DanChartFan

I am right in remembering that Viva La Vida was fairly widely available in the UK as a cover mount 7" on some music mags?

Was the woolies chart ever in danger of being accurate? I'm pretty sure that record labels used to buy their position on the woolies chart. Anyhow I was gonna say that I remember I Believe My Heart (Duncan and Keedie) and the Manic's The Love Of Richard Nixon being Cduk number ones so they must've been mids toppers, was it Call On Me that beat them or am I miles off?

Maybe I'm just sad but I've always considered every single I've ever bought as a sort of vote. I've bought hundreds of singles over the years and there must be dozens that I've never played or else played once that evening when I got in (or these days offline) and not again. I would definitely have bought more copies of Foundations that particular week had I known that it was that close. And I did buy Rage without knowing If I'd like it (I did although it was a bit sweary for my normal tastes) and about seven or eight copies of Bird Is The Word, some through gifting (I still don't believe the final placing and sales info for that BTW). I have also withheld my purchases of some singles if there was something else I wanted to get to number 1 and I knew the week would be relatively close. Oh and I bought James Blunt's You're beautiful on several different weeks as it was getting exciting willing it up the chart every week and trying to get it to number 1. I don't like the 'one person can't make any difference' attitude as if we all thought that noone would buy any legal singles or do anything much. While I thiink of it how many times has the Chart Update had a different number one to the final chart? Wonder if the public announcement of placings on a weds has increased tactical buying generally and ended up changing the outcome in any given weeks?

I'm confused. Are they putting the releases on the online retailers sooner or sending the tracks to radio later? I guess it's the same overall, but if in fact they are sending to radio later it could mean people trying to find the rumoured new single by their favorite artist on an illegal site or somewhere else as they now can't hear it on radio either!

We should think of it as an online totp! Different hosts different weeks but the same reliable charts!

It's every top 40 from 12 Mar 1960 till 3 Jan 2009. Except when there wasn't a new chart over xmas or when occasionally only a top 30 was compiled. Obviously NME didn't agree tp them using the 1952 to Feb 1960 charts though.

That's interesting Jaynesangel, I hadn't even noticed the chart debut symbols until you said. But now I notice a similar error, with S Club given a second debut after they had dropped the 7! As for Crazy In Love I have the UK cd single and I'm fairly sure it was Beyonce ft Jay-Z here in the UK too!

Something else I have now noticed is whenever there is tied positions the following chart tends to have an incorrect previous weeks position for one of the tied records (or more if there are more than two in the tie). This seems to be a particular nightmare in Feb-Jun 1969 when an awful lot of tied positions existed, some of which I have found from online sources but not in the book and some in the book but not in other onlines sources. I assume the author would have had to thoroughly research the 1969 charts in RR and RM to find what is correct as there seem to have been a lot of problems and variations that year between sources.

I just recently discovered the existance of this book and bought it from Amazon. I was wondering if there was any other discussion of this book on here (or elsewhere)? I can only find this thread. In particular I am interested in any known errors in it. I've spent all afternoon going through the Complete Charts thread on UKMix and have compiled a file of things that needed correcting there, but most seem to be already corrected in the book. I have noticed that in different years they follow different rules in terms of how many total weeks Fairytale of New York has charted, first treating it a separate re-entry the first time, then counting all the weeks in every guise in subsequent times. Also I think they have confused the two different labels issues of Je'Taime somewhere along the lines, as I believe the second labels issue enetered high as the first dropped out (due to the first label stopping the issue after the controversies), in the book the second version breifly appears lower (which is really the dropping out of the first issue I think).

I haven't been in an HMV for a year now, since a combination of me joining the downloading bandwagon, getting a much busier life and HMV drastically cutting their selection of singles by no longer stocking 7" singles (I'm mystified by the comment further up that someone here buys 7" singles at HMV as I was told by a colleague of my local branch that it was no longer HMV's company policy to stock 7" singles in stores, only to place orders online for customer's enquiring about specific discs) and in particular only stocking cd singles from the Syco label because Syco kindly gave them a branded fixture to cross merchandise their (and only their!) singles with their albums and related books etc. I only bought singles from HMV or else stuff very cheap in sales so it'll be no loss to me if they go bust, except for one thing. I seem to recall that before Woolworths went bust their distribution company supplied half the cd and dvd needs of the industry (Woolies and several supermarkets) and that HMV's distribution supplied the rest (HMV, Zavvi and the other supermarkets), so with Woolies long gone I presume the same (HMV owned?) distribution supplies everyone (Not sure about WHSmiths who were allegedy pulling out of the entertainment market sometime soon too). So if HMV goes bust then we could see the total extinction of any physical entertainment products! Incidentally I'm expecting to hear that WHSmith are struggling too. As I understand it, they only stay afloat due to the subsudues they get from the Post Office for the instore Post Office counters, and it's not as if the Post Office/Royal Mail is doing terribly well either.

It all comes down to what label they are on at the time of the release I think. I believe Heather Small moved labels for her solo career and then had to be credited separately on M People releases thereafter. A similar thing to what you are talking about is when the lead singer gets sort of promoted eg The Supremes becoming Diana Ross and the Supremes etc again it can be the result of label changes.

I bought the Delirious one because it was number one on amazon, I was completely unaware of a campaign till afterwards, and as yet I've never listened to it due to it apparently being christian music for easter.

Thanks for that info Shakyfan. 10 appearances isn't that many really And I was only 2 at the time and my dad only got a VHS in 1987 and began taping TOTP then, so I wouldn't remember him from dad's archive either.

Oops Feargal Sharkey dropped his mike, his vocal was still coming through all right though, lol! And now Jonathan King has told us the top 5 biggest hits of 1985 in the US. Nice extra!

Well Dixie got that right! We have been playing Band Aid at christmas 'for decades to come!'.

Just shown Baltimora! :dance: :dance:

Just watching it now. Was Dixie Peach a regular presenter? I've never heard of him before, and I've looked at sites listing all TOTP presenters a few times in the past.

Oops soz. I just assumed the 'xmas TOTP' clip of Shaky on TOTP 2 this week was from the 1985 xmas show.

I think Sue and Ricky do it for 2 main reasons. For Caroline, who must be a very close friend of theirs. And for the money which is bascially their pension fund now! Shame there was no Twiggy, but Geoffrey Hughes is seriously ill with cancer. :-( BTW is there another episode or series on the way, cos they finished on a cliffhanger with Sakia getting contractions. And is it me or are they trying to style and dress Dave a lot younger than Craig really is now, or is that one of the jokes?

At least it looked like TOTP a bit I suppose. There was one a couple of years ago that looked like they'd borrowed the corner of a warehouse and just stuck a couple of logos on the wall. We'll be able to see how it could've been done because Five are showing TOTP Xmas 1985 today at 6:40pm! Special Guest Shaky 'Bad Jumper and twitchy limbs' Stevens!

It was good but not that funny. I did like the bit where the guy without the passport kicked up a fuss about something that was entirely his fault and then snapped instantly out of it again. That sort of thing always seems to happen in the real Airport style reality shows!

I'm just watching the xmas special now and Mary is 'appearing' as an urn. It made me wonder, has Doreen Keogh passed away in reality? I've tried googling but not found anything recent about her although if she has or is ill I understand they may be protecting her privacy.

I loved Eliza Doolittle, she made my xmas! The Coldplay xmas song is a bit bland and boring really, the only reason they didn't promote it was probably so that when people suggest it didn't do well in the chart they can blame the lack of promotion! Thought the Cee Lo Green track was out of place on a xmas show too as all I could think of was that it was a row in song form and the alternate lyrics. But above all the one thing that stood right out to me is that as far I can recall it was the first time TOTP has made absolutely zero mention of the chart (well apart from a hurried link pointing out in passing that Matt was xmas no1!). A chart show with no charts, whatver next!

I may seem from the media coverage (or lack of) this year that Rage was much much bigger but Bird had 634,000 members on the main page and many spin-off/copy cat pages so that should've been enough to get much higher sales. Once people already knew about the campaign they didn't need TV to tell them about it, enough people were already there if you see what I mean. BTW the result of last years campaign was to convert many people over to downloads who weren't already downloading, so that is partly why 2010 sales have been higher I think, at least for singles/tracks. While we're talking about fb xmas #1 campaigns I want to mention an idea I've seen on fb called 'Let The People Decide Xmas No1 2011' which is doing what it says on the tin by taking on board any nominations for possible campaigns (including all the various campaigns already on fb) and then next year holding voting to decide which track is the most popular choice and therefore the one to promote as the main campaign.

I was looking at the sales figures for the last three xmas charts and I can't help thinking that something is a bit strange. In 2008 the Jeff Buckley Hallelujah campaign sold abt 80k of 'eligible' sales but also sold, I believe, several hundred thousand 'ineligible' ones. In 2009 Rage sold 502k, seemingly all sales were 'eligible'. This year the Bird campaign only sold 68k of 'eligible' sales but I'm willing to bet that there were many ineligible ones, maybe on the same scale as Hallelujah in 2008. So were there some sort of rule changes that made what was considered ineligble in 2008 become eligible in 2009 for Rage but again become ruled ineligible for Bird in 2010. My feeling is that it is something to do with iTunes rules or data as this year Bird was number one on all the other online reatilers, at some point at least if not all week, and yet stuck on three all week behind Rihanna on iTunes. There was, in my mind at least, no way that the Bird campaign was so unpopular compared to Rage last year for it to have had such a low figure in comparison. Is it to do with the maximum number of purchases on iTunes? We were told repeatedly during the Bird campaign that we were allowed a max of three copies from any retailer before all your purchases from that retailer were declared 'ineligble' due to being a 'bulk buy', with the notable exception of iTunes where only one copy was allowed before all copies would be 'ineligible'. Was iTunes allowing three purchase like all other retailers during the Rage campaign and changed sometime this year? And what was the reason behind the 'ineligble' Jeff Buckley sales in 2008? The only other thing I can think may have happened is that the OCC may have forgotten to remove the ineligible sales from the data last year, announced the incorrect chart/result, and then not wanted to admit to their error and let it stand. That may be unlikely but vaguely possible and in that case the campaigns would then have been more in line with each other and with what I'd've expected. Sorry if this is all a bit waffly and the questions are a bit vague but to me the numbers really don't add up, though I may be personally biased as I was heavily involved in the Bird campaign and was only very vaguely aware of the Rage one last year which became my first ever download (the muppets bo rhap was my second the same week :P ) and ended my physical singles collecting which in turn ended my weekly trips to town, as with Woolies gone and then not buying singles I didn't really need to go into town anymore.