Robbie

Physical Singles sales: 2000: 55.7m 2001: 51.2m 2002: 44.0m 2003: 30.9m 2004: 26.5m 2005: 21.4m 2006: 13.8m 2007: 8.6m 2008: 4.9m 2009: 3.1m 2010: 2.1m 2011: 1.3m 2012: 0.768m 2013: 0.4m

The following singles from the top 100 have a physical release: 03 Steal My Girl - One Direction (CD) 49 Problem - Ariana Grande featuring Iggy Azalea (CD) 69 Unmissable - Gorgon City featuring Zak Abel (12") 81 Do I Wanna Know? - Arctic Monkeys (7") - probably long since deleted (information from UKChartsPlus)

The article from 2007 is referring to 7" vinyl single sales. Sales of 7" vinyl singles rose to an almost decade long high around the mid 2000s - annual sales were just above 1m per year in the period 2005 to 2007 - before falling back. They are now rising once again though this is from an historic low of 96,000 in 2012 to 127,000 in 2013. If anyone is interested, here are retail vinyl sales from 2000 for 7" and 12" singles, in million units YEAR 7" ----- 12" 2000 0.201 - 4.012 2001 0.179 - 3.962 2002 0.265 - 3.469 2003 0.401 - 2.814 2004 0.631 - 2.598 2005 1.073 - 2.076 2006 1.046 - 1.252 2007 1.040 - 0.803 2008 0.486 - 0.254 2009 0.222 - 0.110 2010 0.152 - 0.067 2011 0.123 - 0.063 2012 0.096 - 0.055 2013 0.127 - 0.088

18. How many albums this year will sell over 100,000 copies the week before Christmas? Last year it was 3. Five years previous it was 9. Ten years ago it was 12. What will it be in 2014?

Lily Was Here - David A Stewart Featuring Candy Dulfer Rise - Herb Alpert Spanish Flea - Herb Alpert And The Tijuana Brass Falcon - RAH Band Morning Dance - Spyro Gyra Rain Forest - Paul Hardcastle

^ Carl, not Robert, Palmer!

You should contact Music Week at musicweeksupport@intentmedia.co.uk. Either Karma Bertelsen or Craig Swan will get the email and either of them should be able to get your online access sorted. When I use that email address it's usually Karma who responds, she's the person in overall charge of subscriptions at MW. http://www.musicweek.com/info/contact-us gives a full list of contact email addresses, along with the names of the staff.

I can still login without any problems, Martin. What does the login process ask for? For me it's my email address and password and it has asked for this since an overhaul of the login process about two or three years ago.

This was the first time the entire top 5 had consisted of new entries. the sales that week back in 1998: 1 Believe - Cher 168,000 2 Outside - George Michael 116,000 3 Sweetest Thing - U2 111,000 4 I Just Want To Be Loved - Culture Club 71,000 5 Thank U - Alanis Morissette 59,000 The chart commentary by Alan Jones (along with the charts) from Music Week from that week can be found at http://scans.chartarchive.org/UK/1998/UK%2...01998.10.31.pdf (PDF file).

Another error by the OCC: The first Official Download Singles chart - with Westlife at number 1 - was revealed on Radio 1 on 1 September 2004 and has a chart date of 4 September 2004. I'm not quite sure where the author of the article got November 2004 from. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/3617020.stm

It also shouldn't have been a number 1. The chart compilers didn't realise it at the time it was at number 1 but the running time of the 12" single exceed the maximum 25 minutes allowed at the time. As a result the 12" should have been ineligible for the chart. As most of the sales of the single were on 12", sales of the chart eligible 7" version would have only been enough to place the record at number 7.

Why 100 to 1? That streaming-to-download ratio investigated by Tim Ingham 27/06/14 A common question raised across the industry this week regarded the Official Charts Company’s confirmed ratio for its new Singles Chart. The UK organisation said that, in order to reflect the different weighting between streaming and purchasing, a track will have to be streamed 100 times to count as the equivalent of one download. According to Music Week analysis, this looks likely to have been based around the value of each format: if an average track download now costs 99p, then its trade price - i.e. the money that makes its way back to rights-holders - would be around 60p. Divided by 100, that creates an Official Chart per-stream value of 0.6p. The average per-stream rate announced by Spotify in December last year was $0.007, or around 0.4p. Bearing in mind the growth of the service - Spotify added a million UK users in the four months to March 2014 - suggests its own per-stream figure could now be close to 0.6p. According to sources, the average per-stream payout to UK rights-holders from ad-funded free streams is around 0.1p to 0.3p, whilst premium streams - paid for monthly by users on a subscription - equate to around 0.8p to 1p. In 2013, around 24% of all streams in the UK were made by premium subscribers, with the remaining 76% on ad-funded tiers. “We knew we had to find a logical conversion rate,” Official Charts Company CEO Martin Talbot told Music Week. “We looked at the methodology used in other markets where streaming is mature. The 100-1 ratio is a blended rate that covers both ad-funded and premium streams. You’re never going to get an exact or perfect conversion, but we wanted a system that was broadly accurate, as well as transparent and simple to understand.” Talbot said that, unlike some territories that monitor and adjust the streaming ratio monthly or quarterly to reflect market conditions, he preferred the idea of reviewing the weighting each year. Source: musicweek.com

As I posted above, the 1987 Radio 1 chart was compiled by Alan Jones, then of Record Mirror and now with Music Week. The Brotherhood Of Man sales come from the first ever BPI end of year chart (1976) to feature sales - and you're right, Alan has over calculated the sales of that single. Its sales were given as being 1,050,000 at the time, though Alan also reported that in 2002 (when he compiled the chart for the 50th anniversary of the singles chart and which was broadcast on Channel 4) that the single had sold 1,006,200 copies, so he appears to change his mind at will! Alan has used a multiplier factor of 19 rather than 16 for the panel sales for the record in the 1987 Radio 1 chart.

The top 26 in the Singles list are acknowledged as being million sellers, though some are million sellers on shipments rather than over the counter sales. 'Don't You Want Me' is possibly one of the most contentious as it never sold anywhere near as its sales in this list - and the list of the 1980s best sellers - suggest it sold. It was a million selling single though but I doubt it was the 10th best seller in the two decades covered by this chart. 'Heart Of Glass' sold a million on shipments but most likely sold about 830,000 on over the counter sales. The most controversial single in terms of sales in this chart is 'Mary's Boy Child' by Boney M which is always listed as selling about 1.8m yet its weekly sales in late 1978 / early 1979 never add up to more than 1.3m - again it must be on these lists based on shipments.

Thanks for posting the respective top 100 charts mick745, most appreciated!

The singles chart for w/e 3 October 1987 was announced on Radio 1 on the usual Tuesday date, in this case Tuesday 29 September 1987, but it was never counted down on the subsequent Sunday top 40 - the Sunday chart on 4 October 1987 was the new chart, as you have posted, dated 10 October 1987. Effectively the Sunday Top 40 skipped a week and as a result never played the first week of M/A/R/R/S being at number 1. It was one of only two top 40 charts (outside of Christmas / New Year) that never got to be played on Radio 1 on the Sunday, the other being the chart compiled on the day Princess Diana died on August 31, 1997. The latter broadcast was cancelled due to the death of Diana.

The OCC are going to limit the amount of streams that count to, if I heard this correctly on Radio 5 Live this morning, 6 streams per song per user per week. The 5 Live story also mentioned that all streams of 30 seconds or longer of songs will count. I'm sure the OCC will soon publish a revised set of Singles chart rules, to incorporate the rules on streaming which will clarify the above. I expect Music Week to provide a fuller explanation of the new rules sometime this week, possibly even today.

Streaming counts from next Sunday though as the first chart to include streaming, unveiled on Sunday 6 July will be based on sales and streams from Sunday 29 June to Saturday 5 July. This week will be the last week where the resulting chart will be purely sales based. I wonder if the midweeks will include streaming data? If so, the first chart to be affected will be the midweek chart published at 9am on Tuesday 1 July. The following day, Wednesday 2 July, Radio 1 will be announcing what could be the first ever midweek chart update to include streaming data. If the midweeks don't inlcude streaming data then it could make the Sunday chart less predictable. especially for tracks lower down the chart where sales are normally much closer than at the very top end of the chart.

' Making Your Mind Up' is very high in this list compared with how it ended up in the 1980s decade end chart. On the decade end the titles at numbers 42, 44 and 50 in the above chart appear at numbers 12, 14 and 16 respectively. However 'Making Your Mind Up' is at number 47 on the decade end chart. On the other hand, 'The Land Of Make Believe', at number 89 on this Radio 1 chart is at number 41 on the decade end chart. What makes it more confusing is that the Radio 1 Anniversary chart in 1987 and the Gallup 1980s Decade End chart were both compiled by Alan Jones.

They aren't necessarily the peak of the tracks sales though. Once an album has been pre-ordered then any further instant grat releases are automatically made available for the person who has pre-ordered the album to download. In effect they really are just like advances of the album's tracks. Most "sales" of Instant Grats #2 and #3 for Coldplay weren't actual purchases in the sense of the word that someone had to go and purchase or in fact do anything. So in the case of Coldplay: Order Instant Grat #1 - the customer pre-orders the album and the Instant Grat track is both immediately made available to download and also qualifies for the Singles chart Instant Grat #2 - the track is automatically made available for the person to download. If the person has iTunes settings to automatically download a track or album once pre-ordered and the track or album becomes available then iTunes will automatically download the track without the person actually having to click on any link. If the customer has yet to take advantage of the pre-order promotion and decides at this point to do so then both Instant Grats #1 AND #2 are automatically made available to download. Instant Grat #3 - as above. Again if the person is yet to pre-order the album, when doing so at this point all three Instant Grat tracks will be available to download immediately. It is the fact that the consumer who has pre-ordered the album has to do nothing to obtain two of the three Instant Grat tracks that stops the OCC from allowing more than just Instant Grat #1 from being chart eligible. Beyond that, the album is basically being given away in advance of release in dribs and drabs. In fact., so long as one track remains available to download on the day an album is to be released, there is nothing to stop an act from giving away every other track as an Instant Grat and having everything qualify as an album sale. If the OCC was to allow all Instant Grat tracks to qualify for the Singles chart you can guarantee some acts would do the above just to maximise both Singles chart positions AND build up pre-orders for albums.

Interesting... a self published book. I've not seen this before so thanks for the heads up fiesta.

A Platinum certification award is supposed to indicate a rare and special achievement but over the past few years the amount of singles qualifying for the award have been so numerous that it is no longer a special event. Lowering the sales threshold needed to qualify for a Platinum award would make a mockery of what the award is supposed to represent. The sales level should be higher not lower. However having once lowered the sales thresholds for Silver, Gold and Platinum (in January 1989, following what had just happened in the US for Gold and Platinum awards), the BPI are unlikely to ever raise the Platinum threshold back to its old level of 1,000,000 sales. As for the US: the RIAA did in fact raise the sales thresholds needed for downloads to qualify for Gold and Platinum awards. When the certification awards scheme was introduced for downloads in 2004 the levels were set at 100,000 for Gold and 200,000 for Platinum. The industry didn't foresee that downloads would be so popular and when sales of downloads soared in 2005 and 2006 the amount of records qualifying for Platinum and then multi-Platinum awards became so numerous that the RIAA had to quickly revise the certification scheme and decided to set the sales levels needed to qualify for an award at the same levels needed to qualify for Gold and Platinum under physical singles sales, 500,000 and 1,000,000 sales respectively. At least in the UK the BPI were astute enough to just allow downloads to be certified in the same way, and at the same sales levels, as physical singles and didn't see a need to have separate certification award schemes for physical and digital singles. Incidentally the RIAA in the US have now gone one stage further and have introduced a "Combined" Digital Single Award which allows labels to apply for certifications based on a mixture of downloads and on-demand audio and video streams. Under the new scheme, which replaced the old Digital Single award scheme in May 2013, the qualifying levels for a certification award are 500,000 units for Gold and 1,000,000 for Platinum. A unit is one permanent digital download or 100 on-demand audio and/or video streams. For video streams only official label/company videos count, not user generated videos. http://www.riaa.com/goldandplatinum.php?co...ear_filter=2013 http://www.riaa.com/goldandplatinum.php?co...new-combined-GP Let's hope the BPI do not follow the RIAA lead and allow audio and video streams to count towards certification levels in the UK.

and the website is hosted in Russia while the owners are based in Cyprus! Surprisingly the site has been around since 2006 and has outlasted a number of similar Russian based mp3 sites which have been taken down over the years by the RIAA. The owners say they pay royalties to the artists, publishers etc but as they only charge about 50p to 70p for an album and 6p for single tracks it's hard to imagine that they actually pay anything at all. I certainly wouldn't buy anything from this type of site, they operate in what is known as a "grey market".

A couple of unofficial Download chart facts that the OCC don't seem to be wanting to reveal! First up: the biggest selling download prior to the OCC collating meaningful download sales information was most likely 'Stockholm Syndrome' by Muse which sold over 15,000 downloads in its first week when released as a digital only single in July 2003. The track would have been inside the top 20 had downloads been chart eligible. And indeed had the OCC been collecting sales data at the time! #2: Although the Official Downloads chart wasn't officially first published until September 2004, a series of Test charts were compiled by the OCC and published by Music Week from 26 June 2004 to 28 August 2004. Number 1 on these test charts were: 1 26-Jun 1 wk Pixies - Bam Thwok 2 03-Jul 1 wk Maroon 5 - This Love 3 10-Jul 5 wk Streets - Dry Your Eyes 4 14-Aug 3 wk Shapeshifters - Lola's Theme Westlife replaced 'Lola's Theme' on the first Official Download chart on 4 September 2004. The official title of the Westlife single on the Download chart was 'Flying Without Wings (Live)'

Nothing Compares 2 U - Sinead O'Connor Ensign ENYMC 630 http://www.45worlds.com/tape/media/enymc630 Killer - Adamski MCA MCAC1400 http://www.45worlds.com/tape/media/mcac1400uk