[Fac123]

Downloads have definitely slowed down the singles cart, which is absolutely fantastic if you ask me, but considering it was only five months ago that we were still in the situation where, if you didn't go straight into the Top 10 on day one you may as well forget it, has anyone noticed something interesting about this week's Top 10? Every single track has climbed into the Top 10. Look...

Shakira (entered at 54), Cascada (41), Christina Aguilera (18), Rihanna (16), James Morrison (27), Paris Hilton (35), Lily Allen (13), Rogue Traders (18), Paolo Nutini (42) and Snow Patrol (25).

Now that's one hell of a turnaround in fortunes. Not only that, I've done a bit of digging and I don't know if the real experts like Hanboo or kingofskiffle want to check this out, but from what I can tell the last time the UK had a Top 10 in which none of the tracks had begun life in the Top 10 was 15 September 1990. Either way, it's ironic that Top Of The Pops has been killed just when the charts are becoming unpredictable again.

[paulgilb]

Wow!

[joao]

I don´t know what is "unpredictable" in a chart where the Top 10 remains almost unchanged for many weeks...

These climbings are only happening because the chart is mixing 2 formats (digital and physical), which really makes it weird.

Maybe there´s a reason why people lost interest on Top Of The Pops. Who would want to see the same Shakira video for 10 weeks?

[irishguy28]

[Fac123]

[Gambo]

I share the enthusiasm for finally seeing singles climb the chart with such regularity once again; to those of us old enough to remember following the chart in the 1980s (or before if you're older than me!) and hold some residual nostalgia not just for the music contemporaneous to that era but the way in which records moved from obscurity to greatness over time, it is surely to be welcomed. Although the chart has only ever reflected the way in which records are both marketed and purchases, it somehow brings a much-needed sense of organics back to the concept.
But, we must remember that whilst these moves do represent genuine sales gains of sorts, the phenomenon has been artificially induced by means of allowing sales of downloads in the week preceding a physical release to become chart-eligible, from 6 March this year. It should be borne in mind that most CD releases still accrue their greatest sales tally on their first outing, and it is only if an equivalent download is available prior to that that the track has a chance of charting lower down beforehand. As only 1 week's pre-CD downloads are eligible, with the odd exception like "Chasing Cars", we see a significant climb to reach a peak on the 2nd as opposed to 1st week on chart. As we move inevitably and inexorably towards a primarily download-led market towards the close of this decade, we really will need a chart that allows all pre-CD release download sales to be eligible. If this were allowed today, in some cases where the DL track is available some weeks before the CD, we would see more prolonged climbs towards their chart peak, which will surely come with the boost provided by the CD sales, which for now at least, still provide the larger proportion of total copies sold per track in most cases.
Personally I believe that the "official" chart nowadays should be one which reflects ALL legitimate sales online and over the counter of releases which are less than 2 years old - and my, what a different listing we would see.
However, whilst such a chart would be engrossing now thanks to the 2-tier effect of some weeks of pre-CD DL release followed by a CD providing the greatest sales impetus per track, in this fast-moving market it remains to be seen whether that would still be so in years to come.
If record companies insist on maximising immediate chart position and sales of a single with a broader focus on longer-term marketing of an album, then it may become the norm for DLs to become available at the same time as CDs - the question will be whether they allow a 6-week build-up on radio etc first to create pent-up consumer demand; a tactic so successful here since the early '90s in the physical domain. When this happens, if sufficiently well-promoted beforehand through radio/fanbase interest etc, the record will still crash into the upper reaches of the chart 1st week. Kasabian's "Empire" was an example: although it was only released to radio the same day as the DL/CD, their fanbase is so focused and primed for their favourite artist's first new material in 2 years, that there was no chance of it entering lower and climbing.
That said, if DL & CD releases are made available simultaneously but without any pre-release promos, and/or if it's an artist who has yet to develop a loyal fanbase who know their every move in advance, the track may yet have a chance of charting lower, and reaching a peak of sales interest on both formats a few weeks later, as radio and TV pick up and publicise it AFTER release rather than before. This remains to be seen.
Then there is the question of what happens when DLs routinely start to sell more copies per release than CDs - which is sure to happen by 2009? When singles sales and chart positions are effectively driven
by DL sales, will companies adopt a 6-week pre-release promo strategy to maximise 1st-week impact, or quench even the most nascent of consumer desire by releasing a track as early as possible, and allowing major promotion to take place after, thereby ensuring the single a longer chart life and a peak further into its run?
Will they care enough to even worry about it? Regrettably singles remain primarily a tool for album promotion and are not necessarily seen as key to an artist's development, and if sales per release don't start climbing back to more respectable levels through incremental DL sales over the next few years, how much will artists, labels, radio stations, or even consumers care about how much an individual track sells, and how it moves around the chart? I dearly hope they will, and time will tell.
But whatever the future holds for the format, please let us move to a chart which captures as many elgible sales as possible, and drop this ludicrous 2-week deletion rule! It was meant as a sweetener for High St retailers who didn't like the idea of digital DLs taking up chart places, and in the case of independents, overall market share. But get real! Most High St retailers don't use the official Top 40 chart in their stores now anyway, and independents more often than not don't bother to sell CD singles at all. This sort of technicality is obscuring the true consumer picture and is being exploited by record companies as a means of promoting the next release by clearing the decks of the old one. Yet the older release continues to sell more copies than the new one via DLs - stand up, Gnarls Barkley.
To maintain the chart's integrity, the OCC need to adopt a stance of principle rather than one which tries to pander to both sides of the industry, ending up with a truly fudged reflection of the true market.
Glad I've got that one off my chest; I guess I must feel more strongly about this than I'd thought!

[Blondini]

Great observations ther, fac. I agree with all of it. The only thing i don't like about the new charts is the way the record companies control when a download enters or leaves- week before physical, two weeks after deleting- this shows a falsification of the charts. But it IS much more unpredictable. Because of downloads, Paris Hilton was denied a #1! Snow Patrol climbed and climbed and Jose Gonzalez has hung around all year!

[hazycosmicvibe]

I also agree with the sentiments expressed so far. The day when ALL downloads are included in the chart cannot be far away. With the artificial chart we have at the moment we are missing unusual events such as Jay Z/Linkin Park's "Numb/Encore" slowly rising up the charts again some 18 months after release. Currently it should be at #28 and given the extra exposure it would have if it were included in the official chart, there is every chance of it overtaking its chart peak of #14.

If only we could have had this system last year; it would have prevented the farcical situation with the Elvis re-releases.

I am glad that a new entry at number one is becoming more difficult again; I am old enough to remember being threatened with being beaten up by my schoolfriends for announcing Slade's "Cum On Feel The Noize" had entered at number one!

As regards TOTP, I would wager any amount of money...(all right 25p), that within a year or two the programme returns as a revived old classic "even better than before", in much the way Dr.Who has done. With a more heavyweight presenter than Fearne Cotton-Bud and the other bloke who probably can't even remember his own name, and a focus on live performances of records actually in the charts I am sure it could be popular again. Perhaps it should be on Thursdays, following a new, improved "Tomorrow's World" for the best effect.

As you will have realised by now, I am an old fart, but I feel sorry for the young pop fan today, who cannot experience the excitement there was in the 70s & 80s of hearing the new charts. There were no midweeks "leaked" in The Sun in them days, and no-one knew the charts until we heard them on the radio.

[Gambo]

Quite right Hazycosmicvibe! Whatever one thinks of current musical styles and tastes compared to those of previous decades, it surely had to be more FUN to follow a weekly chart when there were real possibilities about a record's movement, especially new entries. The novelty value of discs entering high but then often falling fast soon wore off, particularly for older chart fans.
Yet, I honestly have to question whether that many youngsters actually have followed the chart in that much detail since that trend came to dominate.
Nowadays there are so many other interests besides music to compete for child/adolescent attention, and your average 21st century kid's attention-span appears to be shorter than ever!
The industry panicked as singles sales plummeted in the early '90s to what now seems to be dream levels of around 52 million per year, and blamed it on the rise of competing forms of entertainment such as the Gameboy, and increased teen spending on expensive Nike trainers at the expense of buying singles. Yet the market rebounded to reach near-records of over 80 million by the late '90s. Regrettably, whilst it was fortunate to reverse its fortunes then, I honestly don't see such a turnaround as likely to happen again. This is especially since individual tracks began to be consumed digitally (and perhaps until recently mostly via illegal peer-to-peer software), thereby displacing large volumes of CD sales, and I fear that the concept of a "singles chart" has become far less relevant to kids overall. Even with legal downloads included, the number of copies sold per track these days is so low that it's hard to imagine that large numbers of kids/teenagers (upon whom the market traditionally relied) would maintain anything more than a passing interest in the tabulations of releases' rankings that week. So what if Shakira has sold around 30,000 copies for the last 9 weeks? As little as 6 years ago 6-figure weekly tallies were the norm by most No 1s, and overall sales for a Top 10 single would comfortably surpass the 150, or 200,000 mark. Let's face it, even a million-seller has only been purchased by 1/60 of the UK population!
Whether a track debuts lower and climbs or reaches a peak straight off is probably pretty uninteresting to most young music consumers now, and I suspect that the people who most care about the way the chart moves, and the relative sales of singles, are not kids, not artists, not even record companies any more: it's the "old farts", such as you and I, who have been following the ebbs and flows of the singles market and the chart as consumers for at least 2 decades, and perhaps have found it difficult to accept what we see as negative trends in an arena which was once so central to being young - the idea of the chart as being "the soundtrack to your life". In fact, I began to notice that concept petering out around the turn of the '90s, as music tastes (and consequently the market) fragmented and the idea of "mass-appeal" hit singles that EVERY under-18 year-old would buy began to wane. Okay, so Take That and Spice Girls racked up huge sales amongst the under-13 demographic, but teenagers in that period tended to favour supporting a more organic genre or artist, and that didn't usully mean purchasing en masse of their singles. See the rise and rise of albums sales over the corresponding period (and despite the digital onslaught CD albums remain very healthy to date).
All this perhaps goes some way to explaining why a chart-orientated format such as TOTP was failing. The people who it was meant to appeal to had other fish to fry. And any possible rekindling of interest in the chart on a wider level is likely to be curtailed by the introduction of too many arcane rules to satisfy different sides of the industry. Those who really do CARE about it, old or young, cannot wholly support it right now because it lacks integrity as a yardstick for actual weekly sales. No amount of feelgood factor surrounding home-grown British acts of the moment will be enough to bring back the "magic" to the chart.
My my, I do go on a bit don't I?! I must be briefer in future.

[irishguy28]

[Blondini]

^ If the chart was physical sales only, she would have been #1- according to Music Week's physical sales chart.

[MrShankly]

Re: Paris, she was number one on physical sales only; so therefore downloads denied her a number 1. The same happened to Morrissey and Muse.
Also some songs would never have got to #1 on simply physicals (I think Shakira for her first week is an example of this)

The singles chart will always maintain some interest even if it is just by the artists themselves and chart fans. After all, having a #1 single is still news-worthy. Maybe singles peaking lower down in the chart will be ignored, but this has always been teh case.