Graham A

The OCC charts are big joke now. They have always been a bit silly, but never as bad as they are them moment. The problem is that the OCC have two competing interests trying to take control of the charts. And try as they might the OCC are the Industry charts and have to make a compromise, but it simply can't work. First competitor is the streaming market. The other is the sales market. To get them to balance the "stream" is treated as a sale. But streaming are never sales, no matter how much they adjust them. Sales by definition have a limit. Streaming has no limit. But the two markets will not concede to the other. And so the OCC has to shunt between the two sides. What should have happened to the charts is that streaming should have taken over completely. But the sites still selling the records and of course part of the OCC would not allow that. Or you could argue that the OCC should have kept it a sales only chart, no streams at all, but of course that would have upset the other side of the Industry. The main issue over the charts is getting shut of records that are popular with the public. The sales chart had a way of doing that naturally. Nobody keeps buying the same track over and over again. On most of the main downloading sites you can't actually do it. Since after purchase once, it tells you that you have purchased the track, if you try again. If your file is deleted accidently or on purpose you can still download it again for free. And it doesn't count towards the charts. However streaming has no limits on how many times you can listen. So there is no way of getting shut of records. Of course if someone does bring an album out that has 16 to 20+ tracks on it then people will download the tracks off it individually or buy the album. However there is a limit. So by week two of the release of this albums track sales will go into decline, by week three some of the tracks will fall so low in sales to drop out of the 100 chart and so on. Yet in streaming there is no limit and in fact more people could start listening more because the tracks are part of a chart, which is displayed on streaming sites. The only way to solve this problem is for the OCC to put some very strict rules on streaming of the most popular records. But if streaming does win over the sales side of things as it appears to be doing, they are just putting off what most come to past, a chart of the most popular records. But the chart has always been a sales chart. But streaming in full control is not a sales chart. It would be a chart of who's got the biggest marketing budget or fan base. Which is what we are seeing since streaming was introduced. However it's a chart few people are interested in.

I agree totally with you. But at the moment Spotify the biggest streaming service at the moment pays next to nothing to the artists. One artist had millions of streams, but the money they got from Spotify wouldn't even pay for a year's subscription to the site! At the moment the only ones making money are Bieber and Drake. My argument is that it will have to stop sooner or later. I predict sooner.

Nothing's for free. Streaming is paid for by advertising if it is free. The cost of adverts puts the price of the things that everyone uses that are done by this method. Streaming is new, so those who stream tracks for nothing are simply getting away with not paying for it now. But Record Companies are greedy bast*rds and so are the people who make the music. They will put a lot of pressure to secure more money from streaming. And frankly the advertising revenue will just not cover that, especially when streaming costs go up. So the gravy train for those who spung there music for free will come to end sooner or later.

If streaming has become dominant than you reduce the streaming ratio not increase it. When downloads took over from physical they didn't say because physicals are more expensive than downloads, we will say two downloads to one physical. So why alter it for streaming? What has happened is that there are two pressure groups pressing on the OCC. One is in favour of streaming and the other is in favour of sales. Clearly one of them has been more successful over the other with this ruling. One of the groups thinks that streaming is damaging the Music Industry. It's great if your Bieber or Drake. But crap if you can't get new records into the top 75 due to the fact Drake or Bieber have got 15 tracks in the chart each. When there is only 2 in the sales 75.

I don't get the mentally behind this. Streams are supposed to be on the increase, downloads in decline. This to me sounds like either they have made a terrible mistake introducing the streaming level that high, or the sales are not in decline and streams are going to fall off soon. Perhaps the record companies have decided that switching to streaming charts is a mistake. And that they can't flog new products to people because of it, because everyone is just listening to Bieber or Drake rubbish and not buying any new records. Great for big name artists. Crap for 90% of the Music Industry. Spotify won't be very pleased that's all I can say.

They are. Which surprises me as iTunes could have done both streaming and downloads. So the X-Factor must have fallen out with iTunes. It's a bit weird since it was not long ago that a record was rush released when a X-Factor singer download had hit the top of the iTunes sales chart. A fact they made a great deal of publicity about. It seems crazy to me to put them on a site which is locked to the public and can't access without registering. As the above link shows. As a matter of interest are the X-Factor eligible for Spotify's own chart? iTunes at first did not put X-Factor acts in their own charts, but later let them in. The reason being that it would be unfair to the competition. My own Real Chart allowed ALL the X-Factor songs in, but as it's a SALES only chart, all streamed records are excluded. The Official Chart Company are liars when they say records have stop selling, they are just adjusting the figures to make it look like they are. Easy enough to do when they never registered more than 30% of sales in the first place.

Many acts don't care about chart positions anyway and since streaming came along, they have little to care about anyway, because the singles chart doesn't relate to how much money they make. You could sell a million with streams and still get a check for less than a year's subscription to Spotify. Record companies are always interested in the chart positions. Because they still make money out of them.

James Masterton noted how regular missing data is these days. He said in the past chart insiders would get a list of those that failed to provide the data for the week on a separate sheet. He says now the OCC have stopped the practice. Though they might supply information to the big players in the Record Industry. I understand it's the Thursday part of the chart that seems to be the main problem. Some acts like the Stone Roses have been bringing out records before the Friday date. Thus if data is missing on Thursday the data cannot be estimated, because you can set up a computer program to fill in blanks when you have no data for the sales pattern. One way around this would be to allow missing data to be added the following week. But the chart companies never seem to have used that. Possibly because it could be used as way to hype a certain record. But of course the sales of the previous week really should be in the previous week, not in the current week. Instead the charts seem to have been revised. And missing data that has been found added to the chart. This practice has been found on the OCC website, where charts don't match those published at the time. Both singles and album charts. It's ironic that despite the latest technology the chart companies still have problems with data suppliers not getting data in on time. Though in the past it was caused by the Post Office not delivering on time. But also the shops not sending out the data in time. It just goes to prove that despite instant data transfer technology, a commercial company can screw the system up!

I thought I made it clear. Those figures are not worth the paper they are written on. If you believe in any sales figures put out by the Official Charts company then you might as well believe that nobody landed or walked on the moon.

It is a sales only chart. The OCC make the streams up to say they are sales! The streaming element is just a mathematical figure arrived at by the people who falsely produce the chart. They have adjusted it so even the streams represent a core figure of people listening to music. It's then adjusted further, because despite advanced technology, the companies that offer streaming services can't get all their figures in on time. The Official charts are a joke. Made up by a series of commercial companies who have vested interests in keeping the public in the dark about how many records are sold each week and the BBC which is only interested in broadcasting a chart that doesn't look like a chart from just one commercial firm that of iTunes, which is what it used to look like. The Drake record is simply a clone of Bieber. Give a person a big fan base and streaming and you can keep records at number one for ages. Sales have indeed drop down, but not to 20%. If they had dropped that low albums would not be advertised on TV, it wouldn't even pay the cost of making records at 20% and streaming pays peanuts! It wouldn't even pay for the drinks and drugs that these pop stars consume.

I used to use streaming services to record the tracks to keep. But it was so time consuming, they also jumped, plus the adverts were annoying too. In the end I switched to downloading. And have stayed doing that. I would buy Music Videos, but you can't really do that in the UK. iTunes does have something on those lines, but it's a small scale operation and restricted in what you can do with them. So it's a none starter. Therefore the only option is to use a YouTube downloader and get them that way. The inability to download Music Videos and the industry's lack of support for setting up download sites, or letting other retailers sell them, is plain stupidity on the record companies part. Music Videos cost a great deal of money to make and not to sell them on a wide scale operation is sheer madness. £2 for a music video is not an unreasonable price to offer, so why is the Music Industry not selling them?

It doesn't. But the BBC and Spotify do. The BBC benefits because the charts no longer look like the iTunes chart for the week. The BBC doesn't like the idea of supporting commercial companies. So by mixing the charts up the public can't go to the iTunes chart and see what will be number one or top ten next week. Thus it no longer looks like a commercial company's chart for the week. Since the BBC put up a great deal of the money for the charts they have a great say in how they look. Spotify benefit's over it's rival company iTunes. The two have been insulting one another for ages. An element of the Music Industry does benefit from the long term use of streaming. Since a record or download is only purchased once. One amount of money. But since streaming a track is unlimited, then the public will pay for the record over and over again. Of course there is a flaw to that. Since it's like renting a record. And the public on the whole doesn't really like renting anything. So the streaming bubble will burst eventually.

That could be cured by a TV show on a either BBC1, BBC2, ITV1 or maybe Channel 4, that only featured new records. Not featuring current chart hits. It should trigger people to at least buy them. I don't know if it would work with streaming. Artist can do the show as long as they are not in the top 40 with the record! It would have to be around 5pm on the main channels or 6pm on BBC2 or C4. One night a week - say a Friday - when records come out? It might work on Channel Five, but most of the other stations would have little impact on buying.

That's partially true, but the streaming fans can do that every week, not just once. That's what's happening with Beiber. It only takes a Simon Cowell type to come up with two more acts just like Bieber and the top ten would be blocked up with those three acts for weeks on end.

Streaming inclusion in the chart is based on the amount of revenue the streaming brings in not on the popularity of a song. It's just that those who stream a record most effect the chart by this bases. There is a difference however between sales and streams. Once you have purchased a record then you don't need to do it again. This means that a finite number of people can buy the record, a proportion of the population of the country. However there is not limit to how many times a person can listen to a record. If you calculate the streams the same way as a purchase of a record, which is what is happening now, a stream record can have a sale (eventually) bigger than the population of the UK! Adjusting the stream ratio to a level where it takes less streams to make the same price of a download, will ensure that this figure will be reached even sooner. Advertises already pay record companies indirectly by running adverts on streaming sites. Without such revenue the streaming sites would struggle under the enormous costs they are faced with for the catalogue of music they offer consumers. Indeed it is already known that several have very shaky business plans. With some sites already closed for business. Even subscriptions don't pay the full cost. And if they did very few would subscribe to the likes of Spotify. Advertising as a whole pushes up the cost of any product you purchase because the companies that use it pass the cost on to the consumer who buys the product. This explains why some branded products, who use advertising, cost more than those that don't. In the past you could advertise a product and the consumer would buy it. But these days it possible to get past the adverts, so companies have changed tactics and spent more money to get around this problem. They pass this on to the consumer, it's the only way it can be done. Though some argue, especially those rich enough to pay for branded products, that consumers benefit from reduced costs from increased sales. I think this is mostly bullshit, the costs being reduced by reducing wages, longer hours and tougher working conditions, rather than a product, being advertised. Indeed some advertising is all about the company itself and not related to any purchase of the product. Most advertising is unwanted. Like the fact that I have an add blocker on this site, youtube and other sites. So such sites have to get the lost revenue from elsewhere. Or they shut down. Advertising a product has limits. For example advertisers want to have consumers that can purchase the products. They do like the gullible people. Young people being extremely of that nature. As they get older they will loose interest in a site, which they see as simply exploiting them for their money. There is also the problem that there are not enough advertisers to go around. The more competition for advertising revenue the less money extracted from it. Thus increasing the costs. I am sure you have noticed the "P" on the TV screen over the last few years. That's there because the VCR killed adverts on TV. Multi TV channels reduced audience figures further so the products are now incorporated in the show itself. Streaming incorporates all the above problems. However because it's new and a growing audience it can get pass these problems. But only for so long... As for your final argument, that will not happen. Those forces that want to see streaming grow even more than it is will make it change in favour. They have already made certain that the download figures no longer represent the true figures that they once gave them, by simply fiddling the figures in the way the do best. As I argued when streaming was first introduced. Once Apple have gained enough ground in the streaming market, they will pull the plug on downloads, just like Sky did with analogue TV. With the help of the BBC who got their way and got a chart that no longer looks like iTunes chart for the week. Even if they no longer care two monkeys about it! - IE A Friday Chart show, reduced to get rid of the repeating crap and news and traffic bulletins !

I think the streaming ratio should entirely depending on how much each site pays to the artists for each stream. The more closer to the amount a digital download the more streams you can have. Some sites do pay something close to that, but the vast majority do not. It should NOT be the same ratio for each streaming site as I believe it is now. It's very unfair. There should also be a difference between those who actually subscribe and those who simply listen for free. It is not on to let advertises pay for the payments to record company and artists. Adverts shove up the cost of everyday products and services for EVERYONE, not just those who listen to streaming sites. Somebody is getting a free ride and the expense of others. It's like this if you move people away from buying a record, then the money that was made from that, seeing that music is still being consumed, has to come out of someone's pocket. I don't see people in the Music Industry being made redundant! So someone is paying for it, if the kids are streaming records for peanuts!

I would like to see a streaming site do live music, debates, phone ins. Also Radio pays considerably more money to the artists than any of the current streaming sites. Like it or not, if you stream music you are just robbing performers of the income they would get. If the people who stream had to pay the real cost of the streams they would switch back to downloads or just go back to illegal means of obtaining music.

Radio and the public does not decide what will be a hit. It's just a question of who's got the best marketing policy and money around to ensure what people hear. If the record companies or some clever people want to convince those that stream records to stream a record, then the people that do will do so and think, like those that posted before me, plus some afterwards, they have made a record a hit. Even the people that campaign for records to be hits on the likes of Facebook are simply responding to a marketing plan. Admittedly not one thought up by a record company. But who really cares, it all goes into the money pot. As long as radio has lots of people listening to it then marketing people will target those people into liking a record. As for streaming making hits, it's actually slowing that process down. If you look at the radio stations playlist for the whole of the UK, there is much more new material than in the whole of the streaming chart.

Many Beatles tracks have actually recently been removed from YouTube. Or blocked.

Amazon do have all the Beatles tracks for download! Beatles Amazon store?

If Google Play can sell them then they are losing their exclusive rights. What happened with iTunes last time is that they advertised the fact you can download tracks and the tracks that were advertised sold the most. I have not seen adverts much for streaming sites before, so I don't think it will have a big impact as far as streaming is concerned. If the other download sites have them that is a different kettle of fish. There are loads of older people who download from the likes of Amazon, more so than iTunes and they will want certain Beatles tracks.

What about the rest of the download sites. Are they getting them too?

Bieber in the UK is simply benefiting from the streaming rules. His big fan base ensures that his records stay high. If it was just a sales chart he would be able to dominate that charts for a few weeks tops, since the fans have to buy his records, once they have them - end of chart life. Not so with streaming, his fans can ensure that his records stay high, by doing what they like to do anyway just listen to the records. They don't even have to try to keep him top, there at that many of them it just happens. Oddly the fact that the streaming keeps the records high, people who still buy records then hear about him so the cycle encourages even more popularity for him. Sadly it's turned the UK charts into the Justin Bieber is God Chart. Not that anyone cares about the charts anymore!

Streaming is popular because it's cheap or free. But experience of music and life in general shows that doesn't last. Of course when you have to start paying for it then it's not that economical to stream. I don't see people rushing out to rent houses, when they prefer to buy them. Streaming is no different to that. You are simply renting music from streaming sites. OK by the record companies of course. My worry is with streaming is that it will turn into what happened with iTunes, everyone buys from there and no competition. It seems to be happening even now with Spotify, so it can only get worse.

The trouble with the people on here is they think the Official Chart is created for them. IT'S NOT!!!! It's created for the Record Industry - a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes... Sorry slipping into Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy mode for a minute there... However it is they who decided how the chart is compiled what goes into it and what come out of it. Nobody else. They certainly don't listen to any chart fans. Who wanted the chart moved to Friday? The record companies, because they didn't want to stop records losing out on two days of record sales. Or records entering at the top spot. If they want 100% streams, or a sales chart that is dominated by streams they will do it. They won't ask the public about it. In fact they even convince people that people are not buying records anymore much, by just hiding a few hundred thousand sales under the carpet.