Graham A

There are no chart rules on that subject. Every song can be promoted and usually is before it's official released. Radio often get records before they are released. It's only recent that On Air On Sale has become accepted as normal in the UK. Even then certain DJ's might get an exclusive of a new record before other stations get it and it goes on sale. The only rules that would effect a record are those concerned with dodgy ways of promoting records. Giving out tea-shirts, tickets to shows and other merchandise with records, often free! If she did pull out due to a record not being released, it's entirely down to the artist or management of her label. They might not want her to sing at some venue with no record to go out and buy.

It's an interesting that if a "physical" record does become valuable and even though the recording of it is generally in copyright, nobody will actually peruse you for a share of the money that you will get from the sale of the said record even if the sale exceeds thousands of pounds! Though in the future I would have thought 3D printers will make it very easy to copy these physical singles, pushing the value down. People will probably make physical singles of the download tracks on their computer!

The only person that "definitely" knows what a record sells is those that work for the Official Charts Company. All other information given out about sales, is speculation or record industry figures that might not be true-full. You can ask the Official Charts Company what a record sells. But since the industry is a bit secretive on these facts, generally they don't issue the information. Unless they want to make a point, many times either very inaccurate or often open to interpretation, on these points. Especially if Alan Jones from Music Week is involved.

Ben Haenow sold a total of 874,000 copies without any streams included, so I do think he does work for the Head of the Official Charts Company Fiddling Sales Division! Careful there you shouldn't know that :cool:

The CD total was 47,001 the Download total 208,602 so that adds up to 255,603. If you add streaming that takes it to 261,240. Or do you work for the Official Charts Company as the head of fiddling the sales figures for every record? I have been after this guy for ages! He must be out there somewhere cause they do reduce the sales figures for every record going. Can I out you! :dance:

Don't you mean 255K in total?

Since streaming doesn't sell records it's not possible to have a million seller from streaming at all. The way things are going we might get a million seller from vinyl :heehee:

The average payout for Spotify (Feb 2014) was $0.00521 and you need about 140 streams to match 1 iTunes download there. Nokia are the best for paying out at $0.07411 and under 10 streams to match 1 iTunes sale. In-fact nearly all sites payout better than Spotify with the exception of MySpace Music. The worst of the lot is Amazon Cloud where you need 5,862 streams to match 1 iTunes sale. Presumably the Official Company does not take this into account when calculating the charts, which must be a major failing on their part. You would think that sites such as Nokia should be allowed more counts to the charts than an the 5 streaming allowed per person, while the 3 worst offenders have having much higher counts per person than the five. A simple formula based on streams to download price equivalents per site is better than just allowing 5 streams per person. It might even encourage the worst payout sites to pay more to artists!

You think it's bad! Try being an artist!!! This year Spotify sent a royalty check to an artist with a huge amount of streams. The artist sent them a thank you back, with the message - another one of them and I will be able to get the year's premium subscription to Spotify!

That might be true. But it doesn't mean a record wasn't selling. It just means it wasn't selling well in the chart shops used by BMRB. Records back then were sent out in bulk to the record shops, when first issued, so without checking each of the record shops to see what was selling, the only way a record company knew a record started to sell well is when shops ran out of stock and requested more. The only other way is if it sold in the chart shops. One record company executive is on the record as saying 'judging by our records chart positions if we are hyping records we are not very good at it!'.

Radio One always had a playlist. It was probably an add on since the days of the Pirate Stations. But it was worse than that. All the shows had a script, even down to fluff Freeman's "allright". How many times he said etc! Each show had a producer and each show was cleverly put together. Records could be marked restricted in the BBC record library and DJ's wouldn't play them. The BBC and all the Radio Stations all had a thing to deal with called "Needle Time". ALL the Records played were given a precise time limit, for each day. This could not be exceeded. It was introduced by the demand of the Musician's Union, who demanded that their members should have live work. Radio was accused of playing records too much - thus cutting down the living for musicians playing live. The Unions controlled the BBC radio and TV and the BBC was powerless to do anything about it. Needle Time has now been done away with so the stations can play recorded music as much as they like. To get around the problem of not been able to play records, they had competitions, recipes, interviews, documentaries and of course the phone in. More popular on BBC local radio of course! Of course there was no restriction on live music, so that could be used. Needle Time probably made the radio a bit more interesting back then, for they couldn't just play records all the time. For example I suspect the Radio One Roadshows came out of the Needle Time thing. They could spend ages shouting to the crowd say at Blackpool "Hello Blackpool". And Dave Lee Travis wanting a stick of rock! Of course we know now that wasn't what he really wanted! But that's the nature of presenters.

As the only really national pop music station it was important. The only other being Luxemburg, which did have a reasonable audience. Radio One did suffer a disadvantage, due to the fact it was a AM station only as was the other. Whereas the ILR were all FM stereo as well as AM. Radio One was only stereo when it took over the radio two transmitter, for certain shows such as the chart and Saturday afternoon shows, with the USA charts. John Peel was lucky to also use the Radio Two FM band, as the night time transmission of AM was bad. The Radio One playlist was more important than it is now to record companies and the record company pluggers were out in force they day that records were to be chosen for that. Some Radio One DJ's have commented in their books that all sort of things went off to get them to play a record on the airwaves. But actually Radio One DJ's and the station itself were not good at picking the hits. In fact my local ILR station Radio Hallam was independently voted the top station for prediction of hits many years running. The station's programme director and former Pirate Radio DJ, Keith Skues regularly beat all the top DJ's at Radio One for picking the most hits and he was number one nearly all the time. In fact most of the top DJ's for that were Hallam presenters, nearly all beating the likes of Tony Blackburn.

Back in 1980 records were still being issued on a Friday and then Polydor decided to release the Jam's going underground on a Monday. The chart week was Monday to Saturday (no Sunday trading). So records released Friday got only two days of sales. However Saturday could see a great deal of stock fly out the shops. But records would tend to enter low and then climb. With the success of the Jam's Monday release more record labels started to issue records on a Monday, but the change over was slow. I suspect a lot of Record Shop owners were not certain when some records were being issued. Nevertheless records were still sent to Radio Stations and DJ's in clubs etc. These were marked Promo or had a large "A" on the label. You can still see these today on e-bay and some second hand shops. Some labels put the release date on them. CBS were very good at this, but others didn't. Capital Radio in London made up the top 40 they broadcast from records the station liked. Generally they included new records as soon as they had a copy and placed it in the chart. From looking at the release dates of these records, some only had a week of promo release, others were several months, though of course not every record on the top 40 of Capital made the top 50 BMRB or top 75. A much better way of breaking a dance act were the disco's in 1980, especially the Gay clubs. The Kelly Marie single was such a record. It was VERY popular in the North of England, especially Sheffield and Bradford, but was not down London way. The BMRB chart was only based on 250 shops, plus regional sales were played down. Otherwise the chart would have a high new entry from a Football record in one particular area, when it should only be say 90! Alan Jones in Record Mirror also reported that the Kelly Marie track was selling in the local sales charts of the ILR stations in Yorkshire. They did not make them up unlike Capital! The record company cottoned on to these sales and remarketed the record on another label and the sales took off. But Radio Airplay wasn't very affective at ensuring a hit. So there were two other ways to ensure a hit. The first was the format. Coloured discs, picture discs, different sleeves, 12" records and many more. Or you bought the manager of the shops a bottle of wine, free records, which they could then sell on to the public and many other ways. If that didn't work you went to the chart shops asked to see the BMRB diary and with a lot of persuasion the owner or shop assistant would let you have the BMRB diary and you could then fill it out! The Label employing the rep, would of course make certain their products stand out records selling more that the rest, but they were not stupid and made them look like they were genuine sales, by adding some ticks to another company's records. The practice was revealed by World In Action in the same year of 1980. Ironically Warner were the worst offenders of it. And what did they do about it? Appoint the boss of Warner as the chair of the BPI!

They tested OAOS when it first came out for everybody. Though it did work for some acts, most acts suffered from the result of it. It seems that Radio Airplay is just too useful a tool in the UK to ignore. The problem is that under OAOS a record will move up the charts slowly, unless you spend money marketing it's release. But since radio does not cost much, a build up of pre-orders is the result of the delayed release. New entry at one! Not 75!!! An entry at 75 will have the media saying "flop". Even the recent Five Seconds of Summer record was called a flop entering at 18! Radio people who pick the playlist are not democratic in the records that make the list. They rarely choose them on the sound, because most records are good! So the look for an excuse not to list a record. Entering the chart outside the top ten is a good excuse. When OAOS first came out Nicola Roberts (Girls Aloud) was trying to get a solo career going. But she couldn't get the airplay for her new song, because under the system it had gone in low on the charts. Radio people called it a flop and the fact she is not having hits now or making records is proof the OAOS is not good. Record companies are aware of who's releasing records, so they try to pick a week when a record might not pushed out by a massive single release from someone else. So after enough time to play the record on radio they get the record out. Recently records have been issued ahead of schedule due to the fact a crap cover version was selling too well.

The other labels might not have option to delay Gambo if what I am hearing turns out to be correct. Apparently the EU is passing a law that will make other download sites able to sell records to members of the public not registered in their country. This means that a record released in say Germany could be downloaded by someone from the UK. As the other European countries use OAOS then if you wanted the record, you could just switch to iTunes Germany and get it from there. Of course it might not be as simple as that, there is all the business of registering with the download site, unless iTunes for example make one registration available to all European sites. I suspect what might happen is that certain sites have "download imports". Just like the old record shops of the past, used to do, actually they still do, those that are left! Of course this all depends if the EU will pass the law. It will be very complicated, since tax would be much harder to collect from consumers going to outside places to download. It will be very interesting to see what happens if the other EU sites sell downloads cheaper than 99p.

I think you have misinterpreted my comment about the future. What I was implying is the next logical step in the development of streaming isn't going to be that streaming might become the norm. As I said earlier people thought downloading would be the norm. Some kind of technological breakthrough might mean that streaming isn't needed anymore, just like downloads. A whole sequence of events could happen that could put a nail in streaming's coffin. Some of these things won't even be connected to the music industry at all. Another example of the future not going as planned... At the moment Microsoft for example are looking great with the free windows 10. But what happens if when it comes out the computer nerds hate it! That could mean the end of Microsoft in a few weeks! You never no with history. Your other statement implies that the music biz is working for the collective good of each other. That's complete bullshit! If Apple can get one over on Spotify they will. Since Apple want you to pay big time for streaming then, that will end the free service and I think the public will then look for something else to put their money in, leaving streaming with only say a small part of the music bizz. When Apple brought out it's ipod they made certain other companies couldn't use it. That doesn't sound like some business being nice about the development of new projects.

I doubt that very much! Especially the bit about the public liking something they don't know they are paying for as they think it's free, due to advertising. It's obvious that people will stream records when otherwise they would have to pay 99p for them, but advertising simply doesn't expand to meet demand. So the gravy train for the free users will end soon. Downloads were the future they said. Physical singles will vanish like the 78. Things don't happen like people expect. You only have to look at films that predicted the future. I'm not flying in cars, and kids are not hovering on skateboards. Streaming hasn't turned a corner yet and isn't Spotify loosing money? Things look rosy for streaming for the time being, but who would have predicted that download sales would start falling rapidly?

Streaming sites having charts shows that people can be channelled into their music listening habits. It's like the download sites too. They rely on people not looking for records, just visiting the chart pages. It's long been recognised. How do you get the public to like your record? Answer make certain it's in the charts. The fact that streaming sites adopted the habit of having charts is not accidental. At the end of the day streaming is just creaming off the most popular records for cash purposes, whilst not paying back the profits to artists fairly. Streaming is simply renting records and the public have not worked that out - YET. The public of course will listen to some records for years and years after the single had stopped selling. So streaming will make a chart more democratic in the public's choice, but it does nothing for new material and new acts. So instead of a top 100 with 20 to 30 new records each week, we are down to five with streaming. The use of OAOS thus will have no effect as far as streaming is concerned for a lot of new records. Streaming sites will simply benefit from the cream of the crop new records of OAOS, those that would sell anyway without much radio airplay. BUT doesn't that happen now?

Holding back records which are going to be big sellers anyway is stupid. All that happens is that cover versions cream of the sales. I can understand why iTunes is backing OAOS. But it's not for what they say it is. The real reason is that iTunes is sick of people messaging them about purchasing the crap cover versions of records that are on the radio that they can't buy, but thought they were doing. I know for certain a LOT of people do that. The only problem with OAOS is that records will start low in the charts, even on the crap OCC chart. Then build up sales. However those selecting the records for listing on a station playlist have the excuse that a record entering low is a flop. And so don't play list a track. While the public will go mad for a record from the States or from Europe that is a big hit there, they won't for some really good songs that are just emerging. That's why record companies backed away from it. I don't see how Spotify helps break records. The vast majority of people listening to Spotify have selected their own records to play. From what I've seen of Spotify it can't force people to listen to a new record unlike radio. People streaming new records on Spotify and the like are doing so because of some other source of the record, unless it's a well known track or artist. A much better way to promote new released records would be for iTunes to have the 59p policy on new records, not another offer of the Killers Mr Brightside or Snow Patrol Chasing Cars for 59p.

It's not ruled by Airplay and it certainly isn't random. It's ruled by whoever has the biggest marketing budget or the best marketing team! The videos that cost thousands and millions to make. The fight to get your record on an advert or in a film. Newspaper and magazine deals. Sending marketing people to the radio stations to get your track playlisted. Special deals for record stores and download sites - need I add more!

Release date was broken this week by Bring Me The Horizon with the Happy Song! It was issued on a Monday. So that's that rule quickly ejected. There's another chart that still uses the old week system and is more accurate as it removes any fiddling that's going off. This week's chart is featured below... As you can see the result of the Friday date is to make records come in low. I haven't included the last week's positions, but Little Mix where 21, Years 1, Avicii 32, Sam Feldt 41. Both Sam and Little Mix had downloads removed due to a certain fiddle that iTunes is pulling on the public this week. The chart is sales only - no streams. 1 David Zowie - House Every Weekend 2 Years & Years - Shine 3 Birdy - Wings 4 Lost Frequencies - Are You With Me 5 Little Mix - Black Magic 6 Walk The Moon - Shut Up And Dance 7 Avicii - Waiting for Love 8 Sam Feldt ft Kimberly Anne - Show Me Love 9 James Bay - Let It Go 10 Fifth Harmony ft Kid Ink - Worth It 11 Tinie Tempah ft Jess Glynne - Not Letting Go 12 Omi - Cheerleader 13 Ed Sheeran - Photograph 14 Rita Ora - Poison 15 Jason Derulo - Want to Want Me 16 Major Lazer ft MØ & DJ Snake - Lean On 17 Taylor Swift ft Kendrick Lamar - Bad Blood 18 Krept & Konan ft Jeremih - Freak Of The Week 19 Wiz Khalifa - See You Again 20 Flo Rida ft Robin Thicke - I Don't Like It, I Love It 21 Kygo - Stole the Show 22 Skrillex & Diplo ft Justin Bieber - Where Are Ü Now 23 The Score - Oh My Love 24 Lunchmoney Lewis - Bills 25 Galantis - Runaway (U & I) 26 Jessie J - Flashlight 27 Fetty Wap - Trap Queen 28 Deorro & Chris Brown - Five More Hours 29 The Chemical Brothers ft Q-Tip - Go 30 James Bay - Hold Back The River EP 31 Brandon Flowers - I Can Change 32 Mark Ronson ft Bruno Mars - Uptown Funk 33 new Bring Me the Horizon - Happy Song 34 Jess Glynne - Hold My Hand 35 The Weeknd - Can't Feel My Face 36 David Guetta - Hey Mama 37 Years & Years - King 38 Natalie La Rose ft Jeremih - Somebody 39 Maroon 5 - Sugar 40 Nathan Sykes - Kiss Me Quick 41 Kygo ft Conrad Sewell - Firestone 42 new John Newman Come And Get It 43 Ed Sheeran - Thinking Out Loud 44 Pharrell Williams - Freedom 45 Ellie Goulding - Love Me Like You Do 46 Taylor Swift - Shake It Off 47 Carly Rae Jepsen - I Really Like You 48 Hozier - Take Me To Church 49 The Weeknd - The Hills 50 Selena Gomez ft A$AP - Rocky Good For You 51 new Calvin Harris & Disciples - How Deep Is Your Love 52 Andy Grammer - Honey, I'm Good 53 Avicii - The Nights 54 Petite Meller - Baby Love 55 Pitbull ft Chris Brown - Fun 56 new Eminem ft Gwen Stefani - Kings Never Die 57 Hozier - Someone New 58 Example Whisky Story 59 Disclosure ft Gregory Porter - Holding On 60 Nick Jonas - Jealous 61 Taylor Swift - Blank Space 62 Shaggy I Need Your Love 63 Martin Garrix ft Usher - Don't Look Down 64 Pharrell Williams - Happy 65 new 5 Seconds of Summer - She's Kinda Hot 66 new Lethal Bizzle - Playground 67 new Jess Glynne - Ain't Got Far To Go 68 Paloma Faith - Only Love Can Hurt Like This 69 re A$AP Rocky ft Rod Stewart, Mark Ronson - Everyday 70 Florence + the Machine - Ship To Wreck 71 Ariana Grande - One Last Time 72 new Tinashe ft Iggy Azalea - All Hands On Deck (Remix) 73 Ginuwine - Pony 74 Meghan Trainor - Dear Future Husband 75 The Weeknd - Earned It (Fifty Shades of Grey) 76 Nick Jonas - Chains 77 re Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars 78 Meek Mill - All Eyes On You 79 Zedd ft Selena Gomez - I Want You To Know 80 Rihanna - Bitch Better Have My Money 81 Taylor Swift - Style 82 re Charles Hamilton ft Rita Ora - New York Raining 83 Duke Dumont - The Giver 84 Jack Savoretti - Written In Scars 85 new Major Lazer ft Ellie Goulding & Tarrus Riley - Powerful 86 new X Ambassadors - Renegades 87 new David Gilmour - Rattle That Lock 88 Ed Sheeran - Bloodstream 89 new Rudimental - Love Ain't Just a Word 90 new Kelly Clarkson - Invincible 91 new Chvrches - Leave a Trace 92 Clean Bandit ft Jess Glynne - Rather Be 93 Years & Years - Eyes Shut 94 re Christina Perri - A Thousand Years 95 new Galantis - Peanut Butter Jelly 96 re Katy Perry - Roar 97 new Future ft Drake - Where Ya At 98 re Alesha Dixon - The Way We Are 99 Charlie Puth ft Megan Trainor - Marvin Gaye 100 new Shura - White Light

I get what he means. I think it started when iTunes got the largest share of the market. This American company attracts only a certain type of users. They were basically interested in certain types of music in the USA top 30. For example they don't give a toss about the Country music that's in there. Only R&B and Rap. There's another section of it's buyers that are interested in dance music. Any other genres are of course sold, but have little shelf life. Bands and acts that could sell CD singles, such as Westlife, couldn't sell a thing on iTunes. Nor could many of the guitar based bands. Sites other than iTunes that could sell them, such as HMV, were blocked from using the Apple ipod, as they had to sell WMA files, which didn't work on it. These were also copy protected. So they couldn't be transferred. Even when the sites could sell MP3, they were so marginalised they couldn't get iTunes buyers to move to them. One of the problems being customers had to use cards to pay. The youngsters didn't have bank accounts, so the parents could give them money for iTunes vouchers instead. But they are no good for the other sites, so thanks to ipods and the voucher, iTunes had customers locked into the system. You can bet your life that many of the people who buy the records in the physical charts don't have iTunes accounts. Hence why they are so like the charts of old. As I'm not a radio listener, I couldn't say if the dance music buyers of iTunes source the records from radio airplay. But since the record companies are holding back the release of these records to ensure radio airplay and cover versions are getting the sales, presumably it must be certain stations that are playing these records a lot.

You don't think you actually are seeing record sales issued out of the OCC computer? What you are seeing each week is a computer program of what the record sales should look like according to the terms dictated by the music industry. It has to take in a great deal of errors each week, caused by consumers and retailers, plus electronic issues. Then there are the complex rules about streaming data. Millions of streaming information all needing adjustments, so they don't cause an in balance between sales and streams. Name one piece of complex software you have used that doesn't crash or produce data errors. Then imagine trying to collect data from all over the UK using it. Apparently the OCC chart once had a packet of KP salted peanuts top of the chart, till somebody noticed it. Don't forget the chart's have to be completed in just over 12 hours, after close of play.

Just because people are driving home at that time and listening to the Radio doesn't mean they are interested in what's in the charts. The chart show on a Sunday was flopping because they had a sequence of DJ's presenting it that were not interested in the chart. This was obvious from the fact there was no discussion about the acts, chart movements. In fact many presented it got facts wrong, insulted acts that were in the charts, by saying things like "ask your dad". No doubt Greg James will be no different. Even James Masterton, a supporter of the move, since he sucks up to anything the OCC send his way, was clearly thinking that Radio One would use the option to cut down the chart run down to a top ten when they can. The fact that they can't shift the news is clear how the future chart show will go. Many on here pointed out that with streaming records hang around for a long time, thus making the chart boring each week. Thus a reduced chart will allow Radio One to play the interesting records such as climbers or new ones. But Radio One could have solved the problem of long running records repeated each week by playing the numerous remixed versions of the tracks, instead of the radio edit. But they didn't even try. That shows you how unimaginative Radio One is. Initially the Chart Show will do OK, but as the novelty wears off, then the audience will go away. To get them back they will introduce an oldies section. The top five from 10 years ago etc, or something along those lines. And competitions. Reducing the top 40 records, but keeping the top ten of course. It doesn't really concern me anyway as Radio lost me ages ago. The only time I listen to radio now is friends cars, but more frequently Taxi's. Most taxi drivers listen to Radio Two, BBC Local stations or ILR Radio Stations. We have used Taxi's a lot for many years. I don't recall any listening to Radio One.

They will when the Friday show flops ;)