Yorkie3

Find it rather strange that Louis and Matt haven't gained on Clean Bandit at all today, it was looking like it'd be close but now it won't be at all! :lol: Looks like Jo Cox will be the only real challenge to CB next week then...

Based on those sales (and assuming 5k missing streaming for Clean Bandit yesterday) it looks like both Louis and Matt are going to end up within a couple of thousand sales of #1 on Friday if all continue to sell at the same rate - it's going to be very close!

Clean Bandit are British though... :P Having said that it's been a great year for past X Factor contestants, strange seeing as that's accompanied by their lowest ever ratings! I really hope Matt doesn't reach #1 with this though, thought we'd finally finished with the era of the winner's single dominating last year!

320. Greg Lake - I Believe In Father Christmas 957. Greg Lake - I Believe In Father Christmas Should be watching this after hearing Greg Lake sadly passed away today :(

The low sales environment seems to really benefit the Christmas songs, Mariah is already top 10 combined and the Pogues aren't *that* far off... If they're boosted by streaming as much as last year I could honestly see both going top 10 officially over the coming weeks! :D

What you're missing here is that albums were barely even a thing in 1958. Look at the album chart from around that time and earlier and you'll see the top 10 (or top 5 as it was at one point) was mostly made up of soundtrack albums, with the odd addition of Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra. It spent so long at the top of the chart because there was literally no competition, was probably only selling a few hundred copies a week (although of course we'll never know exactly), so there would have been no point in creating a compilation chart to leave the official album chart pretty much empty. :lol:

Don't know if it's the record, but 21 reached 4 million during the week ending 26/2/12, so at most 398 days after release. To beat it 25 would have to sell 4 million before 23rd December, which is not going to happen! :P

Surprised Shawn Mendes still has two songs in the play zone, honestly thought Mercy would have a huge drop this week and Treat You Better has been hanging around for ages! Not that I'm complaining though, love both songs! :)

I mean, I know that, just generally despairing that it's still hanging around! :P

WHY

I swear Drake manages to get worse with every song... This is almost unlistenable. Clean Bandit for #1! So surprised the song's taken off! :D

Also at 427. The Pogues always start off lower than Mariah and then overtake during December (on sales at least) - wonder why this is?

I'd really love Clean Bandit to get next week's #1 (and probably their biggest hit since Rather Be) but still doubtful that's going to happen. iTunes sales are pretty low right now with no competition and they need to gain on streaming very quickly to stand a chance. Still, it'll make a great sales #1 and that's the chart I follow more nowadays anyway... ;)

James Arthur had just under half of his chart sales last week from pure sales - therefore although Little Mix have knocked him down to 0.3 on iTunes he's probably still selling only a little slower than them in total. They'll need to keep their current lead all week plus make large gains on streaming before Friday to have a hope of #1 this week... Hope that happens though, it's nice having a song debut at the top occasionally!

Fairytale of New York should not be on this list! :lol: Some real classics here but also a large number of songs I'm very glad missed the top 10...

It can't be ignored how huge Dancing On My Own has been now, especially on sales. Its sales run: 15-26-25-28-32-32-40-20-16-9-7-2-2-1-2-2-3-2-2-3-2-2 Incidentally, 11 consecutive weeks in the top 3 is the longest of any single since Happy! Shame having poor streaming has prevented it from reaching #1 officially (although I prefer Robyn's version so would have liked that to have this success instead :P )

The top 9 has been the same songs in a slightly different order for four weeks in a row... At least Martin Garrix saves that from being the whole top 10 :P

Oh, I get your point. I think my wording was quite bad there, sorry! Of course I agree people were listening to it week after week, but my point was that it wasn't getting millions of streams because the same people were listening to it hundreds of times - more because of the sheer number of people listening to it a few times. Hence why I don't think stopping counting streams after 100 would actually make much difference to the chart, I just think it's only fair.

I think you'd probably be surprised, the majority of users contributing to One Dance's sales probably didn't actually listen to it 100 times - it was just a sheer mass of people listening to it whilst it was #1 on streaming and top of all the playlists causing the problem! I may be wrong though... If so, it only strengthens my opinion that each user should be limited to one sale!

It's not that I don't agree that streaming should be included in some way (it's a huge source of revenue for the music industry so probably should be, although I doubt it makes up over 80% yet as it does in the chart so something must be wrong), but I actually don't agree with the statement that the chart looked stupid in 2005 - having the possibility of Elvis getting to #1 was interesting, and sales may have been depressingly low but the rise and fall of singles was still a normal thing to see, and (at least to me) it was a lot less stupid than it is now! I agree with all the statements about finding some way of limiting the streams for a song - firstly finding some way of separating paid streams and not counting free users towards the chart is a perfect idea, as personally I don't think somebody should be contributing to the chart without paying a penny. This could make a massive difference - I'm not sure exactly how many people use Spotify for free, but pretty much everybody I've spoken to about it does! Secondly, though the difference here would be miniscule as barely anybody actually listens to the same song week after week, I also agree that one user shouldn't be able to contribute more than 1 sale equivalent. This is just on principle, as when I buy a single I will often listen to it well over 100 times, and don't like the idea that I'm contributing less to the chart than somebody who didn't even buy it! I may just be old-fashioned though :P The absolute biggest change that NEEDS to happen though, is Spotify and other streaming services must stop advertising their "most played" playlist so much - it just leads to people listening to songs purely because they've been listened to so many times already, which for obvious reasons is really bad for chart movement. Forgive my rant, I know this has all been said before, but the chart is getting so tedious now, just wanted to add my voice to the crowd...

The chart just isn't interesting any more. :( I've taken to pretending the sales chart is the official chart and looking at that every week instead! :P Now One Dance isn't #1, it's more listenable for me, but I still really can't see how either it or Too Good got more than a few weeks top 10... They're just so boring!

In the last six weeks only two songs have held the #11 spot...

Longing for more movement at the top of the chart :( the two Drake songs especially need to go away.

Cheap Thrills could reach #2 best selling song of the year at this rate (#1 on pure sales even?) - would be a great achievement, although every week it spends this high up in the chart is shocking me at this point :P We Don't Talk Anymore has really grown on me this week, so good to see it rising!

What on Earth possessed Radio 1 to cut down the chart because of this stupid summer mix? I know the charts are getting boring these days, but still, some people genuinely want to listen and it's like they don't care about it at all any more!