Graham A

I wouldn't bet on any album released this way being out on any other retailers. Most of them rejected Beyoncé's album. You still can't download it on most download sites. Releasing an album this way is one certain way to piss off all the other sellers!

As a regular Amazon user I have not seen any download track available for pre-order. They are very common on iTunes. You can pre-order DVD's, but you pay upfront, I have currently got 12 Years A Slave on pre-order, it was paid for to pre-order it. Any price reduction is paid back to you when the DVD becomes available. Other tracks on iTunes are album only. If you agree to purchase the album you can have the specific track now for the price stated. So you have paid for the song and can download it. The system seems to be only on iTunes. Amazon do not use this method as far as I can tell. They have never mentioned it in any promo e-mails they send out anyway! In some cases you can purchase these Album tracks on the other download sites without buying the album. iTunes seems to be very privileged when it comes to the Record Industry and will often get records to download that no other site can get hold of. Some download sites don't seem to be able get some tracks that iTunes have at all, even ones that are available to other sites. Release dates are often different too, between sites. It seems that iTunes can get the cream of the crop sometimes. However some of the other download sites have reacted badly to this iTunes bias. Most notably when Beyoncé did her album there. Many download sites, with the exception of Amazon, are still refusing to stock the download album.

The Beatles Taxman comes to mind here :nono:

Oh Dear! Well take plenty of painkillers and get well real soon fchd. You have done a great job so far by the way.

Any of them could return to the top if an artist were to die. Perhaps with the exception of the likes of Mr Blooby. There could even be a Facebook campaign to stop the X-Factor number one with any of them, except of course an X-Factor number one.

The BBC fund the Official Chart, so it's a lot to do with them. The BBC has very strict guidelines on what is considered advertising. iTunes being a commercial organisation would break these rules. Radio One would look like a commercial radio station and that isn't allowed under the BBC charter. As it would be just a free plug for iTunes. That would have applied in the past so had the chart looked like the HMV chart, the BBC would have pulled the plug on the chart show. There are more rules than I have hot dinners with the chart and how it is presented on TV and Radio. Take the Chart Show Presenters, they are not allowed to do a lot of work which would compromise their status as being the chart show presenter. Other examples taken from an official BBC Guide: Here on some guidelines that the BBC use: The BBC should not partner with religious bodies, political organisations, pressure groups or lobby groups. ■ The BBC must not work with companies involved or associated with tobacco, pornography, guns, escort or marriage agencies, gambling, promotion of the occult, family planning, pharmaceuticals. ■ The BBC must not partner with fast-food or unhealthy food companies or products when children’s programmes or brands are involved. A commercial company even using the BBC logo must adhere to certain standards on how the logo is used. The BBC have always had a problem with the charts and playing records. They are in-fact plugs to make you purchase a record. This is why there is so much live music on BBC TV and radio. The BBC keeps a fine balance on the need to promote music for selling purposes and the need to play music that is just popular with the public. You might recall that a few years ago the OCC got into some trouble with the BBC over the use of Cola firm being used to sponsor them.

I think that the industry doesn't want to use streaming for albums as it would kill the sales even more than they are now dying. Besides it's the BBC that are pressing for the streaming change. I keep saying this because they don't like broadcasting the iTunes top 40, which is what the UK top 40 singles chart has become. It's too commercial for them. I bet they were not happy when AC/DC getting so high at Christmas and matched were it was in the iTunes site, despite the fact the sales chart is supposed to be a combination of ALL selling places. It's not just a one off either. Even in the current chart Beyoncé's tracks are doing much better, despite the fact that you can only get them on iTunes and Amazon. If iTunes had less than half the market in downloads and the rest was split up between a dozen sites, then the people at BBC Radio would not be pressing for the introduction of streaming. But the Music Industry has let iTunes rule the roost. It was obvious to me that sooner or later someone would put an end to the iTunes gravy train, just didn't think it would be the Beeb!

You have to be thick to vote!

Isn't the official chart just a copy of the iTunes sales for the week? You can even predict the top 3 each Sunday just by looking generally at an iTunes chart for Monday, Wednesday and Friday. That just takes the fun out of it. Plus who really cares about the charts, when the chart is filled with records that won't go away just because somebody at iTunes keeps lowering the price of certain records to 59p for a few weeks then shoving the price back up to 99p, killing the song, till they repeat the price drop a month later and the song comes back into the chart! I think that's why the BBC want streaming in the chart, to stop it looking like iTunes!

So when will the OCC count pub jukebox plays? :heehee:

Radio airplay wouldn't make slightest difference to me buying a record since the only time I listen to the radio is if I get in someone's car or a Taxi and they have a pop station on. That doesn't happen much either. I fell out big time with radio when they did away with local sales charts, plus when they separated stations into two - creating a top 40 station and classic one, which got shunted to AM radio.

The BBC are a public broadcaster, therefore has to meet the requirements needed to do that. It can't just broadcast what's in the charts, because the charts are the commercial arm of the Music Industry. They are also not very representative of the taste of what is popular in music. Even commercial radio has problems broadcasting what's in the charts at times. Going back in the past Punk caused both the BBC and ILR big problems. Simply because most of it's listeners didn't want to listen to noisy rubbish. From day one of Radio One, Tony Blackburn chose not to open with the number one, because the number one would appeal to mums not kids. Even today I bet a great deal of Radio One DJ's would not choose to play a lot of the records in the top 40 - given a choice! I bet all of them were not keen on playing Sam Bailey! "Surely at least commercial stations want to attract as wide of a range of demographics as possible?" Not necessarily so! They might want to attract only certain persons to listen, this can be worked out from adverts between the shows who is listening. For example hair and beauty products would mean young females are being targeted.

How is it not feasible? They get 1,000 people from all over the country to listen to records. The same way they get a few people to do it now. Plus I have just seen on BBC Look North that the BBC are wanting people to be on the audience panel, which is unpaid, though expenses are covered. It sounds almost like the same thing. It's not to difficult, all they would need is the person to have internet access and complete a short survey for each record.

The solution is to find out what the youngsters want. For example to have the playlist decided by say 1000 people of the target range would be a start. Not by someone aged over 50 who thinks they know what young people like. The same could be applied to the station as a whole. Does Radio One have its own forum? That might encourage debate, they could even prevent anyone over 30 joining the forum too. Is the choice of DJs correct? If all THEY want to play is dance then, unless they are restricted in what they have to play, they are not going to give the time of day to other music. Overall I suspect that the policy at Radio One is not to do what the commercial stations are doing, but no clear policy of what it should be doing.

The Jessie J track was the inspiration for the use of OAOS by other record companies, I believe the Chipmunk record suffered from being delayed. The Roberts single was after them, people that know me know that I'm not a fan of James Masterton, but he also sited the Nicola Roberts track as being affected by being OAOS, he should know he works in radio! Mind you he did say that the Zedd record wasn't affected by the cover version in his last podcast. So he does get things wrong from time to time. On the chart peaks, the record companies like to think that holding back and gaining lots of airplay helps a record to enter higher, so letting it start slow would be wrong.

That's the reason why OAOS fell out of favour with the record companies. The case in question that caused this issue was undoubtedly the Nicola Roberts single. She entered low in the chart, a Radio Station used it not to playlist it calling it a flop, so it didn't sell. After that record companies backed out of OAOS. The trouble is that the UK radio is not like USA radio, where national stations do not dominate the airwaves. I suspect that in most of the rest of Europe too, a few Radio stations do not pick up large parts of the radio audience. So OAOS doesn't make any difference to the sales of a record being stopped because a single radio station boss says it's entered a 49, so we are not going to playlist it. Also the chart is not a popularity chart. It's a sales chart. If you simply want a popularity chart, you could ask the public which records they like each week. This site could simply put a list of all the available records and people vote for them. I dare say it does already. The trouble is nobody would make any money from such a chart. And that's the problem with streaming sites. How much money is each record getting for being played by a member of the public. With what I see for the amount a streaming site charges for listening to records, then the amount a record "sells" for - for one play is too low to measure, so you have to add lots of plays together. But I still think that it would not come to much, plus don't the OCC chart have rules about the minimum price of a sale? So would a stream track have to meet the minimum sale price? Perhaps that would be so high that a streamed record would need 5,000 + to match just one download.

That's ironic because it's BBC Radio One that are pressing for its introduction in the chart!

That's not true for a none free service. This is the cost per play of each track. Fee for one month. We will use your price of £9.99. Weekly cost £2.4975 Less total time you cannot listen to stream service for the month, a sleep, eating, work, school etc. Less the time each track you listen to is playing. Less the time spent searching for music to play. Equals cost of each track you play. Footnote: cost of each track will rise up each time you play it, since it will eat into the time you have to play tracks. The longer you can spend on the streaming site the cheaper the track costs. If you don't often use the streaming site, costs will be greater than what you might spend on downloads. As download sales fall due to people streaming records, the costs of the fee will rise up as record companies try to recover costs.

The fact it was the BBC that said this is a lot to do with the argument that they don't like an iTunes top 40. The BBC has this funny balancing act between not seen as backing commercial companies and popular taste. They don't like the fact that the top 40 looks too much like the iTunes chart, that's what I think. Till someone can produce a statement from a BBC person saying that it's not a reason, it has to be considered the main reason for this change. Do the streaming sites allow explicit recordings to be listened to by younger persons? If they don't that will change the chart for the worse. Since they can't stop someone buying a record that's explicit. Didn't the BBC not play Dapper Laughs on the same grounds over the weekend. Streaming chart position for that record? "Zero" is my guess!

I think I know the reason they want to add streaming. It's to stop the top 40 looking like iTunes charts. The record industry has let iTunes take the biggest share of the chart, other download sites are ignored. You only have to look at a current Play.com top 100 to see that it's having little effect on the OCC chart, to prove this. I'm pretty certain that the BBC are not at all happy playing what is the iTunes top 40 for the week. In the past the record store chart was a mix of shops, none of which produced sales lists that were up to date, or showed with any certainty what might be number one come Sunday. That's not the case now. You can easily predict what will be top ten, just by following the iTunes chart. By opening it up to streaming it changes the look of the chart. Looking at the iTunes chart after the event of a streaming chart to find out what is going to be in the chart Sunday, will be pointless. One thing is for certain iTunes will not be happy about the combined streaming chart. The Christmas number one might well be Mariah Carey if this goes ahead.

One problem that limiting would cause is that downloads often come off different albums. They are often duplicated because they are very easy to get a licence for. There could be ten different albums all with the same track on. These days some oldies have bounced back in the chart due to some advert on TV or a special event. Some download sites don't have all the albums available for purchase, so one of these sites will be only be able to sell the special event download from one album. That might apply to several sites each with a different album. Customers will also pick and choose which version to download. So one of these special event downloads could have ten versions combined together for the chart. It's unlikely that anybody would download any twice or more. So to limit them to 3 versions would be very unfair. With the CD, the record company had to specify which CD counted towards the chart. That would be a big mistake to introduce now too! I'm am more concerned about iTunes having too much control over the chart, especially the constant flooding of it with 59p tracks that are not generally new material. It would be much better if that company had more new records sold at 59p than something by Blackstreet or Kanye West from the start of this Century priced cheap again!

45 cat is good for solving these problem. The answer is no it was not a double AA. I think a lot of people get confused with the We Will Rock You and We Are The Champions record by Queen, which was released in the same year and was a AA. http://www.45cat.com/record/emi2593

The advantage of having double A sides is that the record company can con people into buying a record twice. The most obvious example being Boney M's tracks. Another advantage is Christmas records, after the day is over. The Radio stations can play the other side and the record picks up sales. However in practice sales didn't pick up with most singles released with a none Christmas other side. I don't think Demis would have got that number one in 1976 without it being in the chart Dave. Even the Real Chart has only recorded one record that was top without making the other charts and that was down to a load of collectors and some dodgy sellers pulling a fast one on Madonna fans in 1992 with the Shine A Light record. The disadvantage is that record companies and acts have to make TWO videos which increases costs, very bad if the records don't sell. I have seen in Chart Books that this or that record was listed in the BMRB chart from this date to that date. When the record was not actually listed as a double A, simply added to the official listed A side. Was this down to the chart makers or some retailers listing that record selling rather than the A side? Robson & Jerome, I think liked AA sides, but was White Cliffs of Dover just added on or a double AA side?

Do you actually like music Suedehead2? Or are you just an aging punk rocker :heehee:

By the time the first Guinness Book came out both the NME and Melody Maker papers were not interested in the charts as they were full of pop bands such as ABBA and Brotherhood of Man. The music these papers raved about didn't go near the charts or if it did the acts that did it had sold out to the corporate media and institutions. Can you really see the NME having anything to do with Mike Read? A man who modelled himself on Cliff Richard!!