good evening pop pickers · 2009-09-16 21:38
When I was a kid, the chart – the official UK Top 40 singles – was important. It’s where new music was heard, it dictated what the radio stations played, and what would be on Top Of The Pops that week. It gave the KLF, MARRS and the Orb a way to worm into the national consciousness, in ways that John Peel and the late night Radio 1 DJs, and shows like the Tube never could.
I haven’t looked at the chart for years. I’m vaguely aware of it, and of what’s considered popular, through the music played in shops, and the tinny hiss, broadcast on public transport from thousands of Apple headphones.
The chart has changed how they’re calculated – in line with ‘how people are listening and buying music’. This meant, first of all, radio plays, and then digital downloads (not, yet, digital plays).
Here is this weeks chart:
chart from Yahoo
To an elderly chartpicker, there’s several things that would have raised an eyebrow 10 years ago.
Firstly, artists with multiple entries. This very rarely used to happen, as an album’s worth of singles would be spread throughout the year, and the few megastars that could sustain momentum would switch all promotional power to the new track, wanting to get that all-important No 1 in the first week of release.
Several artists have 2, with some nudging 4 or 5 (especially if looking at the Top 75). Take, well, Lady Gaga:
graph by chartstats
Ignoring the pink line (that’s the album), you’ve got 4 perpetually charting singles. It used to be a pretty quick exponential curve down the charts once you’d peaked – now you have artists bobbing up and down.
Kings of Leon’s Sex on Fire has been in the charts for 53 weeks.
You never used to see records climb back up the singles chart, let alone get back into the Top 10 only a year after they were released – it’s not exactly a revival is it? I’m not sure if this is a sad inditement on the record industry or the British public.
Now pop music has disappeared from mainstream adult tv, it’s down to whoever can promote/spend enough through other media – celebrity magazines, co-branding with mobile phone companies, newspaper and billboard advertising. It’s brands (artists) rather than the music itself.
Few companies can afford this, especially for singles. The single charts are now completely dominated by major labels:
7 out of the top 40 are independently produced, 5 of those dance music, 2 rock/guitar. Singles aren’t seen to promote albums, where the money is, and which most indies have to concentrate on (dance music is about tracks, with occasional profitable but credibility-crushing breakthroughs into pop music).
Major labels have forced interesting music out, leading to people paying less attention, ultimately killing the singles chart as a cultural phenomenon.
So where’s the action? I’d guess the iTunes Music Store.
iTMS Top Songs
A lot of the same tracks, and acts, but less duplication, and I’d hope a bit quicker turnover. For a start, it’s a Top 200, and you can listen (and buy) to them straight away. There’s also a clear way to find new music and a Radio Top 40 (there’s also the Big Top 40, which I don’t really understand).
It’s still unclear how music can move from niche to mainstream without big bucks, and big promotion on places like iTMS. Can the charts (and pop music) get back its spark, its eclecticism, and become something to talk about again?
comments
I never really understood why TOTP completely disappeared, and/or why it wasn’t replaced with a mainstream show on a different channel. If it wasn’t necessarily receiving the mass audiences that it once had, wouldn’t it still be within the BBC’s remit to show something like it, given the positive effect it had on music buying / listening / etc? Music within niche spaces would be fine if there were anything like enough of them (no matter what time of day, if you switch on to one of the free channels, it’s American R&B) but here’s the thing about a mainstream channel showing an electic mix of what’s hot/not – an educated pop audience who have more of a tendency to like an equally eclectic mix of music.
…although I may just be nostalgic for the TV I had when I was young, I fail to see what opportunities I have to share in pop culture with the kids – particularly in a cup of tea drinking “Isn’t this all bang bang music?” way, which is absolutely essential for any parent to provide in a healthy growing family ;)
The official chart is not based on radio plays at all, it is solely about actual purchases. As you say, it does now take account of digital downloads (to be precise, since April 2005 downloads were admitted as long as a physical format was available; from March 2006 sales of downloads were counted one week ahead of the release of physical formats; from January 2007 downloads counted regardless of physical format availability), and you no longer have to state something is a single for it to be able to be in the chart. There are still some rules (digital single can be a maximum of 15 minutes long, CD/digital bundles 25 mins + 4 songs max).
In the past, for all you know, people were buying a single a year after it was out in their droves from every second hand shop in the country (humour me :) ). You just had no way of knowing that. So you can hardly complain about the fact that the chart is now indicative of what is actually going on, as a measure of the buying public.
Your issue seems to be that you want the chart to be solely about what’s new, whereas they have decided it is about what is being purchased. Both are valid aims, and I quite like knowing what is actually happening, rather than limited to a selection (chosen by who? If some thirty-year old album suddenly had thousands of people buying track 6, shouldn’t we know about that?). If you’re after a list fixed to ignore what people are actually buying but biased towards new releases, I’m sure you could whip one up by only counting things from the first time they can be purchased or similar.
“all-important No 1 in the first week of release.” was a problem for the industry and the public, not a good thing (and I don’t think it was that old a phenomenon); everything was marketed around that one week, nothing could slow burn; you were bang, and gone. Bobbing up and down, as you put it, I think is more preferable, indicative, and nicer.
Why is it a sad indictment of either the industry or the public that a track released over a year ago is still being bought? If people have heard it recently, and like it, and are buying it, what is the problem with that?
Given there are two whole stations on free TV devoted to pop music, whereas a few years ago there was none, I’m not sure what you mean by saying “Now pop music has disappeared from mainstream adult tv” either.
It’s very odd, I’d conclude the opposite of what you say – in the past, it was only major labels who could release things as singles, no-one else had a look-in (if you think the chart now is dominated by major labels, I would be interested in your unspoken statement that it was not even worse in the past), whereas now if you can get on iTunes you can get in the chart. You don’t have to put a huge marketing budget aroud getting to Number 1 or you’re dropped, you can find a track on your album you never even intended to release suddenly appearing.
I think we are living in a rather good age for pop music (Rihanna’s Umbrella still stands out for me as the record of the last few years), the chart and pop music I currently listen to is full of spark and eclecticism, music has never been more popular, and the singles chart is doing what it says it will – showing what people are currently buying. As for talking about it, maybe you need to hang around with more musicians? :)
Sorry, thought I should make something clearer – where you say “You never used to see records climb back up the singles chart, let alone get back into the Top 10 only a year after they were released” – that was because once a label withdrew a single from contention, it would not count for the chart, so it couldn’t climb back up the chart, even if people were buying it. Which seems a bit rum :)
“records never go back into the top 10”. not often but there are a few examples way way way back.
Boney M’s Rivers of Babylon/Brown Girls in the Ring in 1978
http://www.chartstats.com/songinfo.php?id=7729
bizarrely brown girls in the ring started getting played on the radio (the b side) so it went back up the charts again.
and Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood which spent 63 weeks! on the chart. in 1983/4 went out of the top 10 and then went back up the charts when two tribes was a hit.
http://www.chartstats.com/songinfo.php?id=11156
— Jem Stone (BBC) 17.09.09 #
The Kings of Leon example is one that fairly accurately illustrates the point made above about singles being removed from ‘competition’ – I suspect that the comeback of the purchases was after Michael McIntyre used the song in a joke on his TV program. The fact the section was then used as the advert for the repeats across a number of channels would then have brought it further back into consciousness and caused more sales. This might have happened in the pre-digital/new chart formulation age, but people would have either had to trawl for ‘old’ singles or picked up an album featuring the tracks.
I’d be interested to see exactly what point on the graph Michael McIntyre’s show went out: the big rise, or the little peak before. I wonder whether it was his show or the advert that did the most advertising for the song…
— Billy Abbott 18.09.09 #
Just a couple of quick notes. Singles going back up the charts after going down did happen occasionally. This usually happened during the New Year period, when no new singles were released. Big hits throughout the year usually re-entered the lower regions of the top 40 and those in the lower regions of the top 20 did come back in at the top 10 at times. Some singles released during the Christmas period reached their peak position at this name.
Multiple entries was something that happened more often then you’d think. When an artist had a big hit that reached no 1 etc, and then released a new one, it wasn’t unusual for the previous single to still be in the lower reaches of the top 40 whilst the new single reached the top 10. It even happened to the likes of Whigfield and Rednex, if my memory serves me right. The Prodigy and the Manics also re-issued several of their earlier singles during the late 90s that reached various positions in the top 75. Oasis had several singles hanging around the top 75 during the 90’s as well. Whatever spend nearly 60 weeks in the top 75! Frankie Goes to Hollywood had the number 1 and 2 spots at the same time during the 80’s as well.
I think the major issue with the charts now days, is the issue of predictability. With a bit of time and effort, you could easily predict the top 40 the week before by looking at viewing hits on youtube etc. With the division of digital downloads and physical singles, you know if a song reaches a certain position on downloads you know that won’t be it’s peak position but if it included physical then you know that will be it’s peak position. In the pre-95 charts, the only way you could predict how well a single did was by it’s quality. By ’95 things had changed, given the change in focus to pre-release publicity (and cheaper singles in the first week!) in order for positions to reach their peak quicker. It added a certain dimension to it even if it wasn’t the same.
I think Chris misses a major issue regarding the changing consumption of music. Pre-95 if you heard a song on a radio or on TV, you usually waited a while to buy the single. A tighter economy meant you had to save up, and without a consumer world people didn’t mind waited. Things changed post-95 with a booming economy, meaning that people bought singles much quicker, meaning that singles charted much faster. The use of the Internet, means that anyone can buy anything at any time. This not only means that singles can peak much faster than before as they can purchase it on the first day of release with no hassle but they can delay purchase until a later date. You couldn’t do this before – after a year you could only purchase singles second hand (which didn’t count), from the deleted singles section in HMV or just buy the album. This is probably why singles are staying around much longer and peaking much higher. The new singles chart was a cynical attempt to bring back the ‘glory days’ without considering the nature of the new charts.
We are in a transitional period for digital downloads, so more and more people are using it each day. New people will download a specific popular song each day, as they had it on Cd or only listened to it on youtube before. This will probably die down slightly within the new few years when more consistent levels of people are purchasing digital downloads. This is probably why singles are staying in the charts much longer now.
Things will probably not change, even if the I-Tunes Chart was used. The proposal of a new Indie Chart will only divide the modern music charts further. Excluding successful artists in this change and (as of yet) no publicity through a mainstream music show on TV or radio will make popular singles on major labels, whilst the independent remaining truly independent. The singles chart is sadly a thing of the past, it only remains now as a minor marketing tool and a way of labels to analyse artists. A shame, as although the charts were superficial, they had a certain charm. People are now just focusing on the music itself, which is the important thing.