like when?

What do you mean like when? Streaming didn't start being included until 2014. Is everyone suggesting the charts were in brilliant shape up to then? The sales chart still exists and it isn't much better.

It does just seem, on face value, like someone has written down a few figures on the back of a cigarette packet with that 100 figure.
I can see the argument which says a chart is a chart whether is paid for or free or whatever. However to me its wholly unsatisfactory, I cant see any statistical worth in songs being buoyed up and floating on the chart simply because fans now have a cheap( possibly free) and effective way of sustaining them. It goes against the grain for me and the whole stats side of chart performance seems to be a muddle and a mess.

I think it has. It's too easy to keep a song in the charts for weeks, sometimes months. It mostly seems to reflect now what people are streaming rather than what's really popular. Since streaming became included I haven't really paid much attention to the singles chart.

i started a similar thread on this a couple of weeks ago. stop stealing my thunder ha

And no, i dont think watching a video on You Tube should count towards the singles chart - how stupid is that. I watch music videos on MTV but they dont count that.

Actually, this has changed rapidly since Spotify took control of the charts.

It was the polar opposite in 2014 when iTunes had songs available to pre-order for 3 months before release. Iirc, there was a new #1 every week for about six months all thanks to the whole marketing strategy you're referring to.

Only one single so far this year has entered at #1 whilst the rest have climbed to the top.

In hindsight, by this time in 1992 (when the chart ran 'normally') there also had only been six (all 3 wks plus at the top) #1s.

Queen, Wet Wet Wet, Shakespears Sister, Right Said Fred, KWS & Erasure.
The only UK #1s by mid-June in that year.

But yes, IMO streaming shouldn't be included and should be a sub-chart on its own. I find the official Sales chart is more like the 'chart-of-old' and resembles the Vodaphone Big Top 40, which I'm starting to follow instead.

maybe they were more accurate though, the content is only as good as the material being produced.

Go back 25 years and Bryan Adams spending 16 weeks at number one even made the news. When Everything I Do was in its tenth week at the top there was huge hysteria about it. People were talking about it and at the time was about to equal a record unbroken for for over 30 years. No single had topped the chart for 11 weeks since the 50's.

Since then the longest running number ones have been from Whitney, Wet Wet Wet and Rhianna. WWW was a big deal in 1994 as it came near to breaking Bryan Adams run but stalled at 15 weeks.

But if Drake continues I can't see there being the huge media attention that Bryan Adams got in 1991. Even if it spent 16 weeks at the top and was going to break the all time record would anyone care? It would not be such a big deal as it was 25 years ago.

In some ways the charts have settled down a bit. Remember 1999 and 2000. There was a new number one nearly every week. There were 43 number ones in 2000. So this is almost more like the old days.

One dance is only the 8th single in chart history to spend more than 9 weeks at number one. So it should be a big deal. But for some reason it isn't. Maybe that is because we know that streaming is accounting for its success. Personally I think the song is dire. It doesn't deserve to be a long running number one and I hope it doesn't spend any longer at the top. If it did go on to break the all time record it would be a complete farce.

What do you mean more accurate? I would have thought the charts have never been more accurate?

The Vodafone Top 40? Doesn't this include airplay from crappy commercial stations that have tiny playlists? And you're complaining about streaming being included?

America's chart started to include YouTube views in 2013. And what happened? The f***ing awful Harlem Shake song topped their chart for five weeks, as a result of all those videos of people doing it.

I guess they could release a chart purely based on the sale of singles in physical shops (do they even sell singles any longer?) just to keep oldies happy, but that would just make it unrepresentative of how people are listening and paying for music nowadays.

Are we to assume the charts pre-streaming are incorrect now? There was no way of monitoring what teenage girls were playing to death - Maybe New kids on the Block - Cover Girl should have gone to #1 for 28 weeks instead of the top 10 position it received

It still exists on the Official charts company website. It always has alot of new entries and reissues. The Neales are the current no.1.

i am not convinced the balance of streaming to chat positions for albums and singles is correct. But yes it has damaged sales.

Its looking at collation from a totally different angle. To me what is going on now is just ridiculously skewed and flawed. It should as far as possible one person one vote so to speak. The fact that a person had to spend a comparatively large amount of money to buy a cd single or vinyl largely kept that in proportion. Those streaming away now for a nominal charge( or even for free) wouldn't have been buying vinyl/cd's over and over. Thus its a different world.

Obviously technology moves and I must admit I kind of drifted behind the times about 15 years ago. I must say though Im glad this kind of technology wasn't around in the seventies and eighties-would have been hugely boring to watch a stagnant chart.

I would not know any current retailers stocking physical singles.
The only cd single I have seen the past months is Jess Glynne but purely because it was a charity single

this was covered on page 1 .

I fully agree with you - there might even be computers nationwide paid to repeat a certain song.......which reminds me of the record companies bulk buying in the past

Personally, I think pre-orders on iTunes killed sales.

In 2014 there were many singles released all over the world but in the UK you could only pre-order the song. This was to allow the song to build up enough sales so that when it was released, it had an artificial sales figure that made it #1 thanks to 3 months of sales rather than 7 days.

Hence the endless stream of new #1 singles we had in 2014.

I think it got to a point where people couldn't download a new single on iTunes but they could stream the song on Spotify that was the nail in the coffin.

So if iTunes are wondering why people don't download music like they did between 2009-2013, iTunes can blame themselves and the stupid pre-order policy.

Now we've got a song spending 11 weeks at #1 - something that was impossible to achieve two years ago because of the way the UK charts were being controlled by record companies.

It's just that the entire chart these days is slow, rather than just the top 3-5 songs.

Yup. Yes it does... and yes I am. Your point being ?

My point being you are complaining about streaming being included but at least streaming is what the users of the streaming sites are listening to. Not what radio executives at commercial radio are choosing to playlist. The chart also only has 1 New Entry this week so it is hardly fast moving and exiting either.

Fair point and I wholly agree. Streaming has solely sucked the life out of the charts as we knew them... hence my following of the O.C.C. Sales chart which closely resembles the Vodaphone Top 40... regardless of the added airplay aspect which has never interested me as, apart from Sunday, I never bother having the radio on. But that's just me.

Just wanted to revisit this thread.

Last week (Friday) there were about 15 or so new releases. This week's chart (Friday) has one new entry in the top 40 and that's at 38! The streaming/combined sales official top 40 chart is utterly broken in terms of a 'reasonable number' of new top 40 entries each week, and no-one - not the Official Chart Company, not Spotify and other chart-connected streaming sites, not the record labels (large and independent) is doing a damn thing about it. No desire to tweak the format. Very frustrating. It's a big "screw you" to 90 percent of new songs released each week.