UK Music Charts

There is lots of speculation in the press today that the UK Singles Music Chart could soon be packed full of "oldies", and in particular we could soon see a whole top ten of The Beatles singles soon.

All of this is due to a small change in the way that the UK's weekly singles sales are calculated. Last year the rules were changed to allow internet downloads to qualify as sales when the charts were calculated, but only if the download was of a song that could also be currently bought as a single in the music shops, ie invariably the only downloads that counted were of current releases.

Now, after the rule change, all download sales will count regardless of whether you can buy the track it in a shop, in a single format - a simple rule change which of course blows the whole record sales thing wide open to every single piece of music that is available on the internet - and that means any album track that is available, not just those that were commercially released as a single.

Which is good news of course.

Lazy reporting in the press though, but thats no suprise - you see none of The Beatles tracks are currently available for download, either as The Beatles or individually, I should know, I've been looking for one of George Harrisons albums on legal t'interweb sites for years now.

That may change in future of course as record companies look to embrace the medium of download sales, something that they've been keener to ban in recent years, theres nothing quite like money to encourage a complete 180 degree spin in attitudes though.

It also raises the question of how this will affect the credibility of the UK Singles Chart, a credibility that has been completely lacking in substance for many years now, well, ever since Louis Walsh and his cohorts flooded the market with pretty boys singing cover versions - Louis and friends should have been hung from lamp posts years ago for single handedly bringing the whole of the UK music scene into complete disrepute, somehow he's got away with it and is even now still pushing the "boy band" format as an credible music genre - go find another cow to milk Louis, your time is nearly up.

The main question is how will new bands get a fair hearing in the charts if, as predicted, everyone is really downloading "old stuff" - how will a chart full of hits from ten years ago help a new band who cannot break into the market ?

Publicity thats how - record companies will have to get off their fat arses and start promoting again rather than let word of mouth build up the few ten thousand sales needed to currently get into the charts - promote your best acts and they will stand shoulder to shoulder with anything thats gone before.

Let me draw your attention to my post from saturday when I reviewed some of the Napster top ten tips for 2007 - at least two of the bands on that list, Fried and The Gossip stand comparison with any (proper) R&B performers that now qualify for the newly formatted UK Singles Chart, I've gone so far as to say that the two female vocalists in those bands stand comparison with Aretha Franklin, and you can't compare higher than that - both of those bands will do well in a head-to-head on download sales - if they are sufficiently promoted and if the crap producers that write the playlists for 90% of the UK radio stations actually bother to do their job and research the fledgling market properly.