Gambo

I regard myself as fortunate in having been exposed to pop music on radio at a very early age, initially through my parents, and so chances are the first chart (or part of one) I would've heard would've been 1979 or '80, but although I'm blessed with a very good memory, I was too young to really engage with all the detail at that point. However, after my parents finally modernised and bought a new hi-fi in July 1981 (one of those silver things in a cabinet with record deck, radio, single cassette deck, recording level needles, a storage space for your vinyl underneath and a glass door!), my Mum suggested that I should listen to the charts on Sunday afternoons, given my obvious interest, and the improved capacity to record from the radio in better quality. So I strapped on some ludicrously large headphones and knelt in front of the stereo, poised to record the songs I liked from the Radio 1 Top 40 show onto a nice new TDK C-90, making as sure as possible to push 'pause' before Tony Blackburn blundered in! Not sure of the exact week, but likely Sunday 19th July. There were some corkers charting at that point, and I still feel very fondly about 1980s chart music for all its faults. I'm grateful I got with it a fair sight sooner than many of my peers did. To a greater or lesser degree I've followed the singles chart since, although my religious/regular Top 40 listening only lasted until the late 1990s, when I started falling-out of love with a lot of what passed for pop, and the sheer turnover of the chart with only new entries and downward movements made me lose interest in trying to keep pace with it. I dipped-in frequently to the show in the 2000s, but with so few singles I buy (yes, BUY!) ever making the Top 100 let-alone 40 nowadays, and it now being broadcast on a Friday, the recent 2010s has seen far less direct engagement, and I think I'm more-or-less done with it as a broadcast. I tend to follow the official charts now more from a wider interest in the music market and how it develops, for better or worse, not so much the tracks that populate it, though sadly, the ongoing skew that streaming has introduced and the messy rules now applied by the OCC are only serving to reduce that interest!

I couldn't agree more with those who have commented that the charts are there to reflect what is going on in real markets - or at least should be. In which case, they should not be restricted to accommodate or iron-out perceived inconveniences or inconsistencies that the current sales or streaming sectors inherently entail, due to behaviour of consumers that is either organic or massaged by the record industry. The OCC - or its predecessor CIN - did not seek to somehow amend the singles chart formula during the 1990s just because of the increased usage of 'front-loading' marketing norms that led to songs entering at their peak only to fall back thereafter, virtually eliminating sustained upward movement from the countdown and shortening the lifespan of many singles for ten years 1995 to 2005. Many commentators, both consumers and industry figures, disliked this as it was a seemingly skewed and unconventional behaviour for singles after three decades of consistent entry-climb-peak-decline, across 10-20 weeks for a bigger hit, and felt wrong. Indeed there was much talk in the early '90s, even before the entry-at-peak trend really became fully-embedded but during a period of declining sales, of altering the formula to align more with Billboard's, i.e. add an airplay factor to create what would have been a false impression of tracks building for longer towards a peak which would only be triggered once actually made available to buy. Happily, the idea was never fleshed-out or inaugurated. So the chart did become predictable in that everyone following music knew what would likely be the big new entries each week, with no real excitement beyond the debut week's position of a song due to the sheer turnover of around half the Top 40 every 7 days. Yes, I think that did do a lot of damage to the reputation and perceived relevance of the chart, with many older fans drifting away from it, even if they retained an ongoing interest in consuming current releases. Yet would that have been reason-enough to have justified CIN fiddling with the formula to complicate and arguably artificialise the rankings? I would say not, though others may disagree. For all its faults, the chart represented what the industry - and eventually the buying public - wanted of the pattern that singles were promoted, released and bought, which eventually gave way gradually from the mid-'00s as digital downloads shook-up the way we consumed tracks in general, and later the move from purchasing to renting music via online streaming sites. Chart behaviour moved along with those developments, with the reinstatement of more sustained ascendance and slower descendance to and from peaks, and a much lower turnover than anyone could've foreseen only a decade before. So should the OCC, after awkwardly combining streams with sales in both singles and albums charts despite the inherent differences in the type of consumption, have subsequently started introducing restrictions in response to the some-say inevitable occasional mass-dominance of one very popular artist in one or two week's charts caused by en-masse immediate streaming? Or just let the chart reflect the new realities, however skewed they seem to some, and whatever the risk of some thinking that reality somehow reduces the relevance or worth of the tabulation as a whole? I have to say the latter, as despite some people finding it ridiculous that all of an Ed Sheeran's album tracks can block-out 20 out of 25 positions in the full Top 200 tracks listing, that is how the streaming sector operates, and surely it discredits and devalues the notion of having an official chart far-more to airbrush oddities out and artificially-manipulate published positions on it than to just let it evolve and reflect what is actually happening? If we look back at the 1990s/2000s era when many chart followers are thought to have deserted the concept often owing to the pace of turnover, it has become clear in the years since that there remains much nostalgia for the charts of those years among those who were young and caught-up in the culture of that period, and that they miss that frantic turnover and race for a different song to be at No 1 every week. And lest we forget, the late '90s in particular saw very strong physical sales, which showed that the interest in the format per se had not all-but-evaporated as many doomsayers predicted earlier in the decade. When it did die, for another decade, downloads filled the gap and again, with a little stuttering along the way, the chart was only adjusted so that it could properly-include that format alongside its physical counterparts. Very few restrictions were applied from January 2007 onwards. As with all other prior trends, we've seen them all develop and eventually lose currency through time, however set and unassailable they appeared - from front-loaded CD singles, to all tracks being available immediately for download, via on-air/on-sale, through to playlisting and streaming replacing purchasing as the chief means of consumption in a matter of five years. It's fairly certain then that whatever happens in music in the coming years, the fearsome pace of technological change and willingness of consumers to move with that lead will ensure that the extremities of the present chart will likely not exist in another five or ten years' time. So its shape and behaviour may well settle into a different - or previously-familiar - pattern yet again. The chart administrators simply need to let that happen naturally and not interfere unduly with it in the neurotic way the OCC have been since 2015.

In fairness Ben I hadn't seen those figures. In a way I'm pleased if I'm being proven wrong on the assumption that the official chart gets few regular listeners. For all its faults now, it remains the anchor of chart broadcasts and does carry the 'official' status in a way that ILR competitors never can. Are those numbers live as it is originally broadcast or inclusive of any catch-up listens? I don't know how they compile radio ratings now. I only ask because I still struggle to see how many people who'd likely be interested in the countdown would make themselves available to hear it as it is announced. That said, I guess school kids are a fair share of the audience and they're well-home before it starts, and have in the main yet to discover the joys of the early evening Friday-nighter on the town! For my own part as a youngster I remember I used to be pissed-off that I'd nearly-always miss the initial announcement of the new chart when it was on a Tuesday lunchtime pre-Oct '87; I was almost always at school and so had to wait for the fuller (but by the time it was aired almost redundant) Sunday show, blank cassette and forefinger at the ready!

Surely this move has been less about giving earlier exposure to tracks destined to chart or climb on the Friday full-week frame or 'building anticipation', and more about trying to fill the historic Radio 1 Sunday afternoon 'chart slot' with something more meaningful that people might actually want to listen to? Albeit that it was driven by the (I still think errant) decision to move the chart week from Friday to Thursday in accordance with the general shift to Friday as new releases day, and it seemed to make logical sense to be the first to air the official rankings, I think Radio 1 scored a huge own goal by moving the main chart broadcast to Fridays from Sundays, at least in terms of listenership, as there are so many more people who can set aside the time on a Sunday than a Friday. As someone who long-since fell out of love with the type of music that tends to make the Top 40, and in response to the very slow turnover of hits, I haven't been too concerned about missing the official chart on Friday afternoons, but had I been so, it would've been a real blow as it's just not a convenient time to listen. I do sometimes have the Big Top 40 on as background on a Sunday afternoon as despite it being of little relevance in terms of the positions, and not being 'official', I'm simply more likely to be pottering around the house and want to have something on the radio, and that presents as a convenient option. Granted, we now have podcasts and catch-ups but the whole point of a chart show surely is that is a live fresh-off-the-press broadcast; it doesn't quite have the same interest if heard a day or so later. So in effect, all that the move served to do was shift attention away from the official chart and transfer what small listenership there was left for it over to ILR. I think in this day and age while there retains some interest in hearing a chart countdown, there's probably less concern about the specific positioning of tracks, accuracy, how official it is etc. People just want a chart rundown experience to have on, regardless of details. It's almost a tradition for some. Hence why the Big Top 40 for all its faults holds all the aces and R1 are left struggling to retrospectively-fill the Sunday void they created. An airplay chart based solely on what that station plays was never going to cut it. I suppose a 'chart update' is probably their best option for competing with the BT40, although of course it will only be an hour, not three. It will be interesting if they present a rules-free update though, without the starrings-out etc, as per the updates that feature on MW.com during the week. I suspect they might apply the rules to the Sunday update for broadcast purposes though, as surely it would seem illogical - and undermine the reputation of the full-week official chart on Fridays - were they to air any anticipated hits on Sunday that miraculously get airbrushed from the Friday edition owing to the three-track rule? I think the less attention drawn to the artificial removal of certain songs from the official listing the better. The chief concern though has already been aired by several on this thread - given that they still seem to be without key streaming data from some of the biggest players even come Wednesdays, how complete can a Sunday update really be? To say that it will derive data from all streaming sites for the Sunday show just doesn't ring true to me, and if it is mostly made up of actual sales data without much in the way of streaming, the rankings of a Sunday will be far-removed from what they will likely be come Friday. I guess for those who would like a return to a sales-only tabulation that would provide some greater interest, but the disparity between the two Top 20s will soon become apparent.

Missed this initially as I was on holiday abroad happily ignoring the news generally, as it would doubtless be dominated in the UK at least by the Tory leadership race and the Trump visit! Although not an iTunes user, I am nevertheless heartened to hear that they're not closing the actual paid-for purchases store - just yet at least. We've all tended to assume that as it presumably still commands a lion's share of the overall digital sales market (?), once iTunes does finally shut for downloads, the other sites will steadily follow, unless they're interested in retaining a slightly-bigger portion of a shrunken market and provide downloads as a 'niche' offering. I don't know about Amazon - I imagine they're probably runners-up in what remains of the sales sector and I've heard nothing to indicate they're lessening their support for digital music product (again though - ?). But - for reasons I shan't try to relate here - I've always used 7Digital since I began having to download singles at the beginning of the decade, having stuck with CDs for as long as I could. I've noticed that for many months now - probably around nine - they've ceased bothering to refresh their new tracks/albums weekly, with only one update in that period, a few weeks ahead of the Christmas market. I'm also noticing that some current releases are not featuring on this site, or, where the artist is apparently listed, when one clicks on it to access their releases, there's nothing there, just a blank page. I can't see anything about it on any forums, possibly because what's happening with a small player like 7Digital in paid-for downloads is so irrelevant to people now, but I'm guessing none of these lackadaisical indicators bode well? It is starting to make me wonder whether sites like this will actually shut-up their shops sooner than Apple, if their sales and relative market shares are now even-smaller than before and sufficiently minuscule to render it not worth bothering? Okay I can move to Amazon or whatever and all my files are downloaded to a device. But it just feels like a repeat of ten years ago when physical purchasers were being forced onto digital - at least in respect of singles if not albums - and now digital purchasers are being forced towards streaming whether they want it or not. As a curmudgeonly old git I shall probably be one of the last to give up on downloads, and envisaged it would be after 2020, but it seems I may now have less time to go before either succumbing unwillingly to streaming new material, or falling off that particular cliff completely.

A genuine best-of-British talent, and despite having a fair number of hits, underrated indeed, especially her more recent less-dance-orientated material. I seldom find a female vocal truly sexy but she manages it; so refreshing to hear someone who doesn't just try to ape the usual urban histrionics of your Mariahs and Beyonces, and actively eschews any falsely-American sound at all, in both vocals and production values. 'Read My Lips' remains an enduring album which carried many songs that could've passed for potential lesser singles and I'm pleased it is still her best-seller album-wise. In a way it was a shame the focus was on presenting her as a disco queen for singles - obviously far-more commercially-relevant and marketable at that time - but this meant her initial more thought-provoking and sophisticated electronic tracks were inevitably put in the shade. Touches of genuine class in pop were rare even in 2001; sadly now they're almost impossible to find, so it's nice to remember the contribution Ms Ellis-Bextor made on that front (and still does, just less-commercially).

As a point of fact, 'No Good (Start The Dance)' was in fact released in May 1994. Real shame about Keef, but his tufty haircut occasionally lives-on when I step out of a shower and half-dry my own hair and look in the mirror...

Zeus - quite an interesting site which I'd not seen before, although there are - I suppose inevitably - various anomalies, beyond just whether the charts he's using are regarded locally as 'official' or otherwise. How does he make the UK charts date from 1950, for example?! Maybe he uses the sheet music tabulations before late 1952, but that doesn't seem quite right to me, especially as they would go back further anyway so no reason to begin from that year. It's also news to me that the Australian charts can be dated back as far as 1940, while he only seems to date the US ones from ten years later, despite Billboard having begun publishing a singles sales chart from mid-1940?!

For those of us with a general interest in sales levels across the years though, surely it's always interesting when the OCC issues these lists of artist bestselling/streamed tracks to date, despite the confusion they always seem to create by providing sometimes inconsistent figures? Whether or not Louise happens to have been one of one's preferred artists, or whether she sold in larger or smaller numbers relative to others, the figures themselves are interesting if only to help frame the context of the wider sales market at the peak of the act's success, and to estimate in some cases how enduring they've been in the digital era as a catalogue artist. It's not always about offering us the tallies for the biggest-selling/streamed acts. And lest we forget, albeit most of them having brief (sub-ten-week) tenures in the Top 75, Louise did enjoy a run of several Top 10 hits between 1995 and 2003, and was regarded as a significant pop act of the time for the first three years of that era. I too am slightly surprised that none of her hits managed over 200,000 sales at the time of original release, given the overall strength of the singles market in the mid-late '90s, but that in itself is interesting in my book as it can help us calibrate our estimations of how much other similarly-performing artists active in the market at the same time might've shifted, where OCC figures are yet to be reported.

For me this would be a bit of a disappointment if it didn't use a format of picking an official chart from say this week in a previous year from the 1970s-'90s (or possibly the official best-sellers of the year as a whole), as I think it would be more apt to have the authoritative-yet-engaging chart delivery style of Mark Goodier associated with a proper countdown of some gravitas, rather than some retrospectively-made-up countdown with little meaning. But it worries me that it seems inextricably-linked to the Now! series, as I can't see them not using this as an opportunity to promote the currently-flagging compilation brand by - presumably - only picking songs that were (or have subsequently been) included on at least one of their albums, which would narrow the field and make countdowns predictably selective. Obviously that couldn't apply to contemporaneously-issued regular Now! releases for years prior to 1983 when they started, but I believe the brand has since issued numerous retrospective editions covering tracks from prior to its own inception, so technically they could probably be able to cover the '70s/early '80s via those. Maybe they'll do a countdown of a genuine vintage chart, but will only play the songs that featured on a Now! album? Either way it'll be good to hear Mark's voice counting down hit singles once again if only for nostalgia, but the programme will miss a trick if it doesn't seek to become an authentic and better rival to Pick Of The Pops as the vintage chart show of note, irrespective of whether music played has a direct feature on a Now! package.

A year is impressive, but didn't Tony Blackburn manage two without break 1980-'81? Pretty committed.

Regarding the apparently very prompt decision to introduce the latest rule tweak to the car-crash marriage that is the streams-cum-sales combined singles chart, it seems to fit in with the pattern established in recent years, when OCC introduce changes once every six months, either taking effect the first week of January or of July. I don't know if this means they only review their rules at fixed half-yearly intervals, but it certainly implies this. Although should some kneejerk alteration suddenly be deemed necessary in between the Jan/Jul change cycle, I daresay they'd introduce it sooner without waiting until the next regular rule change point. They probably would've done so following the Sheeran debacle, but (ludicrously) it would've taken them by surprise and so they needed another three months to formulate what they and the industry agreed as a suitable solution, which essentially took them to the usual July mid-year change point anyway.

A very timely - and handy - reference tool Dan, that clearly-explains the situation with streaming integration into the main charts clearly and concisely. Only one extremely minor error - it's been announced video streams will count from W/C 6th July, not "W/E" (the W/E date will of course be 12th July).

I've never used iTunes, preferring another online retailer, so the question for the likes of me who prefer to continue buying singles as downloads is how long it might take other competitors to cease their offerings after Apple pull out (okay I get that they're keen to emphasise there's no fixed date yet for that but let's face it, it's on its way and quite possibly during 2019 or '20 at latest). On the one hand Amazon, 7Digital et al might see it as worthwhile continuing to at least absorb the residual market iTunes will have left behind - which in a year's time may still represent over 500,000 tracks sold each week - for a few more years, or just follow suit and gradually shut-up shop. I suppose that may depend on whether each download retailer has a viable streaming platform in place; those that don't by now will likely struggle given the long-term domination of Spotify, and rising competition of Apple Music. So if they want to try and stay in business longer, they may seek to try and specialise in the sales sector, however much in decline it currently is. One note of caution to sound here, based on historical experience in recorded popular music consumption across the last 60 years: each time a format was in steep decline and presumed dead, it has ended up clinging-on, however tenuously and albeit as a niche product. Vinyl never completely died off even at its nadir in the late '90s and now is a relevant if modest sector of the physical market; cassette had died essentially by the early '00s but is seeing a very slight revival in the late '10s; CDs singles died by the early '10s and albums were assumed to follow, yet 50% of the (albeit declining overall) albums market remains on that format. The only significant past formats that have truly died out owing to the market moving on to better things are cartridge, shellac disc and mini-disc! Downloaded singles are dwindling rapidly in the face of streaming and albums downloads have never quite hit their stride, but there's nothing to say that they won't always have a small but relevant segment of the music-buying public, and who knows, possibly enjoy a revival in years to come - probably less on the basis of collectability and nostalgia as has been the case with vinyl and cassette, but a realisation that it's actually preferable in many ways to own a copy of something than rely on a streaming service to always provide what one needs to listen to. It might seem baseless, but so did the other turnarounds described above ten years before they happened. Digital sales have had their brief heyday. But it shouldn't and doesn't necessarily mean all means of purchasing in that format should disappear, even post-iTunes.

I'd need to double-check, but from memory I believe the first time that feat occurred was W/E 19 April 1997. There was concern at that stage that by the end of the century the entire Top 10 (and beyond into the 20) would be new entries on a regular basis. Happily, despite the best-efforts of the front-loading effect that the industry was so set on in that era, that never quite materialised, and despite repeated examples of seven newbies in the ten across the next few years, I don't believe eight was ever achieved on the official chart. Personally I hated that 15 new entries almost every week period, albeit that I concede things felt a lot 'fresher' and diverse than they do currently. I guess that's because I brought myself up in an era when chart movement was slower, but crucially not as slow as now - in the 1980s the norm was an average of say perhaps three new entries, four breakers from below No 40, a further ten climbers within the 40, 15 or so descending, and three non-movers, with an average chart life of eight to 12 weeks within the Top 40 for a record that made the Top 10 or 20, hitting that peak around the middle of that tenure. You never knew quite what was going up or where new stuff would land, as things built organically over the weeks and it wasn't all about that week's new releases, which by the late 1990s one knew would take up most of the expected positions at the top end and then often fall back quite precipitously. And of course there was no media issuing midweek info to give sneak previews! By the same token, records would descend steadily but readily, which allowed for a fair balance whereby enough space was freed typically each week to allow newer material to enter/rise further, keeping turnover at about the right pace.

As regards 'What You Know', although only a modest (no 64) sales hit in February 2011, it has tended to feature around the Top 200 or not-far-below echelon of the charts for some years, as have a couple of Two-Door Cinema Club singles. It has hovered around that sort of level for a long period, trickle-selling consistently on download. I don't know the OCC tallies, but I suspect it has probably proven to be one of the act's biggest sellers overall - if not the biggest. So perhaps the fact that the steady drip of understated but enduring interest now seen in recent streaming of the track isn't quite so surprising, as its appeal in the sales-only arena has been unusually persistent for a song that was never a major hit at any time. Saying that, when one considers the likely saturation on streaming of some of the really big hitters released in each calendar year - particularly those issued in the 2010s contemporaneous to the rise of streaming as a mode of consuming music - it is notable that some much-more minor songs were apparently streamed more during last year than those were. I think the point made above about the time of year some of these were released is important, though it only partially-explains the unexpectedly-weaker showing of the megahits for some years in 2017 streaming terms. An interesting list and one I hope they repeat next year; the comparison will be intriguing and year-on-year will help to build a longer-term view on what the truly most-enduring songs on streaming actually are. I suspect that tracks like 'Africa', 'Wonderwall', 'Mr Brightside' and 'Shape Of You' will likely cling-on to their crowns as most-streamed release of their respective years for quite some time to come.

A fascinating article, and one that confirms the revelation (well, it was a revelation to me at least after more than 30 years) that the official Gallup chart was available on Sunday afternoons almost a year-and-a-half earlier than Radio 1 began broadcasting it in that slot! I'd assumed, as I suspect many at the time and since have, that until October 1987 when it finally caught-up a week, the tech just wasn't up to facilitating a completely-compiled (i.e. fully-checked for anomalies etc as described in the RM article) chart in the 17-hour period from the close of the sales survey week to the time the Top 40 chart show aired. I've thought about this, but I really can't see why "the industry" at large would've sought to have retained the policy of airing the official new numbers to the then-vast amounts of the public interested in them, a whole two days after they were potentially available? What was the gain? Okay, back in the mid '80s the notion of having to get things 'out there' with any kind of immediacy wasn't as acute as it is now, when it is not only legitimate to expect it, but the speed of the way media is consumed online demands it. Things did, and so could, move at a slower pace in the physical rather than virtual world. But even so, not even a move to Monday? And all this with the Network Chart competition breathing down its neck on a Sunday? It can't have been because they believed the Tuesday lunchtime slot was such a great one for listeners that it was worth maintaining, when clearly so many more listeners would've been available to tune-in on a Sunday afternoon - or even a Monday evening pitch. I presume that all the pressure that eventually led them to move to Sunday 17 months late came from Radio 1 itself as it became acutely-conscious of growing disparity between its chart show listening figures and ILR's, and also that controllers tuned-in to the fact that it was no longer acceptable in an increasingly-computerised climate to dish-up a countdown for the week just outgoing rather than incoming, when it could be avoided. In catching-up a week, the Gallup chart was put back in front of the Network in terms of currentness, given the latter's survey week had already ended four days prior to broadcast (Gallup's would now be reflecting sales as recent as one day before). Perhaps this just reflects the sort of arrogance we have seen from "the industry" since, when faced with even-more pressing and potentially damaging issues. An obvious one is the slow and confused response to the prevalence of illegal downloading by the turn of the century, which seemed to just rely on the rapidly-ageing models of selling physical product while making huge capital gains - we saw it in the insistence on charging £15 for CD albums well into the 2000s (and the deliberate withholding of radio singles to force album sales in the US). More recently, in the chart world we have the apparent complacency of the OCC, who seem to just simplistically-rely on the leverage they think they can always gain by being able to use the "official" tag for its output, despite the mess that it's made in trying to keep pace with digital developments, and the constant inconsistencies and errors it makes which many blithely accept because they are the sole authority on chart history, however appallingly it misinterprets or rewrites it. It is actually quite refreshing to see that in 1987, the fact that one chart may have had the "official" trump card to play wasn't ultimately enough to ensure its primacy in the face of alternatives, and a change in policy was forced. If only I could envisage something similar happening with the present dogged state of the UK (and the more I see of them, US) charts - not to mention that of their respective radio broadcasts!

Okay; thanks SmiffJ. Maybe in the meantime I should update my listing to reflect yours where they differ!

This is interesting. I took a complete copy of Gezza's 1990-'94 estimates a while before he withdrew them with the intention of revising them (presumably he has since gained access to some more accurate figures or means of estimating?). Most of these match those posted by SmiffJ above, but with a fair number of sometimes quite notable differences; for example Smiff's figures for the October 1993 to January 1994 period differ quite considerably from what Gezza originally posted. I wonder what might have accounted for these differing numbers? Where it deviates, is Smiff's version of events to be considered more reliable than Gezza's originals (at least until such time as he is able to republish his refreshed weekly totals)? Or, did Gezza amend some of his figures ad-hoc after I cut and pasted them, before deciding to withdraw and re-evaluate the entire five years' worth, and it was him who provided these adjusted tallies reflected above? Grateful for clarification folks if possible.

Despite there being understandable reasoning for the hotch-potch they've made of the weekly charts by combining two entirely distinct ways of consuming music into one tabulation, I have never seen that there is such impetus for combining paid-for sales and rented audio streams for the purpose of bestowing BPI certifications. In that context if nowhere else nowadays, sales should remain just that - actual sales, uncomplicated by the clumsy equations to create notional sales units from streaming. However, in this era of steadily-declining sales across digital and physical formats apparently in favour of streaming, a new series of awards should have been created to honour those who are tracked as having attained certain streaming totals - and by this I mean actual streaming numbers, not some artificial equivalent figure based on a ratio of streams to actual sales. So there could've been say Silver = 50m, Gold = 100m, Platinum = 200m or whatever would be considered suitable points for awards. I believe some sort of awards are given for the number of registered plays on radio (don't know the details), and so I'd envisage it would work similarly to that - i.e. entirely separately from whatever titles manage to achieve in respect of paid-for copies. But of course this is a complete fantasy. As it is, I don't really see how this will translate into anything different to now, bar perhaps certification receiving a little more press interest if it has the word 'Brit' prefacing it.

Whilst the New Music Friday initiative was rolled-out globally, I don't think it was the case that every chart-compiling nation chose to adjust their survey week to suit it. I haven't revisited the specific arrangements being made by different countries in 2015, but I seem to remember that while each made some adjustment for it in terms of compilation/publication/broadcast dates etc, the UK was one of the few that opted to go for the split-calendar week of Friday to Thursday, and it was essentially because labels wanted to see a full week's sales/streams as that would maximise - or bottom-out depending on how you look at it - their new releases' initial chart positions. As DanG observed above, this soon became largely-irrelevant as the rapid take-up of streaming over sales has meant that it is far-harder to register a peak position, especially in the Top 10, in the maiden week of release. The nature of streaming currently is that bar key releases from the most major and keenly-anticipated acts like Bieber or Drake, tracks build to a peak, less-so than in the sales sector. As streaming is now over 93% of the combined market, inevitably it is now more about what position your single can attain on the combined chart in a month, two months or maybe even more following release, if labels are patient enough to care. Personally I think that's a preferable scenario to the instant quick-fix-then-out era of c.1995-2005, but the downside has been excessive stagnation as while the climbs to chart peaks are more steady - and I'd say more exciting as they're less-easy to predict - the declines from peaks are incredibly long and drawn-out, tapering across what can be several months even with ACR now in play for published positions. The ideal would be to keep the culture of interesting climbs up the ladder, but accelerate the retreats downwards. But that would mean changing the chart by imposing even more arbitrary exclusions/restrictions, which would only render it even more artificial than now. No; instead the market will just have to change and evolve over time. It always has, for better and worse, and so it's fair to say the shape of things in the late 2010s probably won't be the trends we'll be witnessing in the late 2020s. Whether the chart show will ever properly or seriously reflect whatever is in store in future however, I rather doubt. Indeed, will it still exist at all in ten years' time?

Although I still purchase singles, most of them stay well-away from the Top 100 nowadays as they're not hip-hop/R&B/rap/urban, and I'm far-too-old to be listening to the Top 40 countdowns now anyway! But, if I were a more relevant, regular listener, I would endorse some of the ideas put forward above, as although they are challenging the current, limited and stale format, they accept the chart as-is by broadening its scope and cherry-picking the more interesting moves within it, while keeping the show's "young people interactive" format, which many of us older chart fans hate but must concede is probably more in-tune with modern listening preferences than a more formal, stricter countdown that presents solid facts and figures, as was more the case pre-2000. Extending its time to accommodate a Top 100 would be a really interesting way of rejuvenating it; not that the average typical kid just cares about the size or positioning of the chart rundown - probably they care all-too-little about the finer details - but it would sound good when seeking to rebrand it. They could call it "The Chart Show", but why not make more merry of it and brand it "The Hit 100" or some such catchy line? Despite all these good ideas however, there is one which to my mind would restore a fair bit of interest in the show, and not least listener share compared to its competitors, and that is simply MOVE IT BACK TO SUNDAY AFTERNOON! I haven't seen the latest RAJARs, but I'm guessing that despite its lack of 'official' status, ILR's "Vodafone Big Top 40" now commands a far-superior audience than its once-all-conquering Radio 1 equivalent, not because it's inherently a great format all-round, but mostly because they stuck with the Sunday slot as being the more conducive to the bulk of live listeners than moving to a Friday early evening. Even those who like the latest R1 format are often stymied because they are at school or working when it is aired. If you move back to Sunday, you immediately allow much more of a splash to be made by it, with more time, a longer chart length, and picking the new/climbing titles outside of the full Top 10 or 20. Stick to a single presenter - Greg James will do although I agree with the comment that "he's no Mark Goodier" (neither might I add is Scott Mills!) - and keep it simple. No fuss with competitions and texts; just as dynamic a playlist as the chart in its slow-moving state will allow across the published 'compressed' Top 100 positions. Some might baulk at this given the official chart is now released two days earlier, but then in an era of midweeks and constant digital updates of so many different charts, OCC and otherwise, does that really matter that much? The R1 Sunday show that began in September 1967 was a whole week behind until October '87! Better-still, my response to that criticism would be "move the official chart frame back to Sunday-to-Saturday, in closer alignment with the actual calendar week"! The Big Top 40 seems happy to run on that traditional, sensible frame despite the 'New Music Friday' release date initiative, and still seems fresher than its official counterpart aired two days earlier because it can include some new titles issued that Friday, albeit with just their first two days of sales/streaming action. Given that as much music seems to be released on other days of the week anyway, has the slavish adherence to a weird Friday-to-Thursday frame since July '15 really worked, and is it time to revert? If the official countdown did so, it'd be on a far-more level playing field with its Big Top 40 competition, and that magic of being the official listing - for all its current perceived faults - might help put it back to the fore, in tandem with a more creative, focused format of presentation. Oh, and while they're at it, they could do a brief resume of songs that have been 'starred-out' of the official positions owing to the stupid "more than three tracks per act" exclusion rule. Okay, that's probably one for the more dedicated chart geeks, but it'd be helpful to know what's missed-out only because of the present chart rules despite accruing enough consumption of both types to have landed within the 'uncompressed' rankings.

I must've read that RM article by Alan Jones before, but it was interesting to read it through again and try to get a handle on the reasoning for the tied No 1. Whilst like many of us I don't pretend to have a complete grasp of all the mathematics behind it, I get the general gist and now understand that like it or not, in that period the industry preferred the 250-sample approach despite the sophistication of electronic data capture enabling a more precise - albeit still incomplete - figure to be ascertained. As an aside, I also found it interesting that Gallup was on a typical average week receiving sales data for around 20,000 titles. Presumably this means both singles and albums, but even so it seems like a large number for what was in '90 a wholly-physical market, albeit across an increasing range of formats. Surely only a few hundred singles would ever be available at retail? I never recall seeing more than that in shops then, even including bargain bins. Amazing to think now that there are probably millions of titles logging sales and streams each frame in a digitally-led market.

We could've found out exactly where within the physical-sales-only Top 40 that track landed, but having scoured the OCC archive, it seems there's a mysterious gap in their physical archives from W/E 7 May to 3 September 2005, and so as this was 14 May, no joy. I wonder why this gap exists? Yet another inexplicable OCC inconsistency I suppose.

A bit of quick research on the OCC archives shows the above was correct. Also, the first single to miss out on a Top 75 placing owing to the change of chart rules that week was a track called 'Messiah' by Kontact. It made No 75 on the physical-only chart, but on the combined physical/digital listing it only registered at No 92. As neither track climbed any higher, their fates were sealed.