Eric_Blob

When you get lower down streaming charts, everything gets bunched up a LOT more. So there's loads of songs that don't have to "sell" that much in 4 months to make the threshold (also a few Christmas songs are almost guaranteed to get in which will make the threshold higher). Anything that's selling consistently that's at two-thirds of 420k (280k I think) will probably make it by the end of the year. The better metric to predict by would I think be whether the top 100 has all made 280,000 by the end of August, which it already has. So on that basis I think this year will beat last year.

They do it in pop songs too, like California Gurls and Empire State of Mind, which were both massive hits.

I think at that time they were still in the mindset of the physical era, where you'd release singles on different dates in different countries depending on multiple factors like how well the previous single did, the country's current pop music scene, when the artist has dates to promote there, etc. You couldn't just change singles on a whim back then especially when you had to manufacture physical copies to sell. They probably could've done a single campaign for Pocketful of Sunshine in the UK and it would've probably done well here from just downloads, but it just wasn't in their mindset at the time.

At the time I was 99% certain that he was trying to copy The Weeknd's situation where Can't Feel My Face took off very quickly and the less mainstream The Hills was more of a slow burner, even though they were released close together. I think Ed was expecting Castle On the Hill to probably climb to #1 after Shape of You. But Shape of You was bigger than expected and Castle on the Hill (at least in the UK), was big right out the gate instead of being a song slowly climbing the charts so that plan didn't really work out.

Listen to a lot: Shape of You Listen to sometimes: Starboy One Dance Listen to rarely: Blinding Lights Sweater Weather Don't dislike, but wouldn't listen to: Sunflower Perfect Find quite annoying but I feel like I should like it: STAY Never want to listen to: As It Was Someone You Loved I was really torn between voting for As It Was or Someone You Loved and wish I voted for As It Was now as nobody else did. I don't know why I don't like As It Was at all as it sounds like Blinding Lights (and Take On Me, etc.), but I just can't listen to it.

Almost guaranteed. It got boosted when it got media coverage for the longest climb to #1, and I would assume this would be a bigger news story. Although maybe most of the types of people who watch the news and who would be intrigued to see what the song that broke the record sounds like will have already listened to it when it broke the longest climb record.

There's a chance that whatever rule changes they're (likely) going to make soon will effect Christmas songs even if just accidentally.

Unwritten is another example from 2004 as well.

Funnily enough Moves Like Jagger would've been year-end #1 in 2011 too had it not been for Adele performing at the BRITS! Bad Habits got year-end #2 a few years back without being #1 that year. So it's definitely possible. I'm not sure how the decade-end charts are looking so far, but I think Mr. Brightside is a contender, and that's far more extreme!

I'm 99% sure yes haha. A very polite and friendly one though!

I think they will change the rules, because they did so after One Dance spent 15 weeks at #1 and after Ed Sheeran had 9 songs in the top 10 and when Running Up That Hill had a resurgence but missed #1. Just based on their previous patterns. I don't think they should (or will) do anything to penalise old songs. It would be ridiculous if they banned something like Milky from charting when it's a song that most of us haven't heard in like 20 years. But I think they may do something to make the charts move faster and to stop songs being in the top 100 for years. I have actually calculated something that would work really well and make the charts act more like they did in the physical/digital age, but it's a super complicated formula (although a computer could do it effortlessly and automatically each week) so I don't think they'd ever do something like that. Although I did test it out on previous years and even the biggest hits of the year weren't usually spending more than about 14 weeks in the top 10 and the longest-running song at #1 (I think it was Ordinary) "only" was there for like 6 weeks iirc, which again seemed like a REALLY long time to be at #1 back in the day lol.

Whenever Wherever was really high in the year-end chart and the decade-end charts. If it missed #1 it is probably because it got unlucky and blocked by an even higher-selling song I would assume. Even if it technically isn't a #1, the statistics say it's a "#1-sized hit". And Beautiful Liar was kind of a 3-way collab with the Freemasons. I heard the (amazing) Freemasons remix way more than the original at the time.

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 don't think there's much we can do about that. It's on the individual to do their own research if they care that much about what's really officially #1 like all of us here did. Radio 1 do specify they are the official charts and a lot of the newspapers mention it too when talking about music charts, and of course Wikipedia, AI, etc, will tell people that, so that all helps a bit. But yeah, I've also met people claiming the #1 on the Big Top 40 Show is THE #1. I've also met people saying the iTunes #1 was THE #1 back in the day. There's probably people thinking what's #1 on the Spotify charts is the current #1. Probably a few out there who think the Billboard Hot 100 is the official UK chart. But really whether it's Global, Apple, Spotify, Billboard, they are not obligated to have constant announcements specifying that their charts aren't the official UK chart. Likewise on BuzzJack we are allowed to publish our multi-chart. If there are people out who are silly enough to think it's the official UK chart, it's not our problem, I don't think any of us have claimed anywhere it is the official chart.

Maybe it will be a top 100 show? They can just play new entries/re-entries/newer songs from the top 100 and skip all the ones that have been chatting for ages already. Although I think more likely it'll just be a regular day-time Radio 1 show with a section within it for the chart. Also, legally the Big Top 40 Show is allowed to advertise itself as the most-listened chart show as long as it continues to beat the Radio 1 chart show in audience. Radio 1 doesn't really have a chance of beating Heart AND Capital and a bunch of other smaller stations combined on any day of the week (unless the audiences of these stations have collapsed since I last looked?). Maybe they could air the chart show simultaneously on both Radio 1 and Radio 2, those combined could have a big enough audience potentially.

Yeah even from the early 2010's a lot of the songs that were omnipresent at the time don't stream that well now. Not always the case, but songs like Party Rock Anthem or Blurred Lines have shockingly low streams. And songs like Unconditionally by Katy Perry or Judas by Lady Gaga which were semi-flops when they came out get tons of streams now.

I've always thought it was weird too. I'm used to it now, but if you asked me 10 years ago which artists from back then would go on to dominate the streaming charts like this they wouldn't have come to mind. The Beatles would've been my first guess, and many others before Fleetwood Mac.

This has been a known issue for quite a long time. Dope by Lady Gaga charted top 10 on the Hot 100 mostly because of YouTube adverts which simply played the song in full. And a few other songs charted high because of that. Billboard eventually stopped counting streams from YouTube adverts. And I reckon other chart companies like the OCC also don't count them (not certain but we'd have probably noticed some major chart anomalies by now over the years if they were being counted). Now, if you actually click on the advert and it takes you to the song's YouTube page and listen to the song there that would still count, but that's not really different to other forms of advertising. The song being randomly played to you in the form of an advert that you don't interact with wouldn't contribute any streams I don't think (definitely not on the Billboard charts).

I feel like Avril Lavigne is a big act amongst like 25-40 year-olds. Someone like Amy Winehouse for example crossed over amongst different generations more so I would say that counts as bigger.

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The DaBaby version of Levitating had a different (but better) instrumental to the original. It's subtle but if you notice it you can hear it. I don't know if they made a version of the solo version with that instrumental, but if they haven't, they should.

That's all true. But with their AI playlists, if you do a generic "I want house songs from 2026" it will just give you an American playlist (probably house songs that are popular on the New York scene this year lol). You have to be specific (this means probably writing a long paragraph and giving context as to being in the UK, etc). But it does work if you say the right things, I've experimented with it a LOT. It is quite good. And you'd get better and faster responses than just asking on here honestly lol.

Spotify has a new feature. If you go on "Create" then "Prompted Playlist" you can ask it to make a playlist of songs from 2026 of your favourite genres (and you can add it to take your listening history into account so it will try to guess ones you might like). It will be automatically US centric. If you don't want it to be you have to directly specify you want songs popular in the UK not the US.

To be fair, some of her songs DO have loads of remixes. There's like 14 versions of Only Girl, around 10 of We Found Love, Diamonds, Work, etc.

Radio 1 does this too. I think they have to play at least 50% British music. But they have a microscopic effect on the charts these days so it doesn't help in that respect. As for streaming, what I'm pretty sure is happening is, because we're so outnumbered by Americans, it interprets all the local UK artists as basically "flops" or unpopular, and therefore not prioritised in the algorithm. For example, if you play Poker Face and it goes on autoplay, for a British user it SHOULD know to include songs like The Fear, Bad Boys, Fight For This Love, etc. But instead it plays Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato (yeah, they ARE popular here, and should come up on autoplay every now and then, but still...). As far as the Spotify algorithm knows, it just sees "Knock You Down by Keri Hilson has 400 million streams, Fight For This Love has 100 million, so I'll add Knock You Down to the autoplay queue as it's massively more popular". So yeah a lot of the British artists that didn't crack the US have been massively screwed over and it's had a snowball effect as because the algorithm doesn't play them it hurts their streams even more and then it doesn't want to autoplay new releases by the same artist (which the algorithm thinks is either niche or a flop) and it gets worse and worse. I'm just astonished that record labels with non-Internationally-famous UK artists haven't tried to solve this issue years ago. They've probably missed out on a lot of money.