Chart Pop

Remember when we used to get all excited when every Smiths single went in at number 12? Nope, me neither.

*get to the point*

anyway IN MY DAY records/artists had to be EXTRAORDINARILY SPECIAL even to go in the top 40 first week of release, never mind shoot straight in at number 5, and the Top 40 rundown had drama in it, especially when it used to be on at Tuesday lunchtimes, so us kids could have good-natured if bloodstained scraps vis a vis haha Slade only number two the Sweet beat them they're fuckin finished you're fuckin finished you bastard WAM POW CRASH

and you genuinely did not know with every new week how far your FAVOURITE RECORD would go

or alternatively HA HA Ghost Town made it to number one, struggled past Stars on 45, in time for the riots and the royal wedding WE'VE WON.

And of course you sometimes had TANTRIC CHARTS - records like Relax and Blue Monday, every time it looked as though they were going to drop off, they had a sudden resurgence and started going back up again to a new peak he he.

The problem with Katie's argument is that access to the 'new talent' which is being kept out of the charts is easier than ever before (thanks to the web, and the fact that Radio 1 plays loads more new music than it did 20 years ago cause it needs to be 'diverse' to keep its funding) - and the question that has to be asked is, WHAT new talent? What singles-based music is 'out there' which has potential popular appeal and isn't actually charting?

NB do the singles charts still use 'chart return' shops or do they use a soundscan style system?

Tom's so polite.

i'm sorry to sound old when i should be young and enthusiastic about these things martin. but when you're in a tiny small scale indie band and EVEN THEN have to deal with a load of guff about agents and pluggers and NME coverage and blah blah blah and THAT'S just for releasing a 7" on a local label, and have to totally reorganise your life to fit in with those commitments, it does make you wonder who the hell is supposed to be in control here.

Erm......?

I think Tom is saying every kind of music that could be in the charts already is in some form.

Tom come back!

But plenty of singles do still hang around the charts for an awfully long time - the last Eminem single is still in the top fourty, just to name one current example...

Noise doesn't get into the UK charts, yes. What other broad genre doesn't? Country is about all I can think of (though it used to). I think a lot of the time when people say 'my favourite sort of music doesnt get in the charts' what they really mean is 'my favourite practitioners of my favourite sort of music doesn't get in the charts'.

(In countries where playlisting is a factor this obviously does not apply).

And it works labelwise, too: if there's no pressure to immediately sock everything in at #1, it's slightly more appealing to release more "niche" items and see how far up the bottom of the chart they can rise. I mention this because when I was younger I recall U.S. chart shows being long -- like the Sunday top 40s, sure, but also even local shows that would run through 20 or 30, skipping some of the ones that were old news and winding their ways down. Now it's the "top 9 at 9:00," or the top five every five hours, on the justifiable assumption that marketing's gotten good enough to stick the right things at the top of the charts from day one.

Not that there's anything that can be done about this: labels have figured out how to use publicity really effectively, and it's not as if they'll stop. And it does make it easier on the listener, making the charts sort of more true-to-life and up-to-the-minute, exactly what's hot right now. But it has the unfortunate effect of turning the charts into basically a debut show -- whereas you used to start listening to chart shows down at #40 expecting to hear the new surprising hit way down there. Sometimes you picked right and the song shot up to #1. But more importantly!!! Sometimes you picked wrong and wound up loving a song nobody else was going to, something that's a lot less likely these days.

But a record has to be getting airplay outside the chartshow for people to notice it, right? So what's it matter whether it's at #38 or not in the charts yet because it hasn't been released. I think the whole build up thing still happens, it just happens before the record gets in the charts.

Siegbran is on the money but in fairness the reason more dance tunes don't chart is that they don't get the big money behind them, it doesn't bother me too much. Obviously there are exceptions, Radio 1 tends to back the odd tune.

I dont think it's different to what I said before.