Mariah Carey - All I Want For Christmas Is You

Make my wish come true?

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That's a fucked up rule. Who gives one if the song is old? The charts should reflect what is popular this week whether it was farted out last Friday or dreamily exhaled by the vocalist of several generations in 1994. What a joke!
 
Jark said:
That's a fucked up rule. Who gives one if the song is old? The charts should reflect what is popular this week whether it was farted out last Friday or dreamily exhaled by the vocalist of several generations in 1994. What a joke!
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Nope. The charts should reflect what people are buying. They've got themselves into a godawful mess with streaming and that's because they should never had added it in the first place.
 
I've said it before, but the whole thing is fucked up. The whole climate of how people consume music (and that's a horrid phrase in itself) HAS changed, and I don't think streaming should be excluded. The problem is trying to create a chart which combines both streaming and sales with a whole load of entirely arbitrary rules which are changed as and when the OCC see fit because something doesn't go the way they like.

We have a sales chart and a streaming chart. I'm more inclined just to follow the one I prefer than a bastardised combined one which often crowns a song which is neither the most streamed or the most purchased, and is essentially made up.
 
octophone said:
Nope. The charts should reflect what people are buying. They've got themselves into a godawful mess with streaming and that's because they should never had added it in the first place.
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Streaming is how people listen to music IN 2018 and sales are not representative of popularity at all anymore so this is a crock of shit...
 
Jark said:
Streaming is how people listen to music IN 2018 and sales are not representative of popularity at all anymore so this is a crock of shit...
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How people "listen" to music was never a factor in the charts in the UK. Nor should it be now just because we've stumbled into this notion that how we "consume" (UGH) something is something that automatically requires to be documented. I hear a lot of music in shops, does that get counted? The only reason it has been shoehorned in is because sales figures had becomes so pitiful people were finding the charts irrelevant. Net result, seemingly random configurations of flawed data and a chart with even less relevance than ever. Boo hiss etc.
 
But the charts being based on sales originates from a time when if you wanted to listen to a song, you had no choice except to buy it. That's not the case now - there are many ways you can choose to listen to something instantly, including buying it.

Plus of course one of the reasons sales have gone down is precisely because people are choosing to stream it instead. If sales are so low that the chart is irrelevant, is it so wrong to attempt to make them relevant by reflecting the way people are choosing to consume it?
 
lolly said:
But the charts being based on sales originates from a time when if you wanted to listen to a song, you had no choice except to buy it.
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Exactly. And charts have to reflect that, like it or not, because it's the way people "buy" music now. A different story is the system they use and how they make it up as they go.
 
Streaming is the modern equivalent of taping off the radio.

Sales have gone down because people have no money - we're either paying exorbitant rents, having our benefits cut (or stopped) or receiving wage rises that haven't kept pace with inflation*. £10 a month for Spotify will inevitably replace buying 4 or 5 albums and 8 or 9 singles a month.

*obviously there's vastly more to this but I don't want to completely clutter this thread. Widely speaking, the only generation with spare cash are boomers who are being targeted with £100 box sets etc.
 
I don't think streaming is the modern equivalent of taping off the radio at all. There has been a seismic shift in how people choose to listen to music, and to how we spend our money. And I don't believe that it's because we have less of it, either.
 
I think the argument we will always come back to is sure: music consumption has changed and charting streams isn’t wrong - it’s just it’s gone from a quantifiable method of measurement to one based on - well, no-one really knows.

I think we all felt aggrieved that some songs in the early days of downloads were denied a chart position because they weren’t allowed to count until a week before the physical release. We wanted the charts to be fair.

But streams aren’t sales. It’s like trying to readjust a movie’s box office total to take into account the number of times it’s been streamed on Netflix.

Absolutely both very valid ways of measuring the success of a movie. But they aren’t the same way of measuring and no ratio or scientific calculation can make one value objectively equal to another.
 
I think Moopy's been 'round this one before and I don't want the lambs piling on because I've derailed the thread. But recorded music is bordering on valueless in our present culture, however you measure it. If that's because the industry devalued it by itself, because of the internet or because people want "experiences" now instead is an aside to this particular discussion. Cards on - I think Mariah will get #1 in the UK this year, regardless of how they pockle the "ratios".
 
The one area I have softened my view somewhat is that I did strongly object to a “curiosity stream” being counted as 1/50th of a sale.

But you really can’t factor intent into the success of a single. Because I would bet that many of us have/had stacks of CD singles purchased with the sole purpose of helping an act get a good chart position without ever intending to play the CD.
 
It may not be completely unreasonable to argue that the way music is purchased has changed and so the streaming chart alone should be the official one, although even then you'd need to do something about playlists. What should never have happened is the combined sales and streaming chart which has been given a load of convoluted rules primarily designed to try and make it look sort of like the old chart and which changes its rules every time something ridiculous happens because the people who drafted the rules didn't realise what could happen.
 
It'll be #1 tomorrow. Loads of parties happening tonight.
 
dmlaw said:
It may not be completely unreasonable to argue that the way music is purchased has changed and so the streaming chart alone should be the official one, although even then you'd need to do something about playlists. What should never have happened is the combined sales and streaming chart which has been given a load of convoluted rules primarily designed to try and make it look sort of like the old chart and which changes its rules every time something ridiculous happens because the people who drafted the rules didn't realise what could happen.
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What do you suggest be done about the playlists then? A rule change now something ridiculous is happening we didn’t realise? :D

I feel like once you get to the point of “the way music is purchased has changed”, a combined chart is the only way forward. People haven’t stopped buying things, so why would you drop that and just go to streaming only?


I don’t see a problem with the playlist either. I remember the Woolies chart having a similar sway. If they hadn’t slotted it in there, it wasn’t sold, and shameless overpromotion as a Woolies #1 would happen too.

Of course you could go to HMV or Our Price or whatever, but now you don’t have to use playlists either. And you’d get plenty of people who wouldn’t bother and just drift into Woolies for their selection only.

There are parallels all over the place!

I still think the root of some problems is having few performance spots, and nobody seems to want to risk it (is that weird TOTP Frankenstein still going?)
 
Diddy said:
I feel like once you get to the point of “the way music is purchased has changed”, a combined chart is the only way forward. People haven’t stopped buying things, so why would you drop that and just go to streaming only?
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I think the main problem with the combined chart is simply how it's aiming for the best of both worlds, but often manages to get neither.

Like @lolly mentioned, there have been times recently where the #1 'combined' single is neither #1 on downloads OR streaming, which just seems a bit peculiar really.
 
Diddy said:
What do you suggest be done about the playlists then? A rule change now something ridiculous is happening we didn’t realise? :D

I feel like once you get to the point of “the way music is purchased has changed”, a combined chart is the only way forward. People haven’t stopped buying things, so why would you drop that and just go to streaming only?


I don’t see a problem with the playlist either. I remember the Woolies chart having a similar sway. If they hadn’t slotted it in there, it wasn’t sold, and shameless overpromotion as a Woolies #1 would happen too.

Of course you could go to HMV or Our Price or whatever, but now you don’t have to use playlists either. And you’d get plenty of people who wouldn’t bother and just drift into Woolies for their selection only.

There are parallels all over the place!

I still think the root of some problems is having few performance spots, and nobody seems to want to risk it (is that weird TOTP Frankenstein still going?)
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But it’s passive rather than active. Whatever the promotion, you HAD you make an active choice to buy something. If you get on the right playlist, you get played multiple times a day in a hair salon. It’s not actually a barometer of whether people like you or not...
 
Slave said:
I think the main problem with the combined chart is simply how it's aiming for the best of both worlds, but often manages to get neither.

Like @lolly mentioned, there have been times recently where the #1 'combined' single is neither #1 on downloads OR streaming, which just seems a bit peculiar really.
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While I don’t think there’s any way to avoid those situations, it’s just a mathematical possibility, I do take the point that the way it has been combined (and more to the point fiddled with) that looks like a mess.

I don’t like the changing ratios thing at all, that’s engineering-motivated rather than making anything resembling accuracy.

The physical, download and streaming charts still exist though, right? Is there a sales chart in the sense of everything else without streaming?
 
Diddy said:
The physical, download and streaming charts still exist though, right? Is there a sales chart in the sense of everything else without streaming?
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Yes there is. Freely available on the Official Charts site.
 
Sheena said:
But it’s passive rather than active. Whatever the promotion, you HAD you make an active choice to buy something. If you get on the right playlist, you get played multiple times a day in a hair salon. It’s not actually a barometer of whether people like you or not...
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Yeah totally get that and I agree. But how would they ever disentangle that without handfuls more weird rules? It’s bad enough that there’s something as nebulous as “current promotion” in the rules, especially as it’s just to fuck over the Christmas songs
 
My main bugbear in all honesty is really that they've gone back and retrospectively made LOADS of songs million-sellers.

I accept that the way we consume music NOW has changed and if we stuck to sales only then many acts who are incredibly popular with younger audiences would be completely under-represented. And acts totally should have a way to achieve benchmarks and not be deprived them because their target market doesn't consume things in the way we're used to tallying them week-by-week.

But I really object to the OCC going "Hey, XX song from 2005 is now a million seller" - well no, it's been on-sale for well over a decade since the iTunes explosion and it didn't sell a million copies then, but now people can listen to it for FREE, we're going to award it that status?
 
I guess part of the argument there would be that, prior to downloads and streaming, you could only buy a single if it was manufactured and on the shelf and, of course, the labels greedily manipulated this by deleting singles early or limiting availability to sell albums. So a song can sell steadily over a much, much longer period than it could before. Therefore these late certifications have some legitimacy. If you wanted to buy a single from 1996 in 1998, you were pretty much stuffed. Now, you can. All that said, I accept the impact of streaming is having a disproportionate impact.
 
It will fall a lot because it's enjoying the weekend bounce but should still be top 20 this week :disco:
 
Jark said:
It will fall a lot because it's enjoying the weekend bounce but should still be top 20 this week :disco:
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I guess the question is: with there be enough Xmas parties on the weekend 14th to 16th for it to be no. 1 on the chart announced on the 21st - or will most parties fall over THAT weekend (21st to 23rd) and with the streams dying at about 2pm on the 25th, could it be no 1 on the 28th before collapsing faster than...well, her last album?
 
I thought it began to die out in its final week in previous years- most work parties are the week before, after all...
 
Sheena said:
I thought it began to die out in its final week in previous years- most work parties are the week before, after all...
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This is what I think - by the weekend of 21st, office parties will have worn off for the most part and people are more likely to be amongst their actual friends (rather than folk they have to tolerate to earn money) or family.
 
octophone said:
I guess the question is: with there be enough Xmas parties on the weekend 14th to 16th for it to be no. 1 on the chart announced on the 21st - or will most parties fall over THAT weekend (21st to 23rd) and with the streams dying at about 2pm on the 25th, could it be no 1 on the 28th before collapsing faster than...well, her last album?
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She was still #7 on Spotify on Boxing Day last year - it was the day after that it collapsed to nothing (well, #43). So with Boxing Day being Wednesday and the chart covering to Thursday, I think Christmas songs will still have an incredibly strong streaming week. The unknown is the impact of this 'active promotion' ratio. And whether she is hit by it.
 
She's in the country this month - that's got to be "active promotion", even if she only plays it at the shows (can you imagine if she didn't?)
 
So she can’t promote it at all or she gets disqualified from the chart?
 
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