Yeah shakira was 6-7k behind on Monday only chopping to 5k today I dont think she will do it this week be interesting to see how she performs now we are getting further away from the tournament

Im guessing the rolling stones sales in the album is a typo as olivia Dean has more sales at 5 @JosephStyles ? Unlucky she dropped out of the top 5 last week

3 minutes ago, 777666jason said:

Im guessing the rolling stones sales in the album is a typo as olivia Dean has more sales at 5 @JosephStyles ? Unlucky she dropped out of the top 5 last week

Fixed!

Shakira getting another top 2 hit for herself in 2026 is great to see. please stay top 40 Mr Brightside.

But isnt it a joint credit with Burna Boy 🤔 then it wouldnt be for herself

3 hours ago, Jessie Where said:

Oooh, Shakira pretty much locked for #2 after all!

I kind of assumed it'd just fall away quickly from last week's #5, pleased for her.

Set to be her first top 2 hit since Beautiful Liar in 2007

Yessss dai dai ikou dale allez legoo

Also it's 24 years this week since Shakira released 'Underneath Your Clothes' (❤️), and now she's back in the top 3 again!

Hoping that Audrey Hobert and Pupsies could sneak into top 40. Maybe Cameron Whitcomb in a few weeks. if ACR was working properly then they would have chances of doing so.

It would be nice to see Confessions II go silver this week.

23 hours ago, rio309 said:

That earlier post saying as of now, in late July, just 20 songs released this year have made the Top 10...

As someone who got into the charts in the late 90s, I find that staggering. You'd have hit 20 by early/mid February back then.

I understand the argument that the charts are meant to reflect what's popular. But if everyone in Britain wanted to listen to Wonderwall in 1999, they'd play their Wonderwall single or What's The Story CD (that they bought in 1995) a few times. And those plays wouldn't count for any chart.

Now they do count. And it's killing the top 40 stone dead. I think they have to change the rules somehow to narrow the time window of what music qualifies for the chart (just like physical availability did for decades pre streaming). Otherwise a few years from now it's hard to see where any new chart songs or artists are going to come from.

I completely agree with this. 'Mr Brightside' and 'Wonderwall' have been popular for years, we don't need to keep seeing that.

We probably want to see the spike in people discovering it. The charts reflecting what is popular isn't particularly thrilling to witness. The charts need to have movement (and songs to root for) in order to appeal to chart fans - which are, ultimately, its audience... If we're not catered for, what is the point of the charts, because they're surely not catering for anyone else.

The only real way to do that is for the charts to reflect what people are discovering, rather than what people are repeatedly listening to. I had a good idea of how that could be done (low lifetime stream caps, to vaguely mimic a single lifetime sale per person), but I'm not sure if it would actually work in practice (and noone has the data to back it up, so we'll probably never know).

We can compare to last year and say that this is much worse than last year, and that it has nothing to do with streaming, and that's it's just now and will improve, which it probably will a little... But a grand total of 32 new Top 10 hits in nearly 7 months is hardly a thrilling spectacle in itself - since streaming has reflected continual consumption/passive listening, it's definitely slowed to a pretty glacial place (and made it just that little bit more difficult for people who use the charts to find new music to actually find any).

Anyway, rambling over 🤣

1 hour ago, Borza said:

Hoping that Audrey Hobert and Pupsies could sneak into top 40. Maybe Cameron Whitcomb in a few weeks. if ACR was working properly then they would have chances of doing so.

i would hope not :/

3 hours ago, Jessie Where said:

Also it's 24 years this week since Shakira released 'Underneath Your Clothes' (❤️), and now she's back in the top 3 again!

The 'Eternal Flame' copy I prefer to the overplayed original!

13 hours ago, Jessie Where said:

Also it's 24 years this week since Shakira released 'Underneath Your Clothes' (❤️), and now she's back in the top 3 again!

That song

That era

That opening 3 track run to the album

13 hours ago, Juranamo said:

The charts need to have movement (and songs to root for) in order to appeal to chart fans - which are, ultimately, its audience... If we're not catered for, what is the point of the charts, because they're surely not catering for anyone else.

Isn't the primary audience for music charts usually people within the music industry? Like record labels, talent scouts, radio stations, festival planners, club DJs, music journalists, etc.

Like it's useful for someone who's responsible for music at a festival, radio station or nightclub to know that Mr. Brightside and Wonderwall are amongst the most popular songs of the decade, or that Murder of the Dancefloor or Michael Jackson's discography had a resurgence. Or for a record company to realise they could potentially make a lot of money from promoting their back catalogue.

UK is really the exception to the rule because the charts (used to) get a lot of press coverage and the OCC seem to have a partnership with the BBC so we had Top of The Pops, a weekly official chart show on a national radio station, etc, but I think primarily they're made for people within the industry, and without the special quirks of this country the official charts would still exist and would be for that purpose. Plus the OCC have already made accomodations to make the charts slightly more palatable for chart hobbyists, like ACR and the 3 song rule, which they don't seem to have in most other countries where there's less interest from the public.

I understood the charts to previously be a marketing tool to promote a song and (by the then limited life of a physical single), its corresponding album. Historically, once a song hit the lower end of the charts, it got exposure from being played on Top 40 chart shows on radio , TOTP on TV and various other music outlets and progressively grew as a hit if it had appeal by being introduced to mass audiences simply because it was on the charts so the charts were for the general public. I'd have thought the music industry had already done most of it work (A&R, production, releasing, distribution, promotion etc before a song ever entered the charts.

I'm not a fan of the main chart being a track of what golden oldies consumers passively listen to either but as music consumption has changed irrevocably, I'm not sure what can be done to make charts relevant and more dynamic again in the modern sense.

 

18 hours ago, 777666jason said:

But isnt it a joint credit with Burna Boy 🤔 then it wouldnt be for herself

Ah...it can still mean it's a Shakira hit for her own discography in that context...

2 hours ago, Eric_Blob said:

Isn't the primary audience for music charts usually people within the music industry? Like record labels, talent scouts, radio stations, festival planners, club DJs, music journalists, etc.

Like it's useful for someone who's responsible for music at a festival, radio station or nightclub to know that Mr. Brightside and Wonderwall are amongst the most popular songs of the decade, or that Murder of the Dancefloor or Michael Jackson's discography had a resurgence. Or for a record company to realise they could potentially make a lot of money from promoting their back catalogue.

UK is really the exception to the rule because the charts (used to) get a lot of press coverage and the OCC seem to have a partnership with the BBC so we had Top of The Pops, a weekly official chart show on a national radio station, etc, but I think primarily they're made for people within the industry, and without the special quirks of this country the official charts would still exist and would be for that purpose. Plus the OCC have already made accomodations to make the charts slightly more palatable for chart hobbyists, like ACR and the 3 song rule, which they don't seem to have in most other countries where there's less interest from the public.

Surely the streaming charts cover the purposes of what people are continually listening to though? We don't really need to be seeing in the singles chart... The one that's supposed to be showcasing the best current music, and that is actually useful in terms of showing what new music people are listening to.

I disagree with the notion that that primary audience of the singles chart isn't the chart fan. The industry get their data from charts (that are also published) relevant to what they're listening to, the chart show/official singles chart doesn't really need to be showcasing what everyone has been repeatedly listening to for the last 10 years!

Half the chart being in the chart for nearly a year or more is hardly worth reporting on, the new songs breaking through is usually a much more interesting topic!

5 minutes ago, Ongarboy said:

I understood the charts to previously be a marketing tool to promote a song and (by the then limited life of a physical single), its corresponding album. Historically, once a song hit the lower end of the charts, it got exposure from being played on Top 40 chart shows on radio , TOTP on TV and various other music outlets and progressively grew as a hit if it had appeal by being introduced to mass audiences simply because it was on the charts so the charts were for the general public. I'd have thought the music industry had already done most of it work (A&R, production, releasing, distribution, promotion etc before a song ever entered the charts.

I'm not a fan of the main chart being a track of what golden oldies consumers passively listen to either but as music consumption has changed irrevocably, I'm not sure what can be done to make charts relevant and more dynamic again in the modern sense.

Basically this, you can't use the chart as a marketing/promotion tool if barely anything is able to break past Mr Brightside 1000th stream from the guy playing it at yet another party or Wonderwall's 1000th steam from your uncle.

It's great that continual consumption can now be tracked in ways like it has never been before, but it's likely telling the same story as we would have had before anyway - that most people will mostly listen to what they already have in their music collection/already know they like. I know my parents didn't care about new music, they just stuck to Cliff Richard/Abba/Madness, imagine if the music they continually listened to lingered in the charts forever back then - the charts wouldn't have ever really been a thing because no-one would have been interested. That's where we're moving to now!

I'm still mostly in favour of a low life-time stream cap per user, but something (probably less feasible) could measure users who have chosen to add a song to their library - obviously re-add would be excluded/duplicate versions. That could cause chaos around big album release weeks though, so maybe the label could nominate post album singles as and when (with restrictions to how often), with album track adds counting to the album chart? 🤣 I dunno lol

Edited Thursday at 16:001 day by Juranamo

14 minutes ago, Ongarboy said:

I understood the charts to previously be a marketing tool to promote a song and (by the then limited life of a physical single), its corresponding album. Historically, once a song hit the lower end of the charts, it got exposure from being played on Top 40 chart shows on radio , TOTP on TV and various other music outlets and progressively grew as a hit if it had appeal by being introduced to mass audiences simply because it was on the charts so the charts were for the general public. I'd have thought the music industry had already done most of it work (A&R, production, releasing, distribution, promotion etc before a song ever entered the charts.

I'm not a fan of the main chart being a track of what golden oldies consumers passively listen to either but as music consumption has changed irrevocably, I'm not sure what can be done to make charts relevant and more dynamic again in the modern sense.

 

Ah...it can still mean it's a Shakira hit for her own discography in that context...

I agree with this. Personally, before streaming really took off and I was just downloading from iTunes, about 85-90% of what I listened to was less than a year old. I loved older music then too but I had less chance to explore and risk wasting money on something I don’t like.

Since I got Spotify (in 2013) that’s gradually switched and now it’s the other way around, 2020s music makes up a very small fraction of my library. I’m probably an extreme case but I’d bet a lot of people are similar and that’s obviously being reflected in the charts. I like it, it’s more representative of what people are actually listening to not what record labels are currently pushing (as much).

Just now, Ongarboy said:

Ah...it can still mean it's a Shakira hit for her own discography in that context...

Yeah, I think there's a distinction to be made between getting one "for herself" (in her chart history) and "by herself"

Out of curiosity how many of shakiras number 1s have actually been solo , whenever wherever ?

2 minutes ago, 777666jason said:

Out of curiosity how many of shakiras number 1s have actually been solo , whenever wherever ?

Shakira’s U.K. #1s to date are ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ and ‘Beautiful Liar’, with Wyclef Jean and Beyoncé respectively. ‘Whenever Wherever’ stalled at #2 due to running into the Pop Idol juggernaut, unlucky 😢