Col1967

'Noble England' is a bizzare combination of the death effect and the World Cup effect. Nobody would have ever seen that one coming!

They should be highered not lowered. Back to the old 'traditional' pre 1989 levels of 1m platinum, 500k gold, 250k silver. In the 80s a platinum single was a rare & precious thing, just a tiny handful of singles made it in the entire decade. For the last few years the top 15 or so best selling singles have achieved it. The top award should really be for phenomenal sales, not simply for big hits.

That might explain it. Perhaps it will finally be a really big hit!

14. Pharrell Williams - Happy That's quite a boost in the last 24hrs, anybody know why?

Well in terms of album sales at least, I agree it's pretty 'unbelievable'.

That would have been difficult to predict, but as we all know predictions are always difficult, especially when they concern the future :) However somebody is always going to be the next global megastar and I don't think saying that in 2010 about Adele would be seen as anything approaching as unlikely as Daft Punk suddenly coming back to have a colossal selling no.1, or indeed the sucess of Maroon 5 in a similar vein. It's just degrees of 'unlikliness' I guess, and that's never going to be easy to quantify :)

Was that in retrospect seemingly so very unlikely, though? In 2010 she was already an established star, the whole Brits 'Someone Like You' phenomenon simply turned her from 'star' into *megastar*.

Dare I look this up on YouTube? It's either a good fun novelty type song or awful beyond belief.....

Beat me to it!

I suspect you will be proved right. 30 years ago it would have been unthinkable for a big, mainstream hit to have the F word in the title. (I know about the Dead Kennedy's in 1981 but that was only a minor top 40 hit) But of course it happened some time ago now. But once you use the C word, well that's the 'last taboo' in swearing, what's ruder than that word, where do you go from there?

I'm sure she will. In fact I wouldn't be totally shocked to see her get another no.1. However she needs the right material to transcend from fanbase buys to mass-appeaL Another 'Spinning Around' in other words. Unfortunately 'Into the Blue' is far from another Spinning Around.

I don't think that is the case. When the Now 87 version came out it made no difference to the top version, sales appeared steady. There was no indication that the second version was taking sales from the first. In other words the second version sales are 'extra' sales and the top version is behaving as it would have done if the second one didn't exist.

Especially so if people are buying it because her death was announced on a Monday.

It wasn't all that many years ago when the standard iTunes rate was 79p. Then it gradually reached 99p. However that happened at a time when the download market was rapidly growing and such an increase would have been seen as being able to be absorbed. Today however download sales can be described as 'stagnant' at the very best, many would say the decline due to streaming has already begun, so a price increase wouldn't really be an option.

Yeah, coming for that top 400 smash....

It was in a way. It was a double A side along with '1999' which reached no.2, although 1999 always the most played and effectively the A side.

It's awful, just awful. Little Mix have removed all the soul & passion of the original by Cameo and replaced it with a bland & dreary rendition that makes me weep. But of course it's all for charidee, so that's allright then, any old crap is acceptable. Here's the original: bwatch?v=MZjAantupsA Check out that cod-piece!

But does her back catalogue really sell markedly less well than her contemporaries from the era she was having her biggest hits? Take Madonna for instance, in the current iTunes top 1500 she has just one entry 'Like a Prayer' at no.1347.

The key word is *eventually* of course. Trouble with EFY is that it's very much of its time and as such won't trickle sell very well. Of course if the two of them ever decided to reprise the song on a major TV show, it would probably make up that 3k deficit in a few hours.....

The Stonk was a Comic Relief single though, the rules governing quality & success don't apply to charity singles.

I don't see why the BBC would care that they are broadcasting someithing similar to the iTunes chart. Why does it matter? So what if there is one retailer that dominates the market, it is their job to play the chart, not be concerned as to where the sales happened to have come from. Would they have been bothered in the old vinyl days if the top 40 was very similar to the HMV chart? I don't see how it's even any of their business.

He's covered his house entirely with speakers, how can that not be music with 'feeling'?

It's OK but it doesn't really go anywhere. It's just kinda 'there'.

How much of a boost will it really get though, with an album version being available? If you are going to buy it, I don't see why the album being available would make that more likely, it's already no.1 on iTunes so it's pretty prominantly displayed! Of course people will cherry-pick from the album but won't that just take sales from the current version, I can't see it producing all that many *extra* sales. I would like to be proved wrong though.