The Hit Parade

Just been reminded there were two rival versions of 'Iko Iko' charting in 1982 as well.

For older readers, 'Please Don't Go' (in 1992) is another famous example of rival cover versions.

I think the counterargument about free streams though is that in either case the marginal cost is the same either way. If you're paying a subscription it's costing you the same per month whether you have it running 24-7 or don't touch it for the whole month. So effectively each stream costs you nothing. That's probably the thing that convinced the OCC, although there are also practical considerations like what if somebody takes a free trail and then cancels before they have to pay? As regards the effect on the chart, I think the relevant question is not how many accounts are free vs paid, but how many streams come from each type of account: it may very well be that paid users stream more than free ones. I don't really think increasing the length would make much difference. Even if you had to listen to a song in full the really determined hypers could still do it, and that would just disadvantage legitimate listeners who got called away a few seconds from the end of the song. Also there are a lot more songs under 90 seconds long than under 30.

Have Soundcloud started paying royalties yet? I presume that's why the OCC haven't included them previously, since they obviously know the site is there.

Just going to count how many I've got: 95. THE XX- XX (37-59-70-72-83-95) 530,700 (T/S 573,600) 87. ONLY REVOLUTIONS- Biffy Clyro (26-39-49-59-71-87) 576,200 83. HOME- Rudimental (78-83) 587,700 78. ONLY BY THE NIGHT- Kings Of Leon (31-44-50-60-66-78) 614,400 (T/S 2,874,600) 77. GHOST STORIES- Coldplay (77-77) 615,500 67. HEAVEN- Rebecca Ferguson (60-39-48-59-67) 661,500 66. GREATEST HITS- Foo Fighters (71-66-68-70-70-66) 663,300 (T/S 979,300) 39. AM- Arctic Monkeys (73-43-39) 874,400 33. 1989- Taylor Swift (NEW) 956,700 16. DEFAMATION OF STRICKLAND BANKS- Plan B (5-8-12-13-14-16) 1,365,500 15. MYLO XYLOTO- Coldplay (13-11-11-12-15) 1,483,100 11. 19- Adele (xx-6-6-8-10-11) 1,713,800 (T/S 2,290,600) 06. OUR VERSION OF EVENTS- EMELI SANDE (10-3-4-6) 2,257,800 01. 21- ADELE (1-1-1-1-1) 4,866,600 It'd be an even shorter list if I only counted the ones I'd paid more than a pound for. Great countdown though, thanks Gezza.

He's a producer who worked on several of Bowie's early-70s albums (and has since remixed some of them for re-issues). Spotify does sometimes seem to credit producers or songwriters on tracks. Ken Scott was also the engineer on most of the later Beatles recordings, so he's a fairly significant figure.

AFAICT the 1995 version of 'Man Who Sold The World' isn't available to download at all. It's very different from the version people know anyway.

That seems an unlikely choice of word.

Actually, I think it's quite interesting that Motorhead are still as high as 83.

Commercial radio is really more of a duopoly between Global and Bauer (who own Absolute, Kiss, Magic and a lot of local stations in Scotland, Northern Ireland and the North of England). But Global do have most of the hitmaking stations.

Somebody put Capital on at work today, and they played a trail for the Big Top 40 WITH MARVIN HUMES and then somebody else said what happened on last week's chart. I understand he was probably on holiday, but it's weird to leave his name in the trail and not the person who was actually presenting.

Spotify only has the studio albums, Past Masters [which is a collection of non-album tracks] and some best-of sets. https://play.spotify.com/artist/3WrFJ7ztbogyGnTHbHJFl2 Everywhere else I've looked has the same but as I said in the other post, I don't have Apple Music. That selection also matches what's available to download from sites other than iTunes, BTW. Re short plays, the OCC said the limit was set at 30 seconds precisely because gave people time to skip if something they didn't like came up in a playlist, or they were just listening to a bit to see if they recognised the song, or they hit the play button my mistake or something. Or I suppose if they had to stop listening entirely but wanted to let the previous song finish. It's a pure guess but maybe Spotify might account differently for tracks that last less than 30 seconds so they aren't stuck on 0 forever.

Beatles In Stereo has the same content as The Beatles Box Set available on iTunes, which possibly accounts for one thing. But there seems to be some sort of anomaly with Apple Music - I've never used it but I noticed the week they started (helpfully also the week Spotify data was AWOL) there were some very odd entries in the album streaming chart (ancient Elvis compilations, Oasis singles boxes etc) so I sort of imagine they report things differently from the others.

But mainly the bloke from Fun. P!nk isn't annoying on every song she sings, but he's always irritating. Especially with all that autotune.

Actually realised much later that 'Just Give Me A Reason' isn't an awful song. It's a perfectly OK song but sung by somebody with a slightly annoying voice and somebody with an amazingly annoying one.

I've never even heard this Snakehips song but I know Buzzjack just totally loses perspective whenever Tinashe appears on a record. Even when she did one with Chris Brown FFS.

Probably not any with a single that was only released OAOS yesterday.

Pretty sure they did trial it, they just didn't tell us while they were doing it.

2007 was the first year Chris Rea's downloads counted, as it wasn't reissued physically.

Universal, but they can't do anything with them unless Apple (the Beatles company, not the computer ones) agree.

I might have said this before but I wonder whether it's because Louisa was such an obvious winner that people don't feel as much ownership of her as they did with past winners.

Right, 'Amarillo' is quite a cause celebre because the 2005 chart run is credited to Tony Christie featuring Peter Kay, despite the fact that Kay not only doesn't appear on the track but wasn't even born when it was recorded.

Thanks fchd, just been having a browse of them. `Format looks good.

I read on another forum that they have indeed done that. But obviously not everyone would really buy it.

There was a bit of online campaigning around 'Mad World' (and probably the Darkness too) but of course in the days before Facebook that had much less impact. Some might also contend that 'Mad World' was helped by being from a film. If you accept either of those arguments the last "normal" Christmas Number One was Robbie Williams & Nicole Kidman in 2001.