or cassette version too. After that, for most people, they were essentially done purchasing it, so there'd effectively be a cap of 1-5 sales of a song per person.

Therefore,

X number of plays by a user = 1 sale. Be that 20, 30, whatever arbitrary number the OCC feels is relevant. After that the plays of that song, on that account do not count to the main chart. This would mean only new listeners would contribute to 'sales' and you'd see songs grow and decline in popularity in a more natural way, in a faster moving chart. Songs would also have to be genuinely popular to gain something like Platinum status rather than just be around long enough to gather the plays over time.

I'm sure the obvious issue is multiple accounts being used to manipulate figures but realistically how likely is that? The public as a whole wouldn't bother, most musicians won't have the time and the impact would be negligible so the biggest question would be around record label activity on the matter.

I don't think the idea is quite the answer right now and I'm sure they've looked at it and found other reasons not to adopt it but it still feels preferable in my view.

Also, ban plays from an album as contributing to greatest hits collections too. They only contribute to the album listened to. And separate compilations from the album chart into their own chart.

Edited Tuesday at 10:444 days by Severin

repeating myself endlessly, apologies again: album tracks are not singles, they are streaming album sales and should be removed from single track sales based on the lowest track "sale", streaming company passive playlists are no different from radio and should be excluded (and streaming reduced to personal playlists or choices/requests), as should Alexa deciding what tracks you need to listen to if you dont specify a track. I dont worry too much about ACR not even existing as a thing as long as every track in the chart is a conscious choice made by individuals as individual tracks eg not whole or part album streams which belong in album sales, not chart show streams etc. This would fix so many ridiculous issues with all charts.

Historically, charts show what people choose to buy not what others decide you need to hear, singles are singles, albums are albums. The only part of the chart that doesnt need adjusting are those sales still being paid for.