bobmoo79

I've always said it's madness to include streams and sales in the same chart. Now the chart is in a mess and that is what was predicted years ago. The two are not comparable at all and no amount of streams will ever really equate to a sale of a song. They should have kept sales and streaming charts separate but they wanted to reflect the changing tastes of music consumption. Fine. But there is a better way (IMO). If sales are dying then allow that to be reflected in it's own chart. If streams are surging then allow that to be reflected in it's own chart. For a song to truly #1 it would then have to top both the streaming and sales chart in the same week. In boxing term it would be "the undisputed champion" of the UK chart! What we currently have is a song that is topping the streaming chart but not troubling the top of the sales chart and being declared "#1" for weeks on end when in fact it isn't. The song has been added to so many playlists due to it's strong performance on the chart, particularly in the first few weeks and will no doubt be picking up many 'sales' because people can't be arsed to skip it. Sure that applies to other songs too, but this just goes to prove my point. Somebody's active choice to purchase a song, parting with their hard earned money to own a piece of music does not, and will never, be comparable with somebody streaming something for free, by accident, or through laziness just because it's on a playlist.

So how many copies do the MB and MJ albums normally sell in a year then? Jackson's Number Ones is probably a consistent seller across much of the year but would be much higher if Sony hadn't released so many MJ hits albums in the years before and after his death (diluting sales of Number Ones). Without the other hits albums I estimate it would have sold nearly 1 million more copies than it did during 2009. Buble's Christmas album will be a good seller in the run up to Xmas but probably non-existent the rest of the year.

Thanks

What time do they stop counting sales for this weeks chart? Was it midnight last night? Or sometime today?

If I'm honest I find the songs on Bieber's album are similar but it makes the album coherent. You only have to read the music press to see that Bieber has evolved out of a teeny bopper artist to something more mainstream. I would say this is his time right now. If not this album then his next will be his career peak. Guarantee it. 1D clearly haven't been able to make the same leap as Bieber and are still a teenage girls band and have fallen from their peak (although they were bigger at their peak than Bieber is now.) I have to say that I find Adele way over rated. She had some good songs, but generally her albums are boring. 'Hello' is a perfect example - just boring as hell. The only way I can listen to that is if it's the Kiss FM remix. Much better.

Yeah the timing of Jackson's death meant that the sales were split badly across two weeks (he died on Thursday). He still managed two in the Top10 at the same time - Man In The Mirror and Billie Jean were #2 and #10. Thriller and Smooth Criminal were #12 and #13. If he died a day or two earlier (or maybe later!) he could have easily had 3 or 4 singles in the top 10, including a #1 for Man In The Mirror.

Lovin the MJ/J5 sample (tho I admit it IS a bit repetitive even with the short run time - they should have added some other vocals) The song's starting to get some momentum now and if the radio spins pick up rapidly they'll have to release this early IMO. Leaving it until September will be a big mistake.

Madonna has used every tacky trick in the book to try to stay relevant and continue selling albums for at least the last decade, and I commend her for it because it worked. Her reliance on hot producers and song writers, and most significantly featured artists, maintained her position on 'youth radio' for years after she would otherwise have been relegated to only stations for older listeners. The youth took an interest because they liked Britney Spears or Justin Timberlake. Frankly seeing her desperately trying to hold onto relevance, prancing around in next to nothing and kissing woman young enough to be her daughter was an embarassment. She has chosen to release this album at a time of year when sales are still low, and when there is little credible competition from other new releases so it's not too difficult for her to achieve a #1 album. She's the latest in a line of artists who have thrown their toys out of the pram when they realised Radio1 wouldn't play them any more including Cliff Richard and most recently Robbie Williams. Youth radio has to draw a line somewhere and the majority of people under 30 - Radio 1's target audience - just aren't interested in Madonna at all. People get older, the world moves on. She's a legacy artist and needs to accept that rather than keep bitching. She'll still have the support of the biggest UK radio station (Radio 2) and large national networks such as Heart and Capital so listeners WILL hear her music if they seek it out. They may just have to realise they are NOT part of Radio 1's demographic. I'm sure this album will make a good debut on the chart but I'm pretty sure it'll sink fairly quickly - maybe not as an embarassing as performance of the single, but it will still drop quickly.

Perhaps monitoring IP addresses will reduce the impact of people fixing the charts, but it can't prevent it. Just like it's not difficult to circumvent region-restricted internet content or streaming content, it won't be difficult for people to circumvent the IP checks. It's not difficult to use multiple random IPs. It would be easy to change IP after every 10 streams ad infinitum. It's just one weakness of using streaming in the official charts. Sure, people could (and actually do) go out and buy multiple copies of singles in an attempt to boost chart positions, but that at least was costing them money, limiting the amount each person would be prepared to buy. Now it will be easy to set up thousands of streams per person, per week, at no cost at all. Whether people actually bother is another question. I know I can't be arsed. I haven't heard of this being a problem in other countries where streaming has already been a big part of charting, so perhaps they have more soffisticated means of preventing a few streamers impacting the charts than only checking IPs

Really? Where was it in the midweek chart yesterday? Only just outside Top40? Apparently a new single won't drop until 11th August, so a loooong way off yet. Still performance up til this week has been relatively good for a posthumous album.

Looks like Xscape has dropped out of the top40 (according to OCC). Does anybody have any idea where it is?

I've always believed streaming should be counted and charted, but that it should be separate to the official sales chart. Reason is, how can you accurately decide how many streams should equal one sale? The decision appears to based on royalties paid for a stream, but this has nothing to do with the reasons for people streaming a song. The listener does not care about royalty rate. It does not factor into their decision making process, so setting the ratio based on that seems pointless. If all you care about is how much money somebody earned off the back of a track being streamed then you might as well compile a net earnings chart and use that as your guage for popularity, except of course that wouldn't work very well either. The decision to use 100:1 has massive implications for a artists perceived success, although I appreciate they say that generally the impact on the sales chart positions will be minimal. In the past a sale was a sale. Somebody bought a copy and that was counted. Simple. Now I know they may have never given it a second listen, but they parted with their hard earned money based on a perception that the music was good. They chose to pay for that music specifically. Now people stream music all day long because they have access to it as part of a paid subscription or maybe even a promotional deal. They're not paying with their wallets in the same way. Often people don't even choose many of the songs they end up listening to yet these songs, played without deliberate intent will be counted as equal to those others that are deliberately chosen by the listener. Seems strange to me. Perhaps this is considered to be statistical noise by the chart compilers. It sounds as though automatic track selection will become (if it is not already) an important aspect of chart performance that music companies will try to influence. How realistic is it that Sony could buy priority for their tracks so that when a person's chosen track is finished the next one cued up by the system automatically is one of theirs, hence boosting chart position? Sounds reasonable to me, and I'd be surprised if it's not done already. Also, it's an incredibly easy task to set up any number of virtual machines each constantly streaming tracks of your own choice. This makes influencing the new singles chart much easier than it is now, as it can be done for free!

Such a shame that Cascada managed to keep MJ's Man In The Mirror from the number 1 spot for two consecutive weeks in 2009. Travesty.

Thanks, the album's done well so far so it's not too bad if it drops out of the Top10 now. The 5th anniversary of his death is in a few days, so perhaps that will earn extra sales, although I would hazard a guess the hits compilations will feel the most benefit from it not this new album. In the USA Xscape just re-entered the Top10 after previously dropping to #12.

Does anybody know where Michael Jackson's Xscape album is in the Friday update? Thanks