Accracy & Validity of World Chart (Sales)

[paulfryer]

Hi,
I would like to know the method of sales & compilation data gathered for use on the world chart based only on sales figures. I ask this question because I live in the UK and the chart here, or at least the official chart has always been based on physical sales. This has now encompassed legal downloads since the spring of 2005 (which has roughly doubled the sales figures, but in total are still less than any time since the 1960s), there are also airplay and video request data which is mixed with sales data and used on some radio networks. However the longest running chart on the BBC has always used official sales data from "The Official UK Charts Company" or previously CIN & Gallup. Historically the official chart was nearly always consistent, besides Christmas sales and some other occasions such as Band Aid in 1984, Beatles mania in the 60s, and Candle in The Wind 1997. Until around the middle of 1995 a single would climb the chart, maybe take 5 or 6 weeks to reach number 1 and then take another 5 or 6 weeks to fall out of the chart. I remember in the late 80s and early 90s this was nearly always the case and the sales figures of most number 1s would be around 70000-80000 units most weeks. Then in 1995 more number 1s would enter straight at the top with very high sales figures in the 1st week and drop off thereafter. From 1998/99 this was nearly always the case and there is a new number 1 nearly every week. This data links into my question of the validity of the sales figures used for the World Chart. In 2001/2002 there was a talent search on ITV (the main commercial UK terrestrial tv company) called PopIdol which was won by Will Young. The single Evergreen was released shortly after and had unprecedented UK only sales of 1.1 million units in the first week of release. Only Candle in the Wind 1997 has had more sold in a week. However when this happened in March 2002, Will Young languishes half way down the "Official" World Sales Chart. It cannot be possible for another 50+ singles to be selling more than that in a week. If that was the case then those songs that hang around in the top 10 for a few weeks would regularly be the best selling singles of all time. Only a few have ever sold more than 8-9 million units worldwide. Therefore with this being the case I would expect the Will Young Evergreen / Anything is Possible track to certainly be in the top 10, probably even in the top 5. This calculation must be fairly accurate as only the USA, Japan, UK, Germany and France have any significant singles sales, other nations especially outside western Europe are tiny in comparison. So even if there's 65+ nations surveyed for the World Chart, UK sales would rate proportionately high, especially with sales of 1.1m, which was over 10 times more than the 2002 weekly average.
I'm sorry to sound anoraky about this, please set me straight.
Regards,
Paul.

[NightyGeko.it]

I've noticed too that the sales chart is quite far for the chart published by Media Traffic (IFPI) www.mediataffic.de/singles-sales.htm
I've also seen that even if there is a single #1 in Italy this single never enter in the world top 100... or even in the European top 100 ...
Italian artists arrive in the European top 100 only when other UE charts are not updated... The absurd thing is that then you see in the middle of the European chart the #1 of Ukraine or of Sweden ... countries with smaller sales than Italy... while no Italian songs arrive in the top 100... difficult to believe!

Other times you see singles that are in the top 10 one week... the next week they are no more in chart... and the week after are back in chart and back in the top 10! o.O
How is it possible?

It happens very often in the web chart where is quite common that a single arrives as re-entry even at #1!

But a part from these 3 charts the other are all very precise.

[paulfryer]

Personally I don't think that any world charts seen on the internet are really only based on singles sales and / or downloads. I've seen the Media Traffic United World Chart and have looked at the corresponding week refered to in my original post. This is week 11 in 2002. Will Young - Evergreen is a new entry at number 22. Which is of course better than the chart here. It is also denoted that it has the largest sales increase, true as it sold nothing the previous week. However look at number 25 on the same chart. Nelly Furtado has had the greatest gain in votes. Therefore this chart is not just based on sales alone. I still argue that sales of 1.1 million in a week in the UK would push a song to the top or very close to the top in the world singles sales.

I'll refer to another single - the runner up of PopIdol in 2002 was Gareth Gates. His single, a cover version of Unchained Melody was released 3 weeks after Will Young. In the 1st week it sold over 800000 copies in the UK only. Now the chart on this website puts it as a new entry at 65. Media Traffic as new entry at 29. With sales as much as 800000 it should in theory go into the world top5, maybe even number 1 if it was based purely on sales alone.

As to the consistency of the world charts on the web and the European charts also available on the web there seems to be a variation, sometimes drastically. I'm not sure of the figures involved in Italian sales in the last 7-8 years. www.zobel.de has figures for the world markets in the mid-late 90s. However sales have declined to less than half since then, with Napster and other p2p file sharing. But in the mid 1990s Italy sold fewer singles than Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Switzerland. Considering the size of the population in Italy this is amazing. Album sales are higher than the countries mentioned above, but still very low given the size of the population. The situation I've mentioned here may explain why Italian number1s rank poorly in Euro and world charts. ie they might only sell 5000-10000 to get to number 1.

In the UK between 1987 and 1994 the average singles sales were about 60 million per year, with a number 1 selling about 75000 units. From 1995 when the UK market really started to take off again after a 10 year slump the average yearly sales was about 80 million units and a number 1 would nearly always sell more than 100000 copies and many would sell over 200000 in the 1st week of release. If a single managed to stay at number 1 for more than 4 or 5 weeks it would almost certainly sell more than 1 million units in total. Take the examples of Cher "Believe" 1.67million in 1998/99 and Robson & Gerome "Unchained Melody" 1.84million in 1995. Both were at number 1 for 7 weeks in the UK. In 1991 Bryan Adams took 16 weeks at number 1 to sell 1.53million copies of "Everything I Do". In 1994 Wet Wet Wet "Love is All Around" took 15 weeks at number 1 (+ a high selling week at number 2 when Whigfield "Saturday Night" sold over 250000) to sell 1.65million. In 1993 Meatloaf "I would do anything for love" was number 1 for 7 weeks and sold less than 800000 in total.

I know that singles sales data does not guarantee that a song is good, as mostly teenagers buy singles. So there's so much **** bubblegum pop, girl/boy bands, talent search winners, and Axel F ringtone drivel. But at least it is accurate in terms of what is bought and what is paid for. Airplay is at the mercy of radio station executives who decide what is in a station airplay list and what rotation policy is used. This skews airplay charts, especially when an MOR (middle of the road) popsong may be played on national pop/chr/hot ac/top 40 stations as well as the mor/melodic stations. Take BBC Radio 1 & Radio 2, NOS Radio 3FM & Radio 2FM in the Netherlands and N-joy Radio and NDR2 in the north of Germany. many songs are played on all of these networks, especially during the day at peak times when the most points are given for airplay of a song.

One chart that has been running in the UK since Januray 2004 is called The Smash Hits Chart. Smash Hits was originally a pop magazine for teens in the 1980s, it is still printed today. However the owners of this magazine (Emap) bought into radio in the 1990s and more recently have branded Smash Hits TV on Sky satellite and cable TV. They (emap) have several more music tv channels which are scheduled by the viewer. You phone a number and request a song from a list which is available. This is better than airplay data as the phone call costs money. Again the draw back is that the list to choose from is devised by some executive, and the callers are usually teens. So this data is used with airplay and "unofficial" sales data from MRIB to form the Smash Hits chart. It is syndicated on several UK commercial stations inluding all the pop stations owned by Emap. Listeners are more than 1 million.

So there are now 3 national UK chart shows, all air on a Sunday between 4pm-7pm. The official UK top40 on BBC Radio 1 has been eclipsed by the commercial stations charts since 1993 when Pepsi took over as sponsor and there was a rebranding and new identity. The BBC chart format has not changed much over the years and was overtaken in listener numbers in 1994. The Smash Hits breakaway in 2004 from Pepsi created the new chart. Other non Smash Hits commercial radio stations now take the Hit 40 UK show, which The Pepsi Chart was predecessor to.

Paul.

[paulfryer]

Sorry,

The link above is supposed to be www.zobbel.de.

Paul.

[paulfryer]

Hello Me Again,

Just for anyone that's interested in world charts by sales alone, it looks like I've found one that looks fairly accurate.
It is the "Track Sales Chart" on www.mediatraffic.de. I overlooked it before when I was looking up Will Young and Gareth Gates in 2002. The archive for this track sales data only goes back to 2003. The archive I was looking at in 2002 is a different chart using sales and airplay data. I've done some simple research and I think it is fairly accurate to world singles sales. In week 3 of 2004 Michelle Mcmanus "All This Time" sold about 115000 units to go straight to number 1 in the UK. The following week (week 4) on the world chart it enters at number 6. It probably takes an extra week to compile the data from all the countries sampled. In week 10 in the UK (11 in World) Peter Andre "Mysterious Girl" sold 105000 units to go straight to number 1 in the UK. The world chart enter him at number 4. In week 17 2004 in the UK Eamon "I don't want you back" sold 145000 units to enter straight at number 1. In the world chart this track was already on the chart at low positions and got to number 16 in week 17. In week 18 on the world chart when the UK sales were taken into account, Eamon's song went up from 16 to 1.
In 2005 McFly "All About You" sold just over 70000 copies in the UK to go straight to number 1. The following week 12 it enters at the world number 1. I'm not sure that 70000 would really achieve a world best seller. Maybe sales were poor that week. The following week the Tony Christie rerelease "Amarillo" sold well over 200000 to enter the UK chart at number1 and also the world chart at number 1. It was UK number 1 for 7 weeks. According to this particular world chart it is the worlds best seller for 4 weeks. Again, I'm not sure about this as the UK sales dropped well below the 1st weeks sales in subsequent weeks. Unless it was released in other countries, but I'm not sure about this. So overall this chart looks more accurate than any I've seen so far in terms of sales figures (albeit the incorporation of UK sales). It also includes many releases from Japan that enter in the top3. So I would imagine that it takes about 70000-100000 on average to secure a number 1 in Japan.
Paul.

[NightyGeko.it]

Just for anyone that's interested in world charts by sales alone, it looks like I've found one that looks fairly accurate.
It is the "Track Sales Chart" on www.meditraffic.de.
Ehm... I've told you the same thing in my previous post.

Here there are some info about the sales in Europe (till 2001)
http://www.singleeurope.com/markets.html

[paulfryer]

Ehm... I've told you the same thing in my previous post.

Here there are some info about the sales in Europe (till 2001)
http://www.singleeurope.com/markets.html

Like I said, I overlooked it due to the fact the track sales chart is only archived to 2003. My original post refers exclusively to 2002. Therefore I had to refer to data and material since 2003 to assess the accuracy of the track sales singles chart on media traffic. The 2001 1/2 year sales in Italy look dreadful, although above Austria and Switzerland, which was not the case in the 1990s.
Considering that current Italian singles sales are about 4 million per annum, then that's about 75000 units in total sold every week. If the Italian market is like that in the UK then a number 1 would sell about 12% of the weekly total (refer to www.zobbel.de). If that is true then the number 1 in Italy will sell 9000 a week on average. This volume of sales would put a song at about 12-16 in the UK chart, about 8-10 in Germany and 4-6 in France. In Japan it wouldn't enter the top 20. In the USA the usual cd singles sales are a low as 10000 per week, but then again they've always watered down charts with airplay anyway. As to eastern European songs appearing on Euro and world lists when Italian songs do not, have you looked at country by country charts? I mean that it is often the case that a song released in a slavic speaking country will also be released in other slavic countries, but not western Europe. Maybe the sound, even the language has some crossover and cultural appeal in other slavic countries. When this does occur the combined sales from these countries could easily outstrip those in Italy.
I suggest that the only way you'll ever see an Italian chart topper (or at least one sung in Italian) in either the European chart or the world charts is to go out and buy 50000 copies of a song yourself.
Paul.