No Rock And Roll Fun

GOODIES!: Like a spark of joy unspotted by the midweek listings, Ciara has bounced over the Chemical Brothers to rescue us from Elvis hell. Oh yes, her Goodies has crashed up into the number one slot, depriving dead Elvis from the third number one of his planned five-month stranglehold on the UK charts. We'd guess the sudden change of fortunes from Wednesday would be down to Elvis fans being the sort to rush out on day of release to get their single to go into the singles box as soon as possible, while other records can benefit from time for people to get used to hearing them on Heart across the week. In other words, by midweeks, Elvis has shot his load, and has nothing in revserve.

Meanwhile, Simon Tyers writes with the following observation based on chart figures:

In light of everything that's been said about how downloads need adding to the singles chart to stop its perceived decline, I was interested to see BPI figures released last week about the popularity of downloads. While numbers of download sales have indeed overtaken single sales, with up to 60,000 songs to register every week the best-selling download track of 2004, Vertigo, sold a total of 40,000 in fourteen weeks to the end of the year (nine weeks at number one), about twice the amount numbers two and three sold together. The total top 20 made up about 10% of the total market (the equivalent for the singles chart takes up about half). No wonder BMG are so smug about Elvis' pre-eminence.