UK Charts/ Midweeks 2019

Thanks Robbie. Any insight into the 'record breaking' Last Christmas' streams, while Mariah still placed higher than it for the week?
I can't work that one out myself as the various sub-charts that make up the overall main chart don't have any downgrading applied to them. Or at least I didn't think they did. If 'Last Christmas' was the most streamed track I would have expected it to be at number 1 on the Audio Streaming Chart. Instead it's at number 2. The only thing I can think of is perhaps the two were close in streams and that premium (i.e. by subscribers) streams are weighted more. They are in the main chart, 100:1 rather than 600:1 (and double those ratios for tracks on ACR on the main chart) when converting streams to sales which applies to ad-funded (free) streams. Maybe that gave Mariah the edge.
 
But isn't the streaming chart just the total number of streams, without any weighting applied? Hence Ellie Goulding at #10.

I didn't think the ACR or the premium/free streaming made any difference to that chart - it's just total streams.
 
But isn't the streaming chart just the total number of streams, without any weighting applied? Hence Ellie Goulding at #10.

I didn't think the ACR or the premium/free streaming made any difference to that chart - it's just total streams.
That's what I thought too. But seemingly not...
 
Either way, it's all so fucking convoluted that what we end up with is utterly pointless.
 
That's what I thought too. But seemingly not...

Well clearly the ACR isn't applied, or else Goulding would have been #1 in that chart. So it can only be the premium/free streaming issue. But both affect 'sales' in terms of the final chart- so either do both, or neither.
 
The question I have in all of this is why record companies aren't doing/ saying anything about this ABSOLUTE MESS. Does no one give a fuck at all anymore? Surely the publicity surrounding Mariah in the US shows that there is still some great PR to be gotten around the charts. I'm BEMUSED AT BEST as to why this utter nonsense has been ignored for so long.
 
The whole issue of resetting the ACR is a nonsense as well. Both Mariah and Wham were 'repromoting' this year - but the ACR wasn't cancelled because the record company didn't apply for it?! Crazy. Why aren't the OCC more proactive, if they want their chart to have relevance?

But I don't really want to fight that - my issue isn't cancelling the ACR for some songs, but scrapping it altogether. Who does it serve that we get a chart which doesn't accurately reflect anything at Christmas? Clearly we are still getting a chart clogged up with old Christmas songs and new songs, all at completely arbitrary positions. Either make it so all songs are subject to the same rules so they compete fairly, or decide you don't want old songs in at all and create a heritage chart.
 
We're basically just at the same situation the US charts used to be in with payola, aren't we? Amazon this year have just dictated what will be number one...
 
We're basically just at the same situation the US charts used to be in with payola, aren't we? Amazon this year have just dictated what will be number one...

I guess at least we can SNIGGER with DELICIOUS IRONY at who was DENIED #1 :D
 
How many people work for the OCC? I assume it doesn't get the funding that it once did. You have to assume a lack of resources leaves the charts inconsistent.
 
But isn't the streaming chart just the total number of streams, without any weighting applied? Hence Ellie Goulding at #10.

I didn't think the ACR or the premium/free streaming made any difference to that chart - it's just total streams.
I've just thought: perhaps the streams that the OCC refer to that 'Last Christmas' got last week is a combination of audio and video streams? It would explain why it is only number 2 in the Audio Streams chart. It's number 1 on the Video Streams chart so the OCC may have just added together both sets of streaming figures. It's not very clear on their website what they mean though, they just refer to streams.
 
How many people work for the OCC? I assume it doesn't get the funding that it once did. You have to assume a lack of resources leaves the charts inconsistent.
There used to be only 8 staff at one time. I assume there's more now but it's still not going to be a great deal. All the hard work is done by Kantar Millward Brown who are the organisation that actually compile the charts.
 
We're basically just at the same situation the US charts used to be in with payola, aren't we? Amazon this year have just dictated what will be number one...

Which is a massive win for them. No 1 and it's not on Spotify?
 
The charts have always been manipulable - the difference here is that the manipulation is being done by the compilers rather than the record companies.

Essentially, this has given the chart company what they wanted out of ACR - a new release single at number one instead of an old Xmas song. A small clutch of chart geeks complaining that a 25-year old song or a 35 years old song *should* be number one will bounce off them.
 
Still, could be worse - at least we're not being asked to buy 2 CD singles and a 12" for all the b-sides nowadays, eh?
 
The charts have always been manipulable - the difference here is that the manipulation is being done by the compilers rather than the record companies.

I think this is a valid point. We have to remember, that even back in most of our day, there was still huge manipulation - releasing across up to three formats, chucking in videos/posters, pricing at 99p or £1.99 first week to be half price, holding releases back for six weeks etc. Yes, no one ever had a gun to their head to buy something, but in hindsight what was say the top 10 on a week in 1998 wasn't necessarily the top ten most popular records in the country. Half of the 'most popular' probably weren't yet in the shops.

In saying that, those charts were still at least based upon what people had actively seeked out to trade in their money for. Even if some 12 year-old was buying three copies of a Westlife song, they still had to part with their money and go to a shop to do so. It would be very rare that simply pricing a pound below the others and having a free poster likely resulted in such high additional sales that it jumped from what would have been #10 to instead be #1.

For me, the main issue above echos what Sheena has brought up - either cancel out all old songs altogether (e.g. 26 weeks after release they are no longer chart eligible, irrespective of their current level of streams/sales) or have everyone on the same ACR playing field.
 
I think a level ACR playing field is right. The difference is that I'd set it at about 500:1 or even 1000:1 rather than 100 or 150. Maybe we could get a few sales going again.
 
either cancel out all old songs altogether (e.g. 26 weeks after release they are no longer chart eligible, irrespective of their current level of streams/sales)

I don't think it would need to be as extreme as that. 10 years would knock out most of the current top 40.

What it would generate is covers of the most popular Christmas songs. The harbinger of doom here is John legend's version of "War Is Over" outranking Lennon's original. As the original becomes ineligible, the scramble would be to get your cover popular before anyone else. Or..and here's a thought...would surviving artists just re-record? Would Michael Buble just do a new set of vocals for his Christmas album?

Questions, questions...
 
I think a level ACR playing field is right. The difference is that I'd set it at about 500:1 or even 1000:1 rather than 100 or 150. Maybe we could get a few sales going again.

It's already at 600:1 for old songs on free Spotify, isn't it? I think I'd go higher, if you're seriously looking at down weighting the influence of streams.

I'm not sure getting sales going again is realistic though. People are increasingly growing out of the habit. A huge number of people who decide the single chart now have probably never paid directly for music.
 
John Legend isn't a harbinger of doom any more than Ellie Goulding, is he? He's an amazon exclusive as well. And it's not like contemporary artists covering old Christmas songs is a new phenomenon.
 
John Legend isn't a harbinger of doom any more than Ellie Goulding, is he? He's an amazon exclusive as well. And it's not like contemporary artists covering old Christmas songs is a new phenomenon.

I only meant in the context of starting to exclude older songs completely. He's an example of what would happen - we'd have the same songs, just in increasingly weak cover versions. That's not a great future.

And I didn't realise the ratio for unpaid Spotify was as low as 600:1 - 1000:1 all round it is then.
 
The streaming ratio for tracks on ACR on ad-funded (free) streaming sites is 1200:1. It's 600:1 for those tracks which are still on SCR. For paying subscription plays it's 100:1 for SCR and 200:1 for ACR. The ratios changed earlier this year.
 
Honestly, it's ALMOST enough to make you think they are MAKING IT UP AS THEY GO, isn't it?
 
Honestly, it's ALMOST enough to make you think they are MAKING IT UP AS THEY GO, isn't it?
Yup! It's like the OCC don't know how to deal with streams, both when differentiating between subscription and free plays and how to compare them to being the eqivalent of one digital download.
 
I noticed whole Xmas songs coming up as adverts on YouTube this year. I guess they exist for the charts.
 
Yup! It's like the OCC don't know how to deal with streams, both when differentiating between subscription and free plays and how to compare them to being the eqivalent of one digital download.

That's seriously random. No wonder the whole thing is a shambles.
 
Question for @Robbie

How does resetting the streaming ratios work for current hits previously on ACR? I believe it's something to do with outperforming the rest of the market, rather than an increase in terms of actual sales. So for Tones and I, I'm not sure if her sales have actually increased, but considering most of the chart this week will collapse out entirely, she has clearly outperformed the market. Does this mean her streams are automatically reset (i.e. without the record company needing to request it), and therefore she has a great chance of rebounding to #1 after falling from #1 to #10 when she first hit ACR a couple of weeks back?
 
Question for @Robbie

How does resetting the streaming ratios work for current hits previously on ACR? I believe it's something to do with outperforming the rest of the market, rather than an increase in terms of actual sales. So for Tones and I, I'm not sure if her sales have actually increased, but considering most of the chart this week will collapse out entirely, she has clearly outperformed the market. Does this mean her streams are automatically reset (i.e. without the record company needing to request it), and therefore she has a great chance of rebounding to #1 after falling from #1 to #10 when she first hit ACR a couple of weeks back?

obviously aimed at the situation and not my dear Lolly, but:

“LOL”
 
Question for @Robbie

How does resetting the streaming ratios work for current hits previously on ACR? I believe it's something to do with outperforming the rest of the market, rather than an increase in terms of actual sales. So for Tones and I, I'm not sure if her sales have actually increased, but considering most of the chart this week will collapse out entirely, she has clearly outperformed the market. Does this mean her streams are automatically reset (i.e. without the record company needing to request it), and therefore she has a great chance of rebounding to #1 after falling from #1 to #10 when she first hit ACR a couple of weeks back?
The track has to outpeform the streaming market by at least 25%. The track will then return to SCR from the following week. 'Dance Monkey' increased in streaming sales by 8% last week but the market grew as a whole. It's what happens this current sales week that matters. The streaming market will shrink but 'Dance Monky' (and most other non-Christmas tracks) should either increase in sales or at least remain stable as people return to the normal Top 50 type playlists. A 10% drop in the streaming market, which is not unusual at this time of year, means she only needs to increase her streaming sales by 15% which many then current tracks managed after Christmas last year.

Of course she wouldn't then return to SCR until next Friday by which point her streams may already be falling away. I expect Stormzy and Ed Sheeran to be number 1 on the midweek charts and on Friday and to stay there for at least another week.
 
Some limited sales information has been posted at BuzzJack so I'll copy it here. Thanks to the poster Jay. All comments below the sales figures breakdown are by Jay.

#1. Ellie Goulding - River
Total: 78,193

Audio Streaming Units: 77,795 [7,629,118 audio streaming: premium (divide by 100) | 902,255 audio streaming: ad-funded (divide by 600)]
Video Streaming Units: 245 [133,106 video streams]
Downloads: 153


#2. Mariah Carey - All I Want for Christmas Is You (ACR Data)
Total: 74,076

Audio Streaming Units: 69,978 [13,706,535 audio streaming: premium (divide by 200) | 1,734,635 audio streaming: ad-funded (divide by 1200)]
Video Streaming Units: 645 [714,076 video streams] *
Downloads: 3,153
Physicals: 300 (171 on 7" vinyl, 129 on cassette) †


#3. Wham! - Last Christmas (ACR Data)
Total: 73,172

Audio Streaming Units: 68,413 [13,442,568 audio streaming: premium (divide by 200) | 1,440,190 audio streaming: ad-funded (divide by 1200)]
Video Streaming Units: 2,067 [2,249,051 video streams] ‡
Downloads: 2,426
Physicals: 266 (all on 7" vinyl)

* These figures correlate with her position of #19 in the official video streaming chart. The Jukebox Heaven #13 position would add approximately another 840,000 streams to Mariah, which I would estimate to be in the region of 700 to 800 ACR sales (or 1400 to 1600 SCR sales missing from her overall sales total). Evidently 700-800 sales wouldn't have made up the gap required to overtake Ellie.

www.officialcharts.com/charts/video-streaming-chart/
#12 - 849,843 video streams - Dua Lipa - Don't Start Now
#13 - Jukebox Heaven - All I Want for Christmas Is You
#14 - 833,293 video streams - Wizzard - I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday

† Oops at Mariah's physical sales being quite weak. The prices were expensive - £13.98 for the 7" vinyl and £5.98 for a cassette, and both were only available via her UK online store which wasn't well promoted (Mariah's socials focused on her US store). It certainly wasn't as well handled as Wham!'s 7" vinyl, which sold 4,859 copies in Christmas week (retailing for a more reasonable £7.99 and it had much wider availability).

‡ I'm still confused by Wham! video streams being so much greater than Mariah according to OCC. They have Wham! with 2,249,051. If you add up Mariah's 714,076 video streams & the 840,000 streams erroneously given to Jukebox Heaven, that's still only 1.55m. The Kworb YouTube data showed that Mariah was achieving almost double the number of video streams as Wham. Where else other than YouTube would Wham have had the edge over Mariah? Something really doesn't add up.
 
^
from the above you can work out that without ACR the top 2 would have been

1. All I Want For Christmas Is You 144,699
2. Last Christmas 143,653

In fact without ACR the entire top 10 would be old Christmas songs. Ellie would be number 11.
 
This is now gaining traction on Twitter although it's kinda-framed as an anti-Amazon thing.


 
To be honest I find it hard to be ANTI AMAZON about it, if people think that allowing Spotify to control the chart is any better.
 

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