Airplay definitely not the answer. Its ruining the Billboard charts where one song is played over and over again on radio so it stays near the top of the chart solely because of airplay while songs who have more streaming and no radio support suffer.

For example I just might is in the top 10 despite low sales + streaming to tracks below it because airplay counts for 59% of the tracks success there.

Presumably a Christian & Gospel chart has a rule where the song is removed after the 13th week charting on the Friday before being resurrected on the Sunday

In the US changes were made to the hot 100 at the beginning of the year - detailed below

https://www.billboard.com/pro/billboard-charts-add-more-weight-on-demand-streaming-2026/

It doesn’t appear to make much difference. Perhaps differentiating between active and passive playlist listening on streaming services would be more effective?

The way around the mess is to introduce a Retail Sales Chart. This is based on the amount the public pay for music rather than the numbers of copies sold. Some streaming sites charge the user more than other sites per month than others. Some users might only be paying less than £0.001p a stream. For example at the rate the Spotify number 10 record would have only sold a total of £1,557.41p. The OCC know who is streaming the records and what they pay for them. So rather than saying as the do at present, that a certain streaming level equals one sale (sales equivalent stream) they count the price the user pays. Then we have the download and physical sales. So you count the retail price of these. So £0.99p etc.

If the record company makes a physical record that is expensive. Say a £60 7-inch. (overpriced records) then the artist royalty is used for the sales of the record. The threshold being set by agreement between record companies and the chart compilers.

There would be no need to have ACR at all.

I believe advert funded streams should be eliminated, but that is just my personal opinion.

The OCC can't tell the streaming sites to change how they operate. But they can change how the charts are compiled. The other charts the OCC (except the streaming) are full of new entries, but these records don't have the numbers of the sales equivalent streams. However, they are more expensive than streams.

For example 600 records at £3.99p would bring in £2,394.00p. Easily beating the Spotify stream of the number 10 record. But 600 units sold would not put it in the current top 100.

It won't be changed, don't see what they could do, why penalise older songs getting an revival over an Rein Me In rule.

The OCC would just need to tweak the way a song goes to ACR.

Rather than a 3-week consecutive decline in streaming it could be more along the lines of 3 declines in the last 4 weeks. That would prevent a lot of songs dodging ACR by gaining minimally when DLC-2 and then needing 3 more weeks of decline.

The problem is that previously records were purchased and that was it. They could be played 4 million times a day (or never) and it wouldn't affect the charts, but now people don't buy the record, they rent it from the streaming companies each play, and we are measuring every single time they listen to it (or at least up to the player limit per week). The act of consumption is completely different and therefore it is completely wrong to compare prior and new achievements as they are based on completely different things.

This is what the OCC need to change; comparing old records achieved with purchases to those based on listening (streaming).

Edited Saturday at 17:002 days by braindeadpj

All that needs to happen in my view is a tweak of the ACR rules so that increases are always measured against the market, so an increase of 1% in streaming against a market increase of 3% is registered as a decline and not an increase. It's silly for it to matter only for declines and not for increases. Would this have affected Rein Me In? Hard to say but it would've undoubtedly sent some long running ACR-dodgers to ACR sooner, and it's an easy tweak to make the existing rule more fit for purpose.

ACR is just the chart company fiddling the figures. When Facebook told the public to stream a record just to get it to the top, the OCC limited the amount of streams any member of the public can have. So the OCC does the same just to get another record to the top. Ignoring the fact that on Spotify 4 million streams has the number one record, but the record at number two there has 2 million streams, but automatically becomes number one because of ACR. Plus the number one record that has spent 10 weeks at the top suddenly dives to 16 in the chart.

I've mentioned this on the other topic. I would be very surprised if a new rule doesn't emerge sometime between now and the end of the summer. The trouble is is that the problems with the music industry as a whole are so much wider than the chart itself that I really don't know what that is. Like for me, I've been following - sometimes more intently than at other times - music for the last 30 years. This is by far the slowest and most depressing it has been that I can remember. But either way. It's a stagnant situation when this week's top 40 is made up of more songs released in the last three or four decades than it is actual songs released in the last year. But I honestly can't see an obvious solution that isn't just another sticking plaster rule on the problem that's then overriden by some other song three or four years from now that somehow narrowly escapes said rule and spends the whole year at number one.

Edited Sunday at 11:041 day by ThePensmith

If OCC introduced a recurrent rule for songs over 1 calendar year old the chart this week would look like this

1 Dai Dai

2 Talk to You

3 Stupid Song

4 Choosin Texas

5 Free Your Mind

6 Hate that I made you Love Me

7 The Cure

8 I Knew It I knew You

9 Movin to the sun

10 American Girls

11 Material Lover

12 Boston

13 Earrings

14 On 2nite

15 Die on this hill

16 Great Expectation

17 Midnight Sun

18 Bloodstream

19 Self Aware

20 Homewrecker

10 songs removed.

4 minutes ago, Paramore said:

If OCC introduced a recurrent rule for songs over 1 calendar year old the chart this week would look like this

1 Dai Dai

2 Talk to You

3 Stupid Song

4 Choosin Texas

5 Free Your Mind

6 Hate that I made you Love Me

7 The Cure

8 I Knew It I knew You

9 Movin to the sun

10 American Girls

11 Material Lover

12 Boston

13 Earrings

14 On 2nite

15 Die on this hill

16 Great Expectation

17 Midnight Sun

18 Bloodstream

19 Self Aware

20 Homewrecker

10 songs removed.

So how do you deal with a song like pink pony club that took nearly 5 years to take off 🤔

5 minutes ago, 777666jason said:

So how do you deal with a song like pink pony club that took nearly 5 years to take off 🤔

Or a genuine revival to new heights like Beauty and a Beat!

5 minutes ago, 777666jason said:

So how do you deal with a song like pink pony club that took nearly 5 years to take off 🤔

Maybe 1 calendar year since debuting in the top 40? That would still get rid of everything there

Just now, JosephStyles said:

Or a genuine revival to new heights like Beauty and a Beat!

Sacrifices must be made. Its not like people didn't find it the first time. Shunt all that to the 'Archive Chart'.

Edited Sunday at 11:301 day by Paramore

I think for the most part the rules are OK but there are of course some glaring holes. If they want to reflect newer music/current trends more in the chart, here are some rules I would suggest they implement (and expect to be shot down immediately 😂).

• Multiple tiers of ACR (SCR, ACR and double ACR. Songs older than 3 years that have already reached the top 40 are on double ACR by default until they are reset.) This means sleeper songs can still see success and are not punished due to age. It also means long runners already on ACR that won't go away won't clog up the charts as their ACR total can be halved again after another 3 declines. Their popularity will still be reflected by them being in the chart, just lower down and not in the top 40.

• The market decline rule absolished. So many stable long runners that have clearly peaked lucking their way into even longer runs.

• Only 2 weeks of decline for a song older than 3 years that has already charted to go back to ACR rather than 3. Viral moments for older songs can still be reflected but the songs don't outlast their viral moment.

• More consistency/transparency in what is reset or not!

Edited Sunday at 11:421 day by gasman449

Also if we want to be pedantic midnight sun is older than rein me in on your list , and i dont think it actually peaked until after the year mark as well,

Which basically suggests your method is flawed

Midnight Sun remix came out this year though. Then again if only being able to count the one with Pinkpantheress just how high would that have got by itself. Defo would have debuted week it came out but would it have stayed

Thats another flaw does a song count from when the albums released or when it gets the singles push treatment.,

^ these are all reasons why this wouldn't work IMO. A year is pretty arbitrary and we've seen plenty of genuine hits take longer than that to take off. At least ACR doesn't exclude a song from the chart, and it can be escaped with an increase.

I also believe ACR shouldn't be over-complicated. It actually does largely do its job in its current form, even if it's not perfect. Making sure the market is factored into increases as well as decreases would tackle some of the ACR swerving, and I think they could do with being more transparent about how a song qualifies for a reset (whether it would need to make the official top 40 or whatever, etc), but when it works, it works well - the big hits will carry on lingering (which is fair, they're popular!), others will fade a little faster and newer songs can gain a little more exposure through the top 40. Overcomplicating this makes it even more difficult to follow, I think, when ACR as it is gives us a happy medium (when it's working properly).

Unpopular opinion but I think if ACR must be, then the current system is fine. Only thing I'd change is maybe bumping up the starting point to 15 or 20 weeks. 10 weeks just seems way too early now, though I suppose if we take it as a seemingly random force for when it strikes, then maybe that's fine too, just unlucky for those who go early.

With regards to songs that keep 'dodging' it, I think that's mostly also doing what it's supposed to do anyway. It should be shunting off songs that have clearly done their dance, the idea that "Rein Me In" should go that way while it's still #1 (or thereabouts) doesn't seem right to me. In general though, I think it's something that looks worse than it actually is because we quickly forget the songs that do move on. The songs that stay on SCR stay in the forefront, the others disappear and are no longer a going concern. Just looked at the chart on the week "Rein Me In" first went to #1, and there are a bunch of fairly old songs on SCR there, but all of them, bar "Everywhere" have since gone to ACR. You can get mad at Fleetwood Mac for seemingly cheating the system, but I always say it's better to look at ACR as a vague extraction machine that gets most of what it aims for, and that's what pushes new songs up the chart. A small handful of songs out of dozens not going on ACR isn't really a problem unless you just really don't like those particular songs I feel.

(I also find it generally unsatisfying as someone who wants to see the audience move on from songs, not to just be in a state of denial where I'm noting records of chart history they're not in, even though I know deep down, that's what's popular).