No Rock And Roll Fun

CHARTSLIP: Ah, the joys of human error and what they can do to the charts. Wednesday morning, Usher's album was number one in the billboard charts, and George Strait at number two. Then a "mass retailer" realised it had got its figures wrong, and had undermarked Strait by about twelve thousand sales. When added in, Strait bounced up to number one. At the same time, REM were moved up one slot to number 13, which Soundscan (who make the charts) says was an error by Billboard when they were printing the charts. It makes you wonder if they'd have bothered to alter the REM position if they hadn't been redoing the chart because of the number one foul up; in turn, makes you wonder how many times bands should be, say, at 17 rather than 18 but nobody bothers to make the fuss.

Record industry computers are not, it seems, infalliable.