3 minutes ago, JosephStyles said:

Entirely possible but she was famously snubbed from Radio 1 for years, much like Kylie and other artists that are deemed to be past it. Many make it to Radio 2 of course but it's all in the hands of the stations themselves as to which songs get the opportunity to break through. It's not like streaming where Hot Hits UK exists, but if a song makes a big enough impact, it breaks through on its own! There's no option for that on radio.

That’s the point- they’re not getting the chance to break through based on not being included in the most popular playlists. All in all, if the chart is to reflect popularity as closely as it can, it needs to include all ways music is consumed.

2 hours ago, reissus123 said:

I’m talking about audience data not actual number of plays. Only music paid for - so no data used from free users then?

 

I never said it was a solution. It’s another way people consume music. Have you looked at the airplay chart recently- there’s far more variety and movement! Skip a song > change the station.

Yes no data from free users

18 hours ago, WhoOdyssey said:

IMO it doesn’t help that they don’t classify a lot of actual charting rock songs as “rock”. They’ll have Fall Out Boy’s very pop Uma Thurman, but not Dexter and The Moonrocks or Yungblud.

I’d open it up to a Rock/Alternative chart, and include the likes of Dominic Fike, Fontaines D.C., Sam Fender, Noah Kahan, etc.

I’m surprised a Country Singles Chart hasn’t been launched yet too.

I'd agree with all them except Noah Kahan. I think he 's more Folk-y.

5 hours ago, ___∆___ said:

Thats literally never going to happen - imagine the amount of data, time and cost to track millions of users play counts and then subtracting any plays after 1 to submit to the OCC.

There is zero benefit for the streaming companies to even attempt to do that.

I don't think it would be that hard. All this is pretty much automated by the streaming service anyway. Unique tracks per user per week seems like an easy sort criteria.

23 minutes ago, Scone1 said:

Yes no data from free users

Which means artists won't make music available for free users on those platforms and that will decimate the ad revenue the platforms get

Edited Tuesday at 17:422 days by Paramore

I'm not really for any of the changes I've seen in here tbh. I don't like the idea of a one click and you're done curiosity stream being all that counts, and I don't really like the idea of radio counting.

I (as has been documented many times) really dislike ACR, purely because it's not a level playing field.

My preferred method, which I feel would work the best is the low lifetime streams cap method (I haven't really been convinced otherwise by @Dircadirca's evidence [which is fair, we can all have our own viewpoints, and I could be very wrong in my hunch either way!], some of the data presented from lastfm etc almost makes me more convinced that a cap would be the way forward - songs released more recently would reach their 'sale' much more quickly than older songs for more people, so therefore drop out of the chart naturally and quickly, older songs might need to be excluded unless they see a significant spike maybe - indicating new discoveries (or a lower cap for songs that were available pre-streaming?), but what I've observed from people I know in real life [not lastfm listeners, who are more likely to seek out new music, I find] is their gravitation towards the same selection of tracks over and over and over again for an extended period!).

But we've all discussed this one ad-infinitum by this point! I think we're long past any hope of speeding up the chart notably, or finding out if that method works! I have no idea what OCC will realistically do...

Edited Tuesday at 17:462 days by Juranamo

3 minutes ago, Paramore said:

I'd agree with all them except Noah Kahan. I think he 's more Folk-y.

I don't think it would be that hard. All this is pretty much automated by the streaming service anyway. Unique tracks per user per week seems like an easy sort criteria.

Which means artists won't make music available for free users on those platforms and that will decimate the ad revenue the platforms get

I think they will make the music available to encourage people to pay , its a Hen and Egg situation

1 minute ago, Scone1 said:

I think they will make the music available to encourage people to pay , its a Hen and Egg situation

I think it would result in big artists making their tracks paid exclusives for maybe the whole pre-ACR period and then the week it is due to be tracked for ACR, opening it up to free users to get a boost.

On the topic of radio, I had a look on the Airplay Top 40, and to be fair there are some more interesting songs in there. However those songs are also ones which aren't doing anything in the lower reaches of the Top 100 either, and so the amount of impact those songs will feel in the chart would be quite low, whereas other songs in the airplay chart (most of which are quite old) would be pushed up.

I've just created a very basic mock-up of what the Top 40 might look like with airplay included (by doing 100-1 points for the current Top 100 and adding in 40-1 points for the Airplay Top 40):

1: Shakira and Burna Boy - Dai Dai

2: Olivia Rodrigo - stupid song

3: ANOTR feat. 54 Ultra - Talk to You

4: Taylor Swift - I Knew It, I Knew You

5: STELLA LEFTY - Boston

6: HUGEL, Imael Angel and Ultra Naté - Movin' to the Sun

7: Ariana Grande - hate that i made you love me

8: KATSEYE - Animal

9: sombr - Homewrecker

10: Alex Warren - Ordinary

11: Olivia Dean - Man I Need

12: Ella Langley - Choosin' Texas

13: SIENNA SPIRO - Great Expectation

14: Sam Fender and Olivia Dean - Rein Me In

15: Ariana Grande - petal

16: RAYE - WHERE IS MY HUSBAND!

17: Zara Larsson - Midnight Sun

18: Prospa and Cloonee - Free Your Mind

19: Silva Bumpa - On 2nite

20: Calvin Harris and Clementine Douglas - Blessings

21: sombr - My Body Isn't Ready

22: Olivia Rodrigo - the cure

23: Ariana Grande - kiss me

24: SIENNA SPIRO - Material Lover

25: Oasis - Wonderwall

26: Malcolm Todd - Earrings

27: SIENNA SPIRO - Die on This Hill

28: Alyssa Grace - bloodstream

29: Harry Styles - Sign of the Times

30: Alex Warren - FEVER DREAM

31: Temper City - Self Aware

32: Tame Impala - Loser

33: Olivia Dean - So Easy (To Fall In Love)

34: Katy Perry - The One That Got Away

35: Harry Styles - American Girls

36: Michael Jackson - Billie Jean

37: ADÉLA - Ain't in LA

38: Audrey Hobert - Sue Me

39: Tame Impala - Dracula

40: Taylor Swift - The Fate of Ophelia

With a few exceptions (Boston, Animal and My Body Isn't Ready being the main ones), that's largely just pushing older songs back up the charts. Of course this isn't including any sort of ACR for radio which might affect some things but that's another complication.

The other thing to note is that the songs in the airplay chart that aren't in the official chart are pretty much all by established artists who no longer get chart hits, and so newer artists would almost universally be hindered by including airplay.

50 minutes ago, Paramore said:

I'd agree with all them except Noah Kahan. I think he 's more Folk-y.

It's all under the same banner I'd say though - and really I'd say Noah's most recent album is more Heartland rock/Americana than anything. It was very Sam Fender.

1 hour ago, Juranamo said:

I'm not really for any of the changes I've seen in here tbh. I don't like the idea of a one click and you're done curiosity stream being all that counts, and I don't really like the idea of radio counting.

I (as has been documented many times) really dislike ACR, purely because it's not a level playing field.

My preferred method, which I feel would work the best is the low lifetime streams cap method (I haven't really been convinced otherwise by @Dircadirca's evidence [which is fair, we can all have our own viewpoints, and I could be very wrong in my hunch either way!], some of the data presented from lastfm etc almost makes me more convinced that a cap would be the way forward - songs released more recently would reach their 'sale' much more quickly than older songs for more people, so therefore drop out of the chart naturally and quickly, older songs might need to be excluded unless they see a significant spike maybe - indicating new discoveries (or a lower cap for songs that were available pre-streaming?), but what I've observed from people I know in real life [not lastfm listeners, who are more likely to seek out new music, I find] is their gravitation towards the same selection of tracks over and over and over again for an extended period!).

But we've all discussed this one ad-infinitum by this point! I think we're long past any hope of speeding up the chart notably, or finding out if that method works! I have no idea what OCC will realistically do...

I'll be honest yeah, it's hard for me to really be certain what the data is like, just going off extrapolations of data & hunches myself! What we'd want to do with it probably is largely affected by what we want to see on the chart, which is admittedly why I'm always quick to discourage a lot of rash ideas because I feel like based on what's been suggested, the end result probably makes the chart worse for that person! A bit like when we all might just conveniently overlook favourable playlisting/algorithms boosting our favourites, the naked reality would expose that truth in a way that can't be ignored. Or otherwise my strong feeling is still that it doesn't really move the needle in many distinct ways. Life if the OCC put in a streaming cap vs. life if they didn't, and it's the same picture both times.

In many senses this all comes down to a debate on whether or not we think new music deserves a leg up purely for the fact that it's new, and how willing we are to suspend disbelief for it on the chart. Like, I feel like Spotify's trending charts capture this kind of fast pace/no lingering nature, but do any of us want to treat it like the real thing? Probably not because it's just too confusing, hard to understand, and doesn't correlate with our realistic expectations of what should be charting where. It leaves the only paths as chaos for the sake of chaos, or objective blandness (which I'll admit is interesting in its own way but that's just me). A matter of whether there is merit to tinkering with the chart to replicate its form of the past, or to leave it to continue to climb to new extremes for better or worse.

The only thing I would probably change is changing it back to a 50 percent increase to get off ACR

and songs over 3 years only being allowed 1 reset per lifetime rather than every single time they get a boost for whatever reason cough cough wonderwall cough cough

2 hours ago, 777666jason said:

The only thing I would probably change is changing it back to a 50 percent increase to get off ACR

This I do agree with - it's too easy for songs which are already streaming in decent numbers to get a reset, still go nowhere near a new peak, and then take forever to return to ACR. If they applied the rule as soon as songs were due to re-enter the Top 75/100 as a result of the reset, rather than only the Top 40/50 as now, they would probably capture more of the genuine resurgences than they do now.

For all the interesting ideas and diverse debate, it seems we're no closer to a consensus on how best a singular, national, official, catch-all single tracks chart should operate. Perhaps there simply isn't a sufficiently detailed, fair, even and honest way of compiling such weekly rankings nowadays, what with the multiple methods of accessing and appreciating music (not to mention many other competing forms of personal entertainment in the real and virtual worlds).

The singles chart 'of old' - say in the sales-only era, wasn't perfect; any 'chartologist' will attest to that, whether it be limitations of compilation, methodology, arbitrary imposition at various times of rules, the need to suit the sponsoring industry bodies first before the consumer, and so forth. But at least it was simple enough - count up what seem to be genuine paid-for purchases of available product and rank them. Okay it was never quite that straightforward, what with verification, anti-hype mechanisms etc, but you know what I mean - whether it be manual or automated data, physical or digital, processed using fast-paced IT - it was a basic totting-up. Granted, sales were only ever one means of measuring popularity of product, even in the less-diverse, pre-digital era. But it was as good a measure as any, and people broadly understood it, whether or not they were aware of the glitches, difficulties, faults and unevenness of the resultant weekly countdown. Yet with streaming blended into sales - two entirely distinct modes of music consumption - it immediately presented the compilers (Kantar) and custodians (OCC) with complex problems, some of which only really became truly apparent as the sector matured a few years in, and inevitably, compromises were made that skewed what had been, for a decade or so, a pretty clean-cut genuine weekly tabulation of what was not so much best-selling, but most-streamed, or - overall - 'most-consumed' titles across seven days. It would've been easier had streaming just become the main means of consumption to the extent that sales no longer happened, or were so minimal as to be statistically irrelevant and so not worth counting any longer. While streaming has cannibalised much of the old single-track sales market, it's not done so to that degree where sales can just be ignored. So the two have to co-exist as meaningful measures of a song's popularity. And what of any other popularity measures, which some argue should be thrown into an ever-complexifying mix?

It's perhaps fortunate for the industry that it's mostly only their problem - if they see one at all - and that fewer consumers of musical product care about the official weekly charts than ever before. We operate in a bit of a bubble here where we all still really care! Yet most stay ignorant and happily so because their interest in charts has waned to zero, or passing casual observation - partly due to the maturity of popular music as a format but also thanks to those same charts becoming over-complicated due to the need to respond to changes in the consumption market. A bit of chicken-and-egg really. So, things like the streaming issue above may never actually be addressed, any more than the inequities and inadequacies of the current Top 100 will be. Some say the answer is getting access, or even full reversion, to the 'real' Top 200 combined rankings. It's true, those are accurate and honest. But many on this thread ideally want more movement and more diversity, more turnover and more access for new acts/songs in a chart. What little reportage about the actual, true Top 200 tracks shows us is that it's even more stagnant and stale than the manipulated 100, as streaming encompasses so many millions of titles across all genres, and all types/ages of consumer are latching on and streaming anything, but often the same 'classic' songs, ad-infinitum, going way beyond the limited compositional choices of the modern era. And so the singles chart reflects that, as it stands. Yes, OCC must keep compiling a real ranking, even if it is never made public as it'd shine the spotlight on the artificial aspects of their official version which they want to pass off as pre-eminent and being of historical record. But converting back to that as the official listings isn't now a solution, if it ever was, to the problems confronted here.

All that being said, I just keep looking, with my thinking cap on, at the spread of charts currently produced by OCC, and wonder whether there is any way they could, in time, champion some sort of 'new releases' type tabulation. It wouldn't be the 'real' or even 'main' chart, as it would exclude certain titles and perhaps encourage others, depending on its qualification criteria (a debate to be had in itself). This seems to me to be somewhat preferable to trying to upgrade any of the genre-specific charts, which all harbour similar issues to the main one anyway, and operate differently depending on how well a genre or kind of artist performs in the different sectors that make up the combined consumption tally. The problem wouldn't be how to set such a chart up, compiling it or presenting it - rather, it would be how to give it sufficient profile as to rival, if not ultimately supersede, the main chart in the minds of both industry bods and regular consumers. And whether that could ever be countenanced by those paying for it? The main chart would always be there as a barometer of the overall market's performance each week and through time. But I think seeking to fiddle with that is a fool's errand, and perhaps the best way forward is to gradually downgrade it in favour of a tabulation that exists specifically to measure and chart the performance of newer material, or - if it were felt important - also genuinely-resurgent older content.

I guess this is a tall order as the OCC have never favoured 'rival' charts (part of the reason they ended up having to present a combined chart in the first place was because having two separate streams and sales listings was seen as confusing and wouldn't serve the perceived need for a 'single source of truth' for posterity's sake - even if that source is slightly skewed from reality to suit industry preference and convenience!). And inevitably there'd be keen debate about the exact rules for such a chart, exclusions and so on. Yet I'd suggest that these may be less irksome than now, as we'd be dealing not with the 'main' singles chart, but a special 'sub' chart focused on current happenings. It wouldn't pretend to be 'complete' and cover everything, so maybe it'd matter less if certain rules and regs were applied to it, in order to keep it fresh and functioning in the way it should? In the end, they could abandon the faked Top 100 altogether, just keeping the honest 200 as a background barometer, but with the 'new stuff' tabulation nudged to the foreground in media terms.

Don't get me wrong folks; I very-much doubt this would ever really come to pass. But for the purposes of the arguments here, in an ideal universe, I reckon we need to move beyond the 'main' chart as it stands and start building towards a separate, more focused, if in effect narrower and more regulated, ranking to give weekly relative indications as to which recent (or recently-reignited) titles are leading the pack, and as it gains profile, so would the music qualifying to feature within it, even albeit on far-fewer total listens or buys than some of the stuff in the main table. While the main list would always exist, it'd be this new countdown that could create much more excitement, even though it would of course never recreate the buzz around the charts per se that existed in the latter half of the 20th century - sadly, that boat has long-since sailed.

1 stream per sale per user meaning if a user streams a song 10 times, only 1 of those streams will contribute

The reality is the charts have been fighting a losing battle for 20 years now. I was still in my 20s in 2006 and for the first time in living memory I couldn't of told you what was number one. It wasn't a conscious decision to stop following the charts, just happened naturally. Nowadays I work with several people in their 20s and into music and none of them could tell me what's in the charts now, I know more about it than they do and I'm old.

Similarly it seems the youngsters don't watch Christmas Top of the Pops these days, just us oldies who keep the tradition and afterwards talk about how dreadful the music on it was.

I can't see a way back. In the beginning it was a way of informing the public what the popular records to go out and buy were. These days the kids can just go on the internet and see what their favourite tiktok person has to say.

I would be up for radio being included in some way. It's not just pop. Maybe even just BBC radio since it airs the chart.