Not only has streaming ruined the charts, but also certifications , fifth harmony work from home- recently labelled as sold one million copies- but only around 310,000 were actual sales- impressive in itself, but the rest of streaming, now makes it a million seller. Certifications should at least mean something also

Funnily enough, most youtube promoted videos seem to decided by soft porn content. I had a look at youtube the other night and was amazed at the content these POP STARS are allowed to peddle.
They needed to hit the male market of course as the market was saturated with female music buyers/streamers, they seem to have covered that base now very effectively.

The inclusion of streaming must be an absolute gift to chart fixers.

well..newly announced million sellers in the last 3 years ...
do they equate to millions sellers before?

i have seen some million sellers that actually sold 300k and had equivalent of 300k streams ..to me they remain 300k only - a long way off 1m sales but very video friendly ....

could you imagine if video plays/ sales counted
MJ;Madonna would sell 4x as much as they have!

well yesterday we had the most entries for months, 7 it was almost like the old days and like an 80s chart as most were climbers into it. Also The XX went straight top 40 due to streaming,grats and midweek releases alternative acts have not got close to top 40, so maybe things are changing.

Also there are over a 1000 new singles/grats released every week, the 15 you are talking about are the ones that are hyped up. Look here to see how much new music is actually released each week http://everynoise.com/spotify_new_releases.html

How do you envisage that working? I mean, if you want to achieve 10,000 'sales' you need 1,000,000 streams. One person can stream a song 10 times a day to a maximum of 70 streams a week before it no longer counts towards the chart, so you'd need over 14,000 accounts on the job. It seems more trouble than it's worth.

This week's chart has one new entry in the top 40! That's not like the old days pre-streaming when you'd get about four/five new songs each week. That's just a rough figure, obviously some weeks you'd get lots of new entries and some weeks less but overall there were a lot more new songs per week than in the streaming era.

You mention the 15 hyped up songs. Most of them don't chart, let alone the other stuff that isn't hyped!

Here's the OCC's list of this week's new releases.

http://www.officialcharts.com/new-releases/

27 new releases. How many will get into the top 40? One or two?

The top 100 was never a measurement of pop success. If a song hits positions 100 to 41 it's not a major pop hit. That's just the way it's been. It's possible some new releases will hit the top 100 next week but they won't be considered big hits. Ask the average person to name a well known pop song from 1950s onwards and they're going to be top 40 hits, not songs that hit below the top 40. Songs below 40 sell in tiny number. I guess the same is true in the streaming era.

I'm not sure why the OCC places so much importance on the top 100 charts. We all know it's the top 40 that is the definitive chart and the standard measurement of chart success.

I agree with that. Only premium members' streams should count towards the chart.

I think it's been mentioned before, but when someone has streamed a song 100 times then their streams of that song should no longer count towards the chart because they've already 'bought' it, if you will. Much like the old days when you'd buy a single. You wouldn't go and buy the same single the next week, would you? Well, some obsessives would, but you get my drift.

yes but songs climb from outside the top 40 now like it was the pre 90s so there are actually 6 songs in the top 40 for the 1st time. I do agree with you the chart is still too slow.

But the mid 90s to mid00s was actually the only time in chart history that you had dozens of songs entering the top 40 in 1st week and most went down the following week or left completely now songs grow in popularity and can top 40 many weeks after release.
Oh and songs between 41-200 dont sell in low numbers at all now. In the 00s a number 100 would sell about 500 copies now it is closer to 20000, taking into account streaming. Most top 100 songs have over 200000 streams a week and even down to 200 its still over 100000 big numbers!!
Thats why new arena sized bands can have number one albums with no top 40 hits now as 200000 streams a week is still a massive amount.

Changed it, yes. Killed it, of course not. Had the Chart not moved with the times, that would have killed it, as people would quite rightly wonder what was the point of setting so much store in something that wasn't representative of the industry it purported to be measuring.

Streaming has changed the Chart because it's changed the way people listen to and 'buy' music. If it changes again, so the Chart will have to change again.

Either the Chart is relevant and important these days, or it's not. If it still is, it has to take into account the ways people consume music and adapt accordingly. If it isn't, then it doesn't matter what it measures, does it.

I think it has killed it. It has certainly changed a lot of characteristics within the charts that we wouldn't have seen pre streaming inclusion - for example, usually songs that are falling continue to do so until they exit the chart but now what we are seeing is songs fall then climb back up, then fall, and back up again, a phenomenam due to streaming as this amount of variation has to be due to people not having to buy the song for it to climb.

I think you're forgetting why the charts were created and their function for the record industry.

The industry really weren't interested in how many people bought a record (back in the day when record buying was the norm). That sale is over and done with. They're interested in boosting future sales. The charts' main function (especially the singles chart) is to promote new releases and draw attention to new artists, the very lifeblood of the industry.

Clearly the chart now isn't doing this as it's led to far fewer hits and ultimately fewer successful acts. As a marketing tool (which is all the charts were really created to be) it's failing.

+1 this perfect post. It isn't the content of the chart thats the problem its the slowness and the massive gulf between new sales hits and streaming hits. How can a song be top 10 in sales but not even top 50 overall, its just not right.

Fair enough then. I stopped taking an active interest in the singles chart maybe ten years ago, when the chart's main purpose was indeed to measure the most popular singles in terms of sales over the previous week. (Which isn't to say it wasn't manipulated, or that the industry really cared about sales, but sales is what they measured.) From what you say, it looks like the emphasis and focus has shifted away from that since I stopped taking an interest. I wasn't aware of that.

I still think the overwhelming popularity with Justin Bieber last year was far too suspicious for my own liking. Particularly the week when Justin Bieber occupied the UK top 3 singles. That's got nothing to do with not liking the songs, I actually thought Sorry was a decent enough song.

However, there are other big artists who have released their albums on Spotify but I don't see their album tracks dominating the Spotify top 20.

So what made Justin Bieber so special, and also how many people in the UK had a registered account on Spotify when What Do You Mean? first entered the chart, compared to something like 16 weeks later when that Bieber top 3 happened? I'm almost certain that the number of users in those 16 weeks more than doubled, maybe trebled.

If this is the case, why didn't the OCC adjust the ratio of download sales to streaming sales to compensate for the big increase in Spotify users?

Justin appeals to teenage girls so the laws of logic do not apply to artists like them as their fans are often fantatic in the true meaning of the word.

Without getting into an argument about which of the above is the least rubbish, taking your point about selling copies, surely the amount of listens a song gets its a truer reflection of its popularity than the number of sales. How many times does a purchased single get played by the buyer? It could be once.

Maybe so, but for an average of 60-80k people to physically buy Bryan Adams' single for 16 weeks in a row even if just to play it once when they got home, that's still some remarkable feat.

These days people don't need to leave their house to buy a single/album. Just log onto iTunes/Spotify and et voila.

The 90s long running #1 singles will always be the most impressive purely because all those people made the effort on those 15/16 weeks to actually buy the song.

Drake's 15 weeks at #1 this summer will never compare. My favourite song of 2017 could spend 26 weeks at #1 and become the most streamed song of all time but I would still say the Bryan Adams/Wet Wet Wet runs at #1 will always remain the most impressive.

no, my point was that in the 1950s when the chart was created it was created to promote new material and break new artists. That was always its function and why the record companies funded it... and supposedly why they still want a chart now. To the public the function of the chart is to show what's selling but that's not what the music industry needs it for...they already know how many of their records they've sold.

As a tool to promote new music, break new acts and create more hits the chart now isn't fit for purpose, clearly.

I think we're possibly looking at two sides of the same coin. I'm referring to the origins of it from the p.o.v. of the person who first had the idea (in the UK), whereas you're possibly looking at it from the p.o.v. of the labels and what the chart means to them.

The UK singles chart came about when the person who first started compiling it would ring up record stores and basically ask what's sold well this week, from which he'd come up with the ten (or whatever it was) best sellers from those stores that week. The idea caught on and different publications started to compile their own charts in their own way, until an 'official' chart was established.

You can argue that the various outlets manipulated their sales and the data they posted (and I daresay that still happens now) but the original intent of the chart, from the p.o.v. of the guy that started it all and those that jumped on the bandwagon, was simply to measure sales. Take Gallup and BMRB for e.g. They're polling and consulting and analysis companies. They have no interest in promoting and marketing any individual artists. They simply collated the stats provided to them. I say again, maybe the record companies manipulated the data behind the scenes, but the point of the chart was to measure sales based on the data provided by record outlets. Any manipulation and marketing and promo opportunities were the business of the individual labels and stores. The polling companies didn't care about that. (As such, although I imagine they tried/ try to limit the scope to do so.)