the charts are stagnating again.

OTM

When every single is sort of expected to debut at its highest posision, a really good song will not benefit from actually being really good. The best songs need some time to climb the charts.

Not that "Crazy" is good anyway, but still...

Maybe not many singles are being sold at the moment so it doesnt take much to be no1.
Also maybe not many songs get blanket coverage on all radio so its hard for somethings to get coverage compared to others.
Or all the other singles out are shite and no one buys them.

I guess when/if the UK eurovision entry wins, it may go wham up the chart. But who knows.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

actually yeah i agree with every word of that. but i dont think its a good sign overall for the future. next thing u know we'll have the 1998 phenomenon all over again, which was something like 7 new number ones in a row each for 1 week, each a new entry. that was a lark.

Women 'drive online music market'
Woman with MP3 player
Music download sales are booming
Technology-savvy women are driving the increase in digital music sales, according to a report.

More than three quarters of women aged 16-45 in the UK now own an MP3 player or mobile phone that plays MP3s, research by media group Emap found.

The report said women spend longer listening to music than men, discover more music and listen to more podcasts.

Sophie Watson Smyth of music magazine Q said the internet gave women the freedom to widen their musical tastes.

The digital music market is booming, with download sales up more than 150% in the first three months of the year, compared with the same period in 2005.

Women are now confidently downloading music at home and broadening their musical horizons in private
Sophie Watson Smyth
Marketing manager, Q and Mojo
Some 80% of women spend now more time listening to music than they did before they got their MP3 player - compared with 75% of men, according to Emap.

Eight out of 10 also say they have rediscovered lots of old artists and albums, compared with 72% of men.

And 72% of women say they spend more time on the internet looking for new music, 7% higher than the figure for men.

Emap said the popularity of downloading music was behind a boom in the number of women reading music magazines.

Freedom

For the first time, more women are reading are reading metal magazine Kerrang than men, while almost half of Q's under-30 readership is now female.

Ms Watson Smyth said: "The freedom afforded by new technology means that women are now confidently downloading music at home and broadening their musical horizons in private.

"Technology has changed how women approach music and we are seeing increasing numbers turning to music magazines for expert guidance and edited choice in the cluttered world."

Emap's report was based on a survey of 1,800 adults between August and September last year.

well this had been the standard for the first five years of the 00s really, if not the five before that as well. it's likely that when Barkely is toppled there will be a bunch of one weekers tho yeah.

An M Carlin of S London wrote some good stuff on 'Crazy', it's significance (projected) and position as well as it's nature as a song.

I still sort of like the idea of it as indicative of a Top 40 supernova/implosion though. The last #1 ever. Of course this won't happen. But it appeals for some reason. Probably because I really don't look at the charts anymore tho it took a long fallout period to reach this stage. No TOTP. No charts (the only way I know what they look like now is thru ILM). No radio. No magazines. I live my life without all these things now. It seems good to move on, away from them, at least for a while. It's odd, thinking about it, but seems okay. I don't miss them that much. Internet has replaced them in many ways of course.

And oh look, Razorlight are on the Radio 1 playlist two months before the release of their new single. Joy.

playlisting that far ahead so as to give singles a longer lease of life supposedly.

(nb: I think it's ok but no more; cee-lo's vocal performance deserves a better producer than boring danger mouse)

(one unrelated point i'm completely mystified on - i don't know ANYONE who downloads legally. they either download illegally, or they don't download. who the fuck are these people?)

Lex, they are the MP-She Generation. You are so out of the loop.

i am guessing you don't socialize with the kind of people who say "oh where can i download that song by snow patrol i just heard on radio 2?" and then consult q magazine for answer.

i download legally from Bleep because:

a) great, weird stuff that's hard to find elsewhere (Ryan Teague, Bibio, El Perro Del Mar, Paul D Miller, Virus Syn, rare Isolee, Fairmont, Bob McFadden and other ace people you've never heard of) unless you sift for ages

b) 50% goes to the artists

c) DRM-free, meaning you can play it on anything, and it's usually 320kbps now so the quality is as good as can be whilst still compressed and tagged.

d) this sort of thing needs support from digital music-lovers

e) i am having it off with the creators of Bleep, obv.

The Pussycat Dolls? Well done!

Sadly it wouldn't. Because the kids would think he's "old", and they seem to be more preoccupied with the age, looks and image of the performer than the actual quality of the music.

Btw. there are 20 singles throughout UK chart history that have topped the charts for longer than "Crazy", and there seemed to be around 10-15 singles that did also top them for 7 weeks.

7 weeks is not dramatic. It is kind of the way it is supposed to be. One new chart topper each week is a sign of bad quality, which was also the case when the likes of Bryan Adams, Wet Wet Wet, Whitney Houston, Boyz II Men and Mariah Carey stayed on top of the UK or US charts forever back in the early to mid 90s.

This is the record we need released:

Been out all night, I needed a bite
I thought I'd put a record on
I reached for the one with the ultra-modern label
And wondered where the light had gone
It had a futuristic cover
Lifted straight from Buck Rogers
The record was so black it had to be a con
The autochanger switched as I filled my sandwich
And futuristic sounds warbled off and on
Chorus :
The Black Hit Of Space
It's the one without a face
It's the one that doesn't fit
You can only see the flip
The Black Hit Of Space
Sucking in the human race
How can it stay at the top
When it's swallowed all the shops?
As the song climbed the charts
The others disappeared
'Til there was nothing but it left to buy
It got to number one
Then into minus figures
Though nobody could understand why
(Chorus)
I couldn't stand this bland sound any more so I walked towards my deck to
turn it off. All I could see was the B-side of the disc which had assumed a
doughnut shape with the label on the outside rim. I reached for the arm
which was less than one micron long but weighed more than Saturn and time
stood still. I knew I had to escape but every time I tried to flee, the
record was in front of me.
The Black Hit Of Space
Get James Burke on the case
It's the hit that's never gone
Time stops when you put it...

How am I right?! My entire contribution is along the lines of "not heard it, more into postrock than chartpop"?!

you are right in that it's very easy not to be aware of its existence.

Aha.

well it would be be if you preferred postrock to chartpop but otherwise waht

but by that reasoning “my love” would have been number one for nine weeks. possibly.

second single off released album, not released in Summer iirc, nowhere near as 'epic' sounding as 'Umbrella'.

it just doesn't seem very pervasive, admittedly when i come to think of it i have heard it in shops and a couple of tv idents. this measure the success of a song by how many times i hear it in a week idea may not be very useful tbh thou. also rihanna doesn't seem to be in the press that much. not being british puts her at one remove and she has yet to be a beyonce style megastar. possibly kind of hard to write broadsheet articles on. she was at live earth wasn't she?

Yes, she was in Tokyo.

gnarls barkley were hardly megastars either

but perhaps a lot easier to write about

Definitely. They had the whole 'first download #1' thing as well as being ex-celeb / trendy producer.

not easier to write about either, unless you need a gimmicky angle entirely unrelated to the music in order to profile an artist

and i'm aware that many do need this hook, but that's not my problem, and nor should it be yours

sure, i agree but as you say lots of writing does work this way. it's the paris/jarvis thing, the press often needs a gimmick to get in. i don't how this stuff works, is this to do with how articles are pitched?

it deserves to be number one for this long.

okay maybe not 9 weeks - it doesnt mean much beyond being a great song, but maybe thats enough these days.

"http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/07/why_i_still_love_rihannas_umbr.html";

thats one of the worst pics of rihanna ive seen.

That eh eh eh bit of Umbrella unfortunately reminds me of the eh eh eh bit in Zombie by the cranberries, after which there's no hope for the song.

I miss CD UK and TotP. It is like chart pop is another genre that you have to keep up with, rather than just being the default that's always there.

Now that strikes me as a very salient point. What's chart pop's presence on mainstream TV now? There isn't really any, is there?

Gentrification, "Coffee Table", the 90s, Broadsheets, False Consensus and "The New Punk Rock"

I keep reading this thread title as "the charts are staggering again" and thinking Britney was spotted drunk or something.

No One Admits To Singing, Writing, Producing Nation's No. 1 Song

landslide win for NRQ and his ping pongs

waht

what are your 11 favourite songs of the moment, fuck

i think 'my love' is less likeable than 'umbrella'. i think it's a sad thing that cynical bullshit like 'don't feel like dancing' is deemed more family-friendly now. 'umbrella' is the only actual song out of the ones acrobat named. do people no longer value that?

grace jones 'pull up to the bumper' (12")
prince 'i feel for you'
ciara 'oh'
rihanna 'umbrella'
television 'see no evil'
nico 'i'll keep it with mine'
bass-o-matic 'fascinating rhythm'
...
oh BOTHERED

Ban That one guy that hit it and quit it.

Ban Don Derun.

good effort brau

typing out most recently played off itunes is not what ilx is for.

if i MUST discuss popular music with you year after year it helps to establish occasionally an understanding of your preferences in the contemporary domain of said medium.

i basically have a preference for things i hear and like. fortunately most bands do something to piss me off before i need to hear them. this saves time.

i basically have a preference for things i hear and like

illuminating

18 weeks - Frankie Laine, I Believe (1953)
16 weeks - Bryan Adams, (Everything I Do) I Do It For You (1991)
15 weeks - Wet Wet Wet, Love Is All Around (1994)
11 weeks - Slim Whitman, Rose Marie (1955)
10 weeks - David Whitfield, Cara Mia (1954)
10 weeks - Whitney Houston, I Will Always Love You (1992)

Source: Official UK Charts Company

ella, ella, ella, ey-ey-ey

7 weeks at number 1 for Mark Ronson in the Uk.

8 long weeks for Drake at number 1. 8 weeks!? longest run for a single in 9 years.

How does it go?

I can't remember the last time I paid attention to the charts... probably about 10 years ago or something. I always took more notice of the album chart, too.

It's been a minute for me, too. Are Wilson Phillips and Boyz II Men still a thing?

they're triple dating.

did "the sign" finally fall off the charts?

There's a special hell somewhere where that fucking Bryan Adams song is still number one, I'm sure.

this is nuts

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-36794105

Drake's single only topped the sales-only chart in the first three weeks of its reign. It's only the inclusion of streaming data (where 100 plays count as one sale) that has given him a lock on the number one spot. And that's something that's starting to worry the music industry, because now that the charts measure consumption rather than purchases, they have practically ground to a halt.

In the first six months of 2016, there were 86 new entries in the UK singles chart. Ten years ago, that figure was 230.

I noticed the other week that the top eight singles in the UK didn't change (not even order) over two weeks, which is... strange.

ten years ago the number of new entries only spending one week on the chart was probably also super high, so no use pretending the chart was problem-free then either. even 'big' hits would frequently enter at their peak and spend a pitifully short time in the top 10 for the majority of the digital music era until recently.

it's pretty common for the industry to have to adjust how it works its product after the charts undergo semi-radical methodological revisions. when soundscan and broadcast data systems numbers were first implemented for the hot 100 in 1991, the main finding was that, on the radio and retail sides, the strongest hits were both breaking much faster and sticking around much longer than would have been reflected by the old survey-based methodology. in order to keep 'playing the charts' as an effective means of marketing singles, some in the industry tried a bizarre series of strategies to try to manipulate the new methodology in their favor. others realized they could market songs to radio, and their parent albums to consumers, without the assistance of singles retail whatsoever. the result was that the hot 100 was both more and less representative of the current state of pop singles consumption for the greater part of the entire 1990s decade. by the time things were 'figured out' (around 1999) and the charts started seeing decent turnaround of singles that were actually popular, not just popular because labels wanted them to appear as such, the singles retail market was in its death throes due to the combination of unsustainable strategies the labels had assumed during those years.

i think this time around the industry won't have to bumble around as long to figure it out. or at least i hope. (they may very well kill the digital downloads market, though. r.i.p. itunes!)

Ed Sheeran. Number 1 AND 2 for 5 weeks straight.

His music's always been piss and shit, tbf.

Interesting thread here:

In a fitting end to the 2010s, Jeff Bezos is responsible for the last Number 1 Single of the year, Ellie Goulding's "River" (by Joni Mitchell).

Here's how:

1. You can't find it on Spotify, Apple, Google.
2. That's because - aside from Youtube - it's Amazon exclusive.

and...

— dan barker (@danbarker) December 28, 2019

wow, hadn't heard anything about that! Crazy story!

it was posted in the system glitch thread

https://www.billboard.com/charts/decade-end/hot-rock-songs

that's pretty grim. i can only handle about four of the top twenty.