Chart Show move isn't really about the Chart Show

Surely what's really important in the story about a possible move of the Radio One chart show from Sunday to whenever is less the move itself, and more the reason behind it:

From summer 2015, new music will be released at 00:01 on Friday.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) hopes an aligned global release day will reduce piracy and "re-ignite excitement".

The Official Charts Company confirmed it would "also be looking to move the UK chart announcement day".

Yes, every record will henceforward be released at the same time all over the world, to, you know, reduce piracy (somehow) and... sorry, what was that phrase again?

"re-ignite excitement"

Let's leave aside the whole question of how this would actually work when you've got situations like Charli XCX's Sucker, which came out in the UK this month but had already had its US release back in 1972 or something.

Instead, let's just wonder what salary the people who came up with this idea are on. Faced with the structural decline of music purchasing, their big idea was not better records, or different records, or even records which came with flavours on them.

Oh, no. They actually believe that a person is more likely to be (a) excited by and (b) pay for a track if they know it's being released on a Friday at the same time only not because of timezone differences as "the rest of the world" by which we mean America really.

It's One Direction you've got to feel sorry for - imagine how popular they might have been had their first releases not been dragged down by humdrum Monday release dates, eh?

Naturally, there's a lengthier expression of this preposterous position:

Frances Moore, the IFPI chief executive, said: “In today’s globalised world, it makes no sense for new music to be released to fans on different days of the week.

“We view this as a tremendous opportunity to breathe new life back into the release of music. Friday has a compelling logic to it, at the start of the weekend when fans most want to listen to and buy music.”

Sometimes you wonder if the people who work at places like the IFPI have ever listened to music ever.

- Hey, Tom, I've got the new Stibby Jolenenza record here, do you want to listen to it?
- Margaret, are you insane? It's only Wednesday. I'd have thought a big music fan like you would want to wait until Friday evening, when proper music fans start listening to music

There's also that odd suggestion that music fans buy records at weekends. Now, when I was younger, maybe there'd be something to that - until Saturday came round, hopping on a bus and heading off to Woolworths or Rounder in town wasn't that easy. Now, though, whoever the poor benighted fifteen year-old who is my equivalent is, all they have to do is press their phone's purchase button.

(Oh, god, knowing what an asshat I could be at fifteen, it's possible that the 2015 fifteen year-old me equivalent is refusing to get a phone on some vague point of principle. Just get one, 2015 fifteen year-old me equivalent. It's not like anyone likes you because of your stance. And for god's sake, lose the 2015 Tears For Fears t-shirt equivalent.)

Paul McGowan, chief executive of Hilco Capital, which owns high street retailer HMV, said it was “a totally logical move”.

He said: “Quite simply, new music should hit the high street when people hit the street. New Music Fridays will get new releases to fans when they most want to buy them.”

Obviously, Hilco know enough about retail to have managed to salvage some sort of high-street presence for HMV, but I'd be intrigued to know who this demographic is - who are so hungry for new experience they don't want a record that came out four days ago, but who are able to wait long enough to go into town and buy it rather than download it straight to their phones.

Still, as an indication of where the thinking of the IFPI is these days, it's a useful guide. And for those remaining physical record stores, the day for the assistant looking confused when you ask for a new CD is moving from Mondays to Fridays. Make a note in the Filofax you're probably still using.

Album charts apparently still going; intend to add streaming

The addition of streaming to the singles charts gave a headache to the Official Charts Company - how do you weight a listen to a tune against the purchase of a CD?

They're now adding streaming data to the album charts, and that's created an even more Sheldon Cooper style twisting of data to make sense.

They've rejected the model used by the Billboard charts:

In the US, the Billboard chart equates 1,500 streams of any song from an album to one sale.

However, that leads to situations where the popularity of one song pushes the entire album up the chart.

(Additionally, and surely more worryingly, it means that the effort of one song is going to be counted for both the singles and album charts, which seems odd.)

So what have the UK chart counters come up with?

The Official Chart Company says it will weight its data to avoid similar situations.

It will look at the 12 most-streamed tracks from each album, then down-weight the two most popular in line with the average of the next 10.

These streams will then be added together and divided by 1,000. This "stream factor" will then be added to the physical/digital sales of the album, to produce an overall "sales figure" that determines an album's position in the countdown.

Louis Walsh was last seen heading home to see if he still had his log table.

There's nothing like a completely transparent system to make the list of best-selling album, is there?

You might ask why it's only streaming albums which get adjusted if people access them but only want to listen to two tracks? Why shouldn't physical CDs be marked down if the purchaser only makes it through the first couple of songs, or rips it to their PC but only ever plays the hits?

The album chart, like the singles chart, will ignore YouTube data completely so won't even reflect what people are really listening to.

Charts: Surely they've streaming already?

An announcement from the South Bank...
Just before we get to the announcement from the South Bank, what's with the Official Chart Company and the BPI having some of the most expensive office space in London, right down opposite Parliament? Given everything the BPI does is funded by its members, which means ultimately it is money that otherwise would have gone to musicians or songwriters, shouldn't it look to taking cheaper rooms? I suppose they'd argue that being in the old GLC buildings is great for access to the people who make law, but is that true? Do they communicate by semaphore from across the Thames? Or just nip out and hang around outside the Tesco Express hoping to bump into Michael Fabricant? Because they could do that with an office in Uxbridge and an Oyster Card.
The Official Chart Company has announced that streaming will be added to the toxic brew ("mix") which makes up the charts:

Official Charts Company boss Martin Talbot told BBC News that the changes are "about future-proofing the charts".

"So far this year we've seen nine tracks which have been streamed more than one million times in a week," Talbot explained. "Last year there were only two tracks that had reached that kind of level."

Bastille's 'Pompeii' is the most-streamed track of all time in the UK so far with 26.6 million steams to date but only made number two in the singles chart based on sales alone.

Bastille were given the announcement to make:

On one hand, this makes sense, and it's surprising that it hasn't happened before - like, eighteen months ago, probably.

On the other... this is a bit problematic. The Billboard charts always included radio play alongside sales, on the basis that that was a measure of popularity. The UK charts never did, for the two strong reasons.

One, that just because something is being listened to on the radio doesn't mean it's being enjoyed (look how long DLT broadcasted for).

Two, that radio play is a lot more nebulous than sales. How do you weight a play on Little Rissington FM against someone paying 79p to buy a track? Can you be sure all those plays for that local band on Froome Sound are because the band is popular, and not because the station manager's daughter is the bassist?

So, sesnsibly, the charts focused on a slightly more trustworthy measure of popularity - a financial transaction.

Obviously, this was, and is, still open to gaming - managers filling the trunks of their cars with godawful CDs by their terrible bands, purchased to give them a boost; slipping singles into different sleeves. But it was a least bad situation.

The problems with radio play are multiplied by streaming. How many 'listens' indicate an enthusiasm that equals someone willing to shovel over some money over to own that track?

Maybe the falling price of a single has made this argument less compelling, but even so - does 'I keep hearing about this Kasabian all over the place, I wonder she's like, I'll go to Spotify and play her song OH MY GOD THIS IS AWFUL are they all this bad? I'll try another OH MY GOD THIS IS WORSE' really have the same weight as someone who thinks 'I love Lana Del Ray, I've already bought the CD single but simply can't wait for it to be delivered so I'll get the download too'?

And if you accept that a single Spotify play can't equal a purchase, you suddenly find yourself having to create an exchange rate. And once you do that, your chart becomes opinion-based, not fact-based.

There is such an exchange rate:

To reflect the difference in weight between streaming and purchasing, 100 streams will count as equivalent to 1 single (download or physical single) in the chart compilation process.

Oddly, the amount of cash earned by a musician for their track being streamed on Spotify isn't 1% of the amount they get, so you have to wonder about the 'science' behind this particular ratio.

And that's before you ask the question about how you can be certain there are ears listening to the stream, rather than just a handy-dandy little script or two deployed across a number of computers?

Cassingles: They're growing in popularity

Good news for manufacturers of pencils, although only the hexagonal sort. Britain is going to be needing something to start trying to spool unruly tape back into cassettes, as Cassingles had a massive upswing in sales in 2012. A 300% increase, in fact.

Although the Official Charts Company has a slight note of caution:

That’s right, the Official Charts Company track sales of recorded music in the UK seven days a week, 365 days a year, covering a whopping 99% of the singles market, EVEN CASSETTES! And now, according to this eye-popping treasure trove of data collected daily from music retailers the length and breadth of the country, we can confirm that the market for cassette singles, or ‘cassingles’ tripled in 2012, from 218 to a grand total of 604 copies.

480 of those cassingles were Feeder's Borders.

Perhaps even more surprisingly, the Chart people counted 270 albums on minidisc being sold in the UK.

No word on how the few remaining available Digital Compact Cassettes are selling, although "they're not" is most likely.

Streaming piles

I'm struggling to grasp what the point of a a chart of streaming music is meant to do. Besides, perhaps, drawing some brief attention to the existence of streaming services?

One chart - the chart, the Sunday one that used to be the Tuesday lunchtime one - is fair enough, although given the instant feedback and constant monitoring you get online its now more about confirming what you already know; a moment to freeze the data rather than a revelation.

And that should contain a details of all music consumption that implies a transaction has taken place.

But is anyone - outside, perhaps, the people who run the servers and collect the royalties - that worried about the granularity of the detail?

Here, from the Official Charts Company, are the streaming and sales charts of the year so far:

01 ED SHEERAN 01 DAVID GUETTA
02 LANA DEL REY 02 GOTYE
03 DAVID GUETTA 03 JESSIE J
04 RIHANNA 04 FLO RIDA
05 COLDPLAY 05 NICKI MINAJ
06 GOTYE 06 ED SHEERAN
07 JESSIE J 07 RIHANNA
08 EMELI SANDE 08 EMELI SANDE
09 FLORENCE & THE MACHINE 09 RIZZLE KICKS
10 DRAKE 10 KATY PERRY
11 FLO RIDA 11 COLDPLAY
12 BEYONCE 12 LMFAO
13 ADELE 13 OLLY MURS
14 BEN HOWARD 14 DJ FRESH
15 SKRILLEX 15 CARLY RAE JEPSEN
16 RIZZLE KICKS 16 LANA DEL REY
17 NICKI MINAJ 17 ADELE
18 KATY PERRY 18 LABRINTH
19 OLLY MURS 19 KELLY CLARKSON
20 ONE DIRECTION 20 BEYONCE

Which is which? Does it matter overmuch? (The streaming chart is the one on the left, the singles chart on the right).

I'm not against the idea of sharing the data; I just don't see that what we're getting requires the hoopla of pretending it's a useful chart.

Indie guitar routed, says chart company

For reasons that aren't immediately apparent, the official chart company has decided to tell indie rock that it isn't good enough:

"2009 was the toughest year of the Noughties as far as independent guitar music was concerned," said the [Official Chart C]ompany's managing director Martin Talbot.

"We're going through that period where guitar music and electronic-driven pop music is winning through over guitar bands."

Goodness. That sounds like something that might even be worth trying to interest journalists in as if it was some sort of trend. Well, almost. I suppose if your job involved compiling lists of what records were selling slightly more copies than other records, you'd have to be able to come up with some sort of fact that doing all that compiling might reveal. However banal it might be.

But can Talbot explain what is almost certainly just a cyclical change?

Talbot knows exactly were the blame lies. He said, "You only have to look at the charts over the past 12 months to see we're going through a real period in resurgence for pop music.

"The biggest stars of the last 12 months have been the likes of Lady Gaga and Pixie Lott. Dizzee Rascal having three number ones in a year. I can't see that changing over the next 12 months either."

So, Talbot's explanation for pop doing better than guitars is that... pop is doing better than guitars. Watch out, Gennaro, somebody is after your crown for chart commentary.

Hang about, though, Martin - are you sure that it won't change for the next twelve months?

"It's about trends and movements. Sometimes movements can be sparked by one act coming out of nowhere and doing something different to what everyone else is at that particular point in time."

Well, yes, a movement would require someone doing something different for it to start, wouldn't it? If you came along doing the same thing as everybody else, you wouldn't really be in a position to start a movement.

In summary, then: Indie-style guitar rock is now selling relatively less well than other types of music, because other types of music are selling more strongly. It's unlikely that anything will change that in the foreseeable future, unless something happens to make it change.

I only hope that the newspapers haven't yet sent their front pages to print.

It's the new new Top 40

Every time someone takes it into their heads to muck about with the Top 40, it's hailed as the "biggest revamp in chart history", although what they really mean is "once again, the chart is fading into pointless obscurity and it's hoped mucking about with the rules might give it a couple more years before it finally expires.

The latest idea is to somehow include streams played in the list of the best-selling singles in the UK. Only then, of course, it wouldn't be a list of best-selling singles any more.

Official Charts Company managing director Martin Talbot told BBC News the charts had traditionally counted individual singles bought for permanent ownership.

"The key task that we've been getting to grips with over the past 18 months has been ensuring that post-download, and post-permanent ownership of music, we're also counting how consumers are consuming their music in other ways," he said.

"The charts have always been there as a popularity poll, as a means of identifying what are the hottest records of the moment.

"That's been relatively simple when people have bought stuff to keep forever. But that's going to become increasingly more complicated."

Although the chart seemed quite happy to ignore music played on radios, or taped off the radio, or on television for all these years. Indeed, the chart has never really cared about how well-played stuff has been at all: records which, it's a fair bet, many copies of which have never been played more than once, if at all, happily bubble to the top of the list and sit there. How many copies of Elton John's famous 'Diana Spencer was a bit like Marilyn Monroe, or close enough to save me the need to write a new tune' have even left the case?

And how many streams are listened to out of curiosity rather than an endorsement? Is someone auditioning a track and deciding it's rubbish really a 'vote' towards calling a record 'hot'?

A streaming chart might be interesting, but counting what people listen to is a different endeavour entirely.

In fact, it turns out the idea of adding in streams is only that at the moment:

Mr Talbot said streams would be integrated into the main chart when they become "a very big part of the way people consume music going forward" and fans were buying fewer tracks as a result.

"I'm sure it will come upon us quicker than we might anticipate but none of us really know when it will happen," he said. "I think ultimately it's bound to happen. But that could be five years, it could be 10 years, it could be 20 years."

So, he can't tell when it's going to happen, but he knows it's going to happen earlier than he'd guess it was going to happen? If he knows it's going to happen sooner than he'd predict, shouldn't he adjust his prediction?

Indie charts prepare for 1995

It's not like the BPI and the Official Charts Company don't really care about the indie charts, but they've just got round to having the first tweak of the rules for inclusion since 1978.

Yes, the BPI and the charts people are redefining indie:

The initial criteria defined an independent release as any record which was released by a label with independent distribution, in an era when major record companies were self-distributed and smaller labels used alternative routes. Today, however, with even majors outsourcing their own distribution to independent operations, this criterion has become less relevant.

Under the new rules, a download or CD will be eligible for the Official Independent Charts if it is released on a label which is 50% or more owned by an independent (or non-major) company, irrespective of the distribution channel through which it is shipped or delivered.

In other words, your record can now come out on a label fifty per cent owned by EMI, and still be magically 'independent'. It's a fair point that the criteria probably needed changing, but 'half-owned by a major' seems to be an odd compromise point.

Actually, isn't the idea of there being an "official" independent chart slightly odd anyway?

But there's more. A whole new chart:

In addition, two new charts will be launched to reflect "breaking talent". The Official Independent Breakers Charts - for singles and albums, respectively - will be open to independent releases by artists which have not previously been featured in the Top 20 of the Official Singles or Albums national charts.

This is like the old 6Music chart, only with slightly tighter entry criteria, then.

Given that the indie chart ceased to have any meaningful relevance to the average person sometime between the time The Chart Show finished and NME dropped its chart pages, it's probably not especially important that these rules are being changed - although I'd love to know where they feel the demand for an Indie Breaking Talent list is.

Julian Wall, the BPI's Director of International Events & Independent Member Services says, "The independent chart has a long and illustrious history. After 30 years, the time is right to bring it back into a world in which truly independent labels are releasing masses of music that deserves to be heard and recognized. A credible independent label chart for albums, single tracks and new 'break' acts is an important step to achieving this.

"Working alongside AIM, Iain McNay (the chairman of Cherry Red Records responsible for launching the independent chart in 1978) and the Official Charts Company, has been a great experience. The BPI is 101% committed to the re-launch of an authoritative and genuine UK Independent Chart."

Only 101%? Couldn't give it that final hyperbolic extra 9%, could you? Although since the BPI's commitment to independent members is such that Wall has a whole other job to do as well, I'd be interested to see how he manages to overdeliver that commitment on half his time.

It's instructive, though, to discover that the independent chart is vital to provide a showcase for slightly-non-mainstream music to be heard.

But hang on... what's this, in the press release sent out to promote the change?

They will be accompanied by the new Independent Breakers charts. The new Breakers Charts are designed to reflect and bolster music from the independent sector’s newer, developing acts, by remaining open only to artists which have not previously scored a Top 20 hit in the UK – in the first few months of this year, they would have benefited critical darlings including Bon Iver, Friendly Fires, Patrick Wolf and The Horrors.

So these moves mean Friendly Fires and Patrick Wolf will have a platform? But since they're already "critical darlings" (and isn't that a slightly sneery term, a put-down rather than a leg-up?) why do they need a new platform to be discovered? Wouldn't they be brining credibility to the charts rather than the charts offering visibility to them?

It does make me slightly nostalgic for the old days of working through the 94 pages of charts in the back of the Record Mirror during Wednesday night tea, though.

BPI charts company tries surprising 'pay to buy' model

Just making its debut on the iTunes app store is a little application from the Official Chart Company which lets you look at the charts. Music Ally is surprised:

But hang on, any savvy iPhone user can simply visit the Radio 1 website every Sunday and get that info...

Ah, but there is a unique selling point:

Well, the OCC is hoping its app’s extra features will make it tempting, with the ability to preview and buy tracks on the iTunes Store, stream videos for some tracks from YouTube, browse that week’s new releases, and click through to artist websites.

Aha - so it's a useful tool to allow people to move from grazing the charts onto buying the music. That's quite savvy. Giving away a nice shiny app to play with charts in the hope of making some sales. Good wo... hang about, what's this?

It costs £1.79 to download the app, although...

Although you get your money back? It's free if you're in the UK? That comes with a free iTunes purchase?

although this will soon rise to £2.99.

Oh. So you want me to give you three quid for a device to sell music to me? You know what else lets me click through to artist websites? Google. You know what that costs me? Nothing.

BPI also has plans for a Madrigal only chart

You might have thought that the Classical Music charts were already pretty specialist, but apparently they're not specialist enough: The Official Charts Company is launching a spin-off, proper classical chart:

Ginny Cooper, of the BPI's classical committee, said: "Within the classical sector, there are many first class performers providing first class recordings which were not registering on the chart radar as the crossover titles were obviously higher profile and selling more.

"We felt, however, that they were just as valid and wanted to provide an outlet to enable the public to see that sales of pure classical music are still alive and well."

Although, presumably, if the sales were that alive and well then the records would be doing well in the ordinary classical charts, wouldn't they?

The test of classical-ness is apparently going to be asking Paul Gambaccinni if he'd have played it when he was a Radio 3 presenter, and only allowing in things he wouldn't approve of.

The serious aim is to keep out recordings of light music written as popular entertainment, like Lloyd-Webber's stuff...

The first published chart is topped by the Gala Ensemble with their album The Best of Gilbert and Sullivan.

... although not Gilbert and Sullivan, it seems.