2 minutes ago, zenon said:

LH?

Brexit got them to change to Last Holiday </3 Not allowed to celebrate Christ*as here anymore!!!

Thanks for your trees Tesco. THANKS A LOT!!!!!

4 minutes ago, GreyAsh said:

If it was done as a request, wouldn’t it need to be done before the start of the chart week, rather than an increase related reset?

Anyway, the OCC have already indicated that they want Kylie to be Number 1 apparently, so they’d refuse, and on good grounds.

Christmas songs are exempt regardless sabrinas Nonsense christmas got booted to acr midweek last week once it hit 3 years

Yeah not even Band Aid got a reset when they released the 40th anniversary version so they definitely wouldn't reset Wham

Mariah’s label asked for a reset in 2019 and were denied, I know a lot has changed since then but it does seem to be the one rule the OCC consistently uphold.

Maybe with the exception of Band Aid? Can’t remember if they got a reset last year.

EDIT: ignore second paragraph, already answered by Gasman above

Edited December 17Dec 17 by Maestro

I think I got this list right, but Kylie's "XMAS" will be only the second yearly "focus track" Amazon Original to go #1, and of course the first to go #1 on the Christmas chart:

• 2018 - Katy Perry - Cozy Little Christmas - #56 (hit #23 the following week, peaked at #22 the following year)

• 2019 - Ellie Goulding - River - #11 (hit #1 the following week)

• 2020 - Jess Glynne - This Christmas - #4 (peaked at #3 the following week)

• 2021 - George Ezra - Come On Home for Christmas - #10 (peaked at #8 the following week)

• 2022 - Lizzo - Someday at Christmas - #15 (peaked at #8 the following week)

• 2023 - Sam Ryder - You're Christmas to Me - #2 (repeaked at #2 the following week)

• 2024 - Tom Grennan - It Can't Be Christmas - #4 (peaked at #3 the following week)

39 minutes ago, 777666jason said:

Actually shocked the palestine somg is holding so well maybe it can finish top 10 afterall , that would be a fantastic achievement for it

22k is prob nearly guaranteed to be top 10 which is great, still need to download my copy too 😬!

33 minutes ago, blackmascara said:

Yeah it’s rising globally! Seems like it might genuinely become a hit after all which I’m thrilled about personally

It already has been a hit has it not?

1 minute ago, Steve201 said:

It already has been a hit has it not?

Well for Dave standards it has been underperforming but I was more talking global wise when I was talking about the “hit” part. It’s definitely not done too bad here, but judging by this it’ll be a lot bigger in 2026.

One other point that is important regarding XMAS is she’s sold many thousands of physicals, CD is £5, 7inch £13 and Zoetrope £20. That’s a large revenue topping £50k plus several thousand downloads (admittedly low revenue but it’s a tough market to sell in when most stream).

It’s not just doing well on Amazon streams from prominent play listing and the Alexa spam.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves we still need to hold on until Friday and keep supporting. But it’s looking good.

To think last week many of us were very much doubting a top 3 let alone Christmas Number 1 just shows never to rule out Kylie 😃

2 minutes ago, aeroco said:

One other point that is important regarding XMAS is she’s sold many thousands of physicals, CD is £5, 7inch £13 and Zoetrope £20. That’s a large revenue topping £50k plus several thousand downloads (admittedly low revenue but it’s a tough market to sell in when most stream).

It’s not just doing well on Amazon streams from prominent play listing and the Alexa spam.

Not to take away from her success but if wham released as many physicals versions or other artists did they would make lots of revenue too, id say that point is a bit mute 😅

1 minute ago, gooddelta said:

Back in 2019/20 when Ellie got the No.1 after Christmas I was dead against the Alexa trickery - and I even was one of the probably very few people to pay to download River on Amazon myself when it came out as I like it, but let’s be honest barely anyone else did and it felt unfair.

I don’t care as much anymore for three reasons:

[snip]

3) Spotify are almost as bad as Amazon forcing Kylie onto people with their playlist position choices dominating the charts in almost the order they set. Are we really supposed to believe that Wizzard is suddenly only the 22nd most popular Christmas song in this country behind a load of crooners that never charted here before? I dare them to switch Bobby Helms’ position with Wizzard (which is down in the 60s!) on the Christmas Hits playlist next year and see what happens

While I agree with your other points, and the impact that Spotify's playlist ordering has on the chart, there is a difference in how Amazon works and the inauthentic effect it has on pushing their exclusives up the chart.

If you put a Spotify playlist on repeat shuffle, it will play all the tracks once only, before playing any of them again.

Whereas if you ask Alexa to play Christmas music, they can get repeat played multiple times within the space of a couple of hours or less, for example (slightly exaggerated for illustration purposes, but you get the idea):

Wham! - Kylie - Mariah - Brenda - Kelly - Ariana - Kylie again - Elton - Gwen - Shaky - Bobby H - Kylie again...

and this has been observed with the exclusives of the time and mentioned on here every year from 2019 onwards. I think they've been very clever in ramping this up when it gets close to Christmas and people are just happy to have Christmas music on in the background. At least on Spotify people would have to make a conscious choice to give the same song so many streams in a short space of time. This, combined with the fact the their exclusives are always on SCR and therefore their streams count double the usual classics (as I mentioned earlier in the thread, none of their previous exclusives would have even gone Top 10 if ACR didn't exist) effectively means the chart is at the mercy of Amazon's algorithm.

The difference this year as far as the Christmas #1 is concerned is the level of fanbase support towards Kylie which wasn't there for previous exclusives, which has made the difference between Christmas #1 and just being somewhere in the Top 5 or lower (Ellie was actually #11 on Christmas week itself in 2019 - it was the tracking weeks after that included Christmas Day in which she rose to #1). This level of support is admirable to see and in many ways good for the chart, but at the end of this week Kylie's pure sales will be dwarfed by the sales units from Amazon's streams, as produced by their tactics mentioned above.

In the short term, it makes for a great story and publicity for the OCC that it's not Wham! for a third time. In the longer term, it feels like they're papering over the cracks and having Wham! vs. Amazon as the only possible battle every year isn't any more satisfying. But who knows, the optimistic in me can hope that any good publicity towards the Christmas #1 race might encourage other artists with new songs to have a go without the help of Amazon in future years.

3 minutes ago, jimwatts said:

While I agree with your other points, and the impact that Spotify's playlist ordering has on the chart, there is a difference in how Amazon works and the inauthentic effect it has on pushing their exclusives up the chart.

If you put a Spotify playlist on repeat shuffle, it will play all the tracks once only, before playing any of them again.

Whereas if you ask Alexa to play Christmas music, they can get repeat played multiple times within the space of a couple of hours or less, for example (slightly exaggerated for illustration purposes, but you get the idea):

Wham! - Kylie - Mariah - Brenda - Kelly - Ariana - Kylie again - Elton - Gwen - Shaky - Bobby H - Kylie again...

and this has been observed with the exclusives of the time and mentioned on here every year from 2019 onwards. I think they've been very clever in ramping this up when it gets close to Christmas and people are just happy to have Christmas music on in the background. At least on Spotify people would have to make a conscious choice to give the same song so many streams in a short space of time. This, combined with the fact the their exclusives are always on SCR and therefore their streams count double the usual classics (as I mentioned earlier in the thread, none of their previous exclusives would have even gone Top 10 if ACR didn't exist) effectively means the chart is at the mercy of Amazon's algorithm.

The difference this year as far as the Christmas #1 is concerned is the level of fanbase support towards Kylie which wasn't there for previous exclusives, which has made the difference between Christmas #1 and just being somewhere in the Top 5 or lower (Ellie was actually #11 on Christmas week itself in 2019 - it was the tracking weeks after that included Christmas Day in which she rose to #1). This level of support is admirable to see and in many ways good for the chart, but at the end of this week Kylie's pure sales will be dwarfed by the sales units from Amazon's streams, as produced by their tactics mentioned above.

In the short term, it makes for a great story and publicity for the OCC that it's not Wham! for a third time. In the longer term, it feels like they're papering over the cracks and having Wham! vs. Amazon as the only possible battle every year isn't any more satisfying. But who knows, the optimistic in me can hope that any good publicity towards the Christmas #1 race might encourage other artists with new songs to have a go without the help of Amazon in future years.

That's why I said 'almost as bad' 😁

I know it's not actually as bad.

15 minutes ago, blackmascara said:

Well for Dave standards it has been underperforming but I was more talking global wise when I was talking about the “hit” part. It’s definitely not done too bad here, but judging by this it’ll be a lot bigger in 2026.

I wasn’t thinking globally I guess but it was top 10 for a number of weeks and will Likely return there in January.

6 minutes ago, 777666jason said:

Not to take away from her success but if wham released as many physicals versions or other artists did they would make lots of revenue too, id say that point is a bit mute 😅

They have they released a picture disc, snowflake white vinyl, Black Standard vinyl and CD single (Released on the 5th December this year) No one really bothered buying because they sold 6k physicals last year for the 40th Anniversary so they were just repressed for this year. Kylie will more than likely sell more, Andrew also did a signing event in London for fans (Either these were excluded or hardly anyone turned up).

Amazon exclusives are not guaranteed a number one (Ellie was the last) so to be honest I don't really have an issue with them anymore because the song's get playlisted on mainstream radio, they end up being downloaded multiple times (Sam Ryder 9,000) so it's not like all the sales come from Alexa. Especially with Kylie, Well over 6K physical copies and Thousands of downloads means it's actually selling records as opposed to all coming from Amazon.

I'm glad everyone's getting along today 🤣

Edited December 17Dec 17 by Mr. C. Joel

9 minutes ago, 777666jason said:

Not to take away from her success but if wham released as many physicals versions or other artists did they would make lots of revenue too, id say that point is a bit mute 😅

Not quite sure I agree, Kylie's fan base are notorious for lapping all this up in a way not many are. I mean, you only had to see the merch (tat) that was sold in her pop up shop for instance - she has the type of fan base who would probably even buy toilet paper with her name on it

Last original and new Xmas song to be Xmas #1?

Saviour’s Day in 1990?

Edited December 17Dec 17 by chartjack2

Just now, Jessie Where said:

Not quite sure I agree, Kylie's fan base are notorious for lapping all this up in a way not many are. I mean, you only had to see the merch (tat) that was sold in her pop up shop for instance - she has the type of fan base who would probably even buy toilet paper with her name on it

That is very True tbf 🤣🤣 i guess she not the only one though

Taylor needs to do it with Christmas tree farm though 🤣🤣

1 minute ago, chartjack2 said:

Last original and new Xmas song to be Xmas #1?

Saviour’s Day in 1990?

Depends if you count Stay Another Day or not!

6 minutes ago, Jessie Where said:

Not quite sure I agree, Kylie's fan base are notorious for lapping all this up in a way not many are. I mean, you only had to see the merch (tat) that was sold in her pop up shop for instance - she has the type of fan base who would probably even buy toilet paper with her name on it

sitting here rather embarrassed with my Kylie sellotape and Kylie coat hangers