GreyAsh

Someone please remind me: when was the cut-off release date for the original physical sales of older singles to be combined with streams for certification purposes? Was it (Jan) 1989 or (Feb) 1994? I know, for example that the original sales of Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ (1994) are added to streams for certification purposes, but not ‘Fairytale of New York’ (1987). Does anyone know whether the cut-off point is 1989 because of the change in sales needed for each certification, or 1994 when Millward Brown took over producing the chart? And also, do you have a link to where this is explained? Thank you

Such a shame it didn’t make the top 100. It’s now the 5th 2023 release (plus any others this week) to pass gold but not be in the top 100. Interestingly, the previous one is this week’s number 11, ‘Popular’.

I third that! Really appreciate the work you’ve done on this. Absolutely love it - so please continue to do this each year if you get time. I have so many comments that I want to make, but I will only make two. Firstly - I never realised GBI was on Spotify! It’s a track that I’ve never heard, and always wanted to… and now I have! Secondly - does anyone know if there are any good playlists - either ones that split all of Kylie’s work into eras like you’ve done, or ones that cover her lesser known tracks? There are still a few here that I’ve never heard. Here are a couple that I listen to or ones I’ve made: Kylie SAW B-sides https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2uHO0OAwO...=e-jqPM1m_NQYO6 Alternate versions of the biggest hits (based on Step Back In Time) https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5EWYK9xbG...=e-hHPR9JvVR32U Anti Tour set list https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1XgueGnAb...=e-Faxj4dEWQbeC Best tracks NOT on studio albums https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7kTwedn3G...=e-bIM-FMoMSYKu Best album tracks (up to Golden) https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0ALV7BOBf...=e-1nl4L4u0TR6z

Amazing work Jules! Loving what you do. This just makes me think of the all-time chart. Do you have estimates for: Shape Of You Do They Know It’s Christmas? Candle In The Wind ‘97 Bohemian Rhapsody Thinking Out Loud? I guess these are the five remaining songs in the all-time top 10.

Amazon 100% tries to suddenly filter out Christmas songs (it does the same before the Christmas period too). It fails - as it misses some Christmas songs. It even removes Christmas songs from their Christmas songs chart - so we currently have ‘Sound Of The Underground’ at 4 in their Christmas songs chart and Céline ‘Think Twice’ at 5. Apple appears to be a 24 hour rolling chart - you can tell this from its charts on Fridays and Saturdays - new songs often start to decline during Saturday. Overnight, Stick Season has finally knocked ‘Last Christmas’ down to number 2, meaning ‘Last Christmas’ was still the 2nd most streamed track on 27th.

Yes - agreed re ‘Last Christmas’. I haven’t paid huge attention to its figures this year so far, but it will end up on a minimum of 650k - probably more like 680k. Looking through the information in this thread, I feel that is likely to put it at number 20. Therefore pulling further ahead of Lewis/Killers in the year end all time list (they will of course overtake it during the year). Does anyone have a good current estimate for Band Aid?

‘Last Christmas’ has just beaten Adele’s record (2,801,638) for most streams in one day. 2,889,765! Brenda takes the lead overall, but as the two versions of her song are on different labels, they won’t be combined for chart purposes. And ‘Mr Brightside’ spends another Christmas Day in the top 200.

I haven’t looked into this - but two things to consider: last year RAYE had two versions of her track that were doing well on streaming. And Christmas is a day later in the week this year. So this may mean Noah doesn’t do as well as you expected.

Official Charts say they will make regular updates, but they have deliberately remained quiet yesterday, so that people aren’t aware that Wham! are pulling away from Sam. If anyone can motivate fans to buy their track, it would be Sam, but there is such a lack of willingness these days to download or buy physical singles that I would be very surprised, if he succeeds. Social media is probably not enough, he needs the media on side as well.

I looked around for this a lot online, when there were arguments about whether Cliff or Elvis had the Christmas number 1. The consensus seem to be 1973 - which is part of the reason why there is disagreement about previous years, because nobody really thought about the race between Elvis and Cliff being a Christmas number 1 race, therefore no one can remember it, and therefore know what song people considered to be the number 1 on Christmas Day.

Finally in the Chart Update at 74

Only just thought of this, following all of the ‘Taylor’s Version’ discussions. For Official Chart purposes, surely the two versions of Brenda Lee would not be combined as they are on different record labels? Whereas for Wham! the Pudding Mix (and an alternative ‘Single Version’ get a fair number of streams as well, and these would all be included.

You mean you’ve correctly guessed LadBaby…

Fairytale is down to 6 on iTunes. It also seems to be making no headway on streaming platforms. It will surely need at least 10,000, but more likely 15,000 vinyl to reach number 1. I doubt this number has been produced! But also how many singles have sold that number on vinyl recently? We overestimate people’s willingness to do anything other than stream.

There very much is a download campaign! It just really hasn’t headed anywhere. These days there is very little motivation to download and those who are motivated generally don’t know how (as Chloe mentioned). Effectively you’re paying money for nothing - and even though a small number of people are willing to do that, the general public isn’t - now that they’ve got used to streaming. Somehow LadBaby managed to persuade people to download - but it’s something hardly anyone else has managed to achieve - beyond a couple of thousand maximum.

Wow! And do we know how many of those are downloads and how many are physical? I completely agree, there is practically no appetite for downloads at all.

Overall, I don’t feel that a lot of downloads are being sold this week. I think people assumed that whatever the Christmas number one would be, it would get a lot of downloads.

In terms of sales, it sold more copies on CD/cassette than Jack Harlow (number 2 in downloads) did in downloads - so I’m guessing maybe 2000? Plus it may have sold 2000 vinyl, so possibly wouldn’t quite have made the first look chart (top 20) but it would have been nice to see it in the chart update on Monday.

That is BAD news! It means the CDs and cassettes that were dispatched last night, have been included in this week’s chart rather than next week’s chart. Massive facepalm moment. It is 2 on physicals and not yet in the vinyl chart.

No sign of Lyrical Lemonade (ft Jack Harlow and Dave) on iTunes yet but Krackpots very low at 178. Not sure any New Entries will make the Official top 40 next Friday (interesting to see how many physicals Kylie gets - but I think in the current climate she’ll struggle to make the top 100). I think Christmas songs will dominate further next week. Then Are we still thinking it’s between Wham!, Pogues and Creators for Xmas number 1?

No sign of Lyrical Lemonade yet but Krackpots very low at 178. Loads of Nicki Minaj at the lower end.

Ah yes!! I think the K songs are the only campaigns that seem to work. Mostly because of their anti establishment nature. But no sign of the Krackpots on iTunes chart yet…

I’m trying to remember the last time that any kind of campaign worked outside of Christmas week. It will be interesting to see how K*nt and AC/DC fare. I do still wonder how many people will bother to download Fairytale of New York.

Going back to the ‘10 streams’ rule - how do we know this to be true? Spotify counts all the streams of a track (I know - I experimented and found that when a song was getting ~5-20 streams a day, I could increase it to well over 100 by playing it on repeat). I know OCC doesn’t like to be pinned down to an answer about the maximum number of streams - (I emailed them and they were vague) but if there is a cap of 10 streams, who removes the others? Does Spotify remove them after counting them? Or do they provide OCC with data about who has streamed what?

The fact that Shaky has been 1, 2 and 3 suggests to me that the top 3 are pretty close. And the fact that the second version of Last Christmas is still very high, and there is a third version that has also been well inside the top 200 suggests to me that Wham! is Apple’s number 1 overall.