AcerBen

Plumb - Free new single Mar 21

Sam Ryder - White Lies single confirmed for March 21

Grace Davies - Do Or Die - single out Feb 14

Måns Zelmerlöw - Revolution single out Feb 21, favourite to be Sweden's ESC entry

Plumb - Fighter (I’m Not Afraid) single Feb 7 (from her Facebook)

Tom Walker - You’ll Get There In The End new single out on Friday.

Will was actually supposed to duet on Suspicious Minds but he refused. I don't suppose Simon Cowell was worried about it looking weird from a chart point of view so wouldn't have demoted it on that basis.

I think that's always been a thing, mostly used by independent labels for new artists. One more high profile one I remember buying was when Shola Ama and The Divine Comedy released a special tribute single to the music of Noel Coward. That made the top 30.

You were still only allowed 3 songs on a single in the 2000s, though you could have 40 minutes of remixes again from some time in 2001. More obscure stuff was probably more likely to chart in the physical era because there were finite amounts of each single available. The sales threshold to chart was quite low in the last years of it. It's not that difficult to see why an underground club record might sell a few hundred copies on 12" and make it to #97.

And maybe an honourable mention to Fleur East's X Factor performance of Uptown Funk making #1 on iTunes, but excluded from OCC chart.

Do I get a half point for this? Adele's Someone Like You went to #1 largely off the back of downloads of the Brits performance, IIRC? Edit - think fair to say yes for week 1 anyway. I always preferred it to the studio version. http://www.itunescharts.net/uk/artists/mus...from-the-brits/

Lauren Spencer Smith's new single Pray is out on the 24th https://www.instagram.com/p/DE0LrUqStUT/

dearALICE (that BBC Made In Korea band) are releasing their debut single "Ariana" on Feb 21. They've been performing it in Korea already. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frBbwMY1FSY https://www.mk.co.kr/en/musics/11216016

Just put greatest hits albums in a separate chart. Ridiculous that The Weeknd's Highlights album was the 2nd biggest album of 2024.

Granny Harmers making it to #1 suggests as I've always thought that iTunes sales have a very big percentage of the chart make-up

Probably been the worst year for British music ever commercially. The chart of the year is a depressing read.

Come on Wham! - if only because the more times it gets Christmas Number 1, the more likely it'll be OCC will do something about it.

I want to see big changes to the charts, but it's the music industry that's broken, in that it struggles to break new artists.

About 1.3 million I believe

Yeah I don't see why it would've sold more than a couple thousand

I think it'll be a bit sad if it flops really badly. I actually think Trevor's done a really nice job on the new version. I can see both sides in the political debate but the previous versions + Live Aid did raise huge amounts of money and led to other things like Comic Relief. Bob Geldof can be annoying but his heart's in the real place, so I don't think he deserves the indignity of this version flopping.

Not sure whether they should combine or not, but no brainer for OCC to reset to SCR either way. Don't understand what they're playing at with the release date. Why release to radio and Spotify on a Monday, do all the press and then not release the download and physicals till Friday Makes no sense. Oh, except the 25th was the actual 40th anniversary to be fair. But I fear the gap might affect sales, especially as Ladbaby has shown, it's getting harder to get people out of the habit of downloading to do it.

Jenny Berggren (Ace of Base) has a new single called Lion's Den out tomorrow

Is Band Aid 40 doing absolutely nothing then? 22,000 streams on Spotify so far WTF?

Yeah it's the best version since the original I think. Thought it ended a bit abruptly though. It'll do well.