Talk:2014 in British music charts

Sales figures

The sales figures are given without a source. They also shouldn't be called 'sales' from 6 July 2014 because the singles chart includes a factor for streaming. The OCC uses 'chart sales' or 'combined sales' terminology. "Units" might be an option with an explanation of 1 unit = 1 sale OR 100 streams. I've not edited the table because the source page tells me not to, but sources must be cited or the info can't stay there. Btljs (talk) 15:09, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Length of contents

The contents table has become so long with all the weeks' summaries that it's quite difficult to get to the number 1 tables. Could it be changed not to include every week as a sub-heading? Is that OK? Btljs (talk) 15:55, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes, definitely much better as far as I'm concerned – I think there are a few of us who don't really see the point of a weekly summary at all, but my focus at the moment is trying to convince Hadji87 that his week numbering system is wrong. Richard3120 (talk) 16:10, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Oh yeah, I hadn't noticed. Doesn't the fact that OCC list 4/1/14 (published 29/12/13) as "2014" rather put the matter to rest? Or am I being naive? On the weekly summaries: the number ones are already listed and other notable new entries, climbers etc. could really be monthly as in earlier years. Probably wait a couple of years and then edit them down ;-P Btljs (talk) 17:38, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Well, yes, you would have thought so, but the OCC in their infinite wisdom made the error of saying here that it was the final number one of 2013 (even though, as you say, their own list subsequently contradicts this view). And as Hadji insists that the chart date is the week beginning the Sunday the chart is announced, rather than the week ending the following Saturday which every official source (the OCC, Guinness and Virgin chart books, etc.) uses, he therefore takes this week to be the last week of 2013 and not the first week of 2014, and that therefore shifts every week out by one. I think it's important to change this, not just so that Wikipedia matches the official numbering system, but also because the year-end charts go by these numbers as well, so the 29 December 2013 - 4 January 2014 chart actually counts as 2014 sales, not 2013.

On the subject of the summaries, I've left them alone because I'm more interested in getting facts right (see above), but I agree that a monthly or even general annual overview would be enough – Wikipedia isn't meant to be a chart stats encyclopedia and it probably contravenes WP:NOTDIR WP:NOTSTATSBOOK, apart from the issue that an incredibly long article overrun with facts and figures is completely offputting to the casual reader. I can understand the enthusiasm of Hadji and others awaiting the new chart every Sunday and updating the Wikipedia page, but the trouble with this is that it's always the "now" that's important, and the relevance of previous weeks fades away very quickly. I mean, how many people are really going to want to look up what the highest climber in Week 37 of 2012 is, or even in May this year? The other issue is, are Hadji and the others going to spend the rest of their lives updating Wikipedia on a weekly basis? At some point I suspect he'll find other things to occupy his time and the summaries will fall by the wayside. Far easier to have a more general summary that's quicker and easier to maintain by other editors in the future. But that's my opinion, I'm not going to insist on their removal. The week numbering, however, I feel is a more important matter, because it's factually wrong. Richard3120 (talk) 18:53, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes it is. Each chart MUST be dated as per OCC on the following Saturday. This is really not so strange as lots of periodicals are dated the day before the next issue (like my son's favourite Marvel comics). It means you always know when the next issue is coming out even if the period varies. Similarly annuals usually use the following year: like Guinness Book of Records (or whatever it's called these days). On the point of future-friendly editing, this is a sleeping giant in my opinion. The sheer volume of information (growing all the time) is going to get harder and harder to keep up to date. In a way it doesn't matter if there are weekly chart summaries for a few years and more sparse ones before and after, but the number of places each fact exists is an issue. If someone in 20 years time tries to find out about the chart life of a song, they may easily find conflicting facts in articles on the song, the artist, the album, the charts of the year, the decade, the top 10s page etc. It's sales figures where this gets really complicated, as people are quite happy to paste in sales to 6 significant figures without too much care about the cut-off point or whether it contradicts other figures on other pages and then they don't update the figure when it changes. Ah well. Btljs (talk) 22:15, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Totally – I'm 44, and I told Hadji I remember the days when the first time you heard the new chart was not on the Sunday evening show, but on Tuesday afternoon at 12:45pm when Radio 1's lunchtime DJ (Paul Burnett and Gary Davies among others) would do a 15 minute slot of the highest entry and top 3, I think. So to be consistent using Hadji's system, we should change every chart date up until the mid-80s to a Tuesday. What every chart from 1952 to the present date has in common, regardless of the day of the week they were announced, is that the sales week ran until the end of Saturday, which is why that day has always been used. It looks odd that Wikipedia uses different dates from the OCC's website, the Guinness book of British Hit Singles & Albums and its successor The Virgin Book of British Hit Singles.

Sales are definitely an issue as well: I'm slowly working my way back through the year-end charts to correct them, but people do insist on adding sales figures to older years because they've found estimated sales on chart forums. Truth is, there were NEVER any official year-end sales figures before 1994, when Millward Brown took over compiling the charts, and it's since emerged that their figures were very suspect and had to be revised substantially, so I prefer not to include any sales figures before 1998. I think the only figures people really care about are the ones on List of best-selling singles in the United Kingdom and List of million-selling singles in the United Kingdom, and it's much easier to monitor and update two pages than dozens of them. Richard3120 (talk) 08:59, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Countdown of the whole top 40 I remember, playing the new entries. I used to catch it in my lunch break (and copy it down - so I do have a soft spot for the weekly summaries, although I think a blog is really the place for these rather than an encyclopaedia). I think there's a bit of work needs doing on rounding sales figures, which really needs consensus. Even now, with electronic chart compilation giving a figure like 128,893 implies too much accuracy (although it does make it easy to find where unreferenced stuff comes from) - no chart has ever captured all the sales and even the definition of a sale varies as the eligibility changes (the maximum number of remixes being my personal favourite). Btljs (talk) 17:52, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

References

Dates of charts

I have changed the pages List_of_UK_Singles_Chart_number_ones_of_the_2010s and 2000s and 1990s so that the dates match the other decades and more importantly, the OCC Official Chart dates. This page needs to be altered to match - ie start with chart of week ending 4/1/14 and have the correct dates next to the number ones. I now have a spreadsheet that does this and I'll do it when I have time unless anybody feels like doing it first... (don't all shout at once) Btljs (talk) 23:43, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

I will just warn you that I had already changed the week numbering dates once, and Hadji87 simply changed them all back again... don't be surprised if this happens to your changes. This is what started my discussion with him in the first place. Richard3120 (talk) 09:02, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

That's the least of my problems. All the number 1 charts going back to 1983 need changing, all the top 10 pages back to 2000 and that's just singles! I'm not bothered about his week numbers as the OCC don't list things by which week of the year they are - I just want the date next to a number one to always be the same. Btljs (talk) 09:09, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, but the OCC DO list charts by week number – not for the current chart, but if you look at the archive charts they do... and as these are the charts Hadji links to as citations, I think it's important that they match up as well, like the date. For example, the current chart is described as "Week 38 (21-27 September)", but if you look at the archive chart here, the week ending 27 September is Week 39 going by the OCC. And as I have said before, it matters for year-end chart purposes because it has shifted the New Year week's sales into the wrong year. Richard3120 (talk) 09:35, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

@Btljs: Just as a back-up to what I am saying... you have changed the dates List of UK Singles Chart number ones of the 2010s to what I (and I suspect many others) would agree are the correct dates, as they match up with the OCC dates and the dates that will be used in chart reference books in future. According to that list and also the OCC's list of 2014 number one singles, "Happy" was the first number one of 2014, in the chart dated 4 January. Yet according to the article to which this talk page is attached at present, 2014 in British music charts#Number-one singles, the first number one of the year was "Timber" by Pitbull and Kesha, in the week beginning 5 January. This difference has come about entirely because of the different week numbering system, as Hadji uses the week beginning on 29 December 2013 and not the week ending 4 January 2014, so by his reckoning that week belongs in 2013, not 2014. So we now have a situation where two Wikipedia pages contradict each other. I'm sorry if I sound like a broken record, but this is why I feel the correct week numbering system IS important to address – it goes hand in hand with the correct dating system. Richard3120 (talk) 10:42, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

I totally agree. I hadn't seen the archive page with the week numbers on it - the individual archived charts don't seem to have the week num on them(?) We just need to be completely clear what we are trying to achieve so I created this boilerplate template:Chart_dates to put on pages with Sunday chart dates (input on the wording is welcome). The key aims (as I see them) are:

• Any wiki reference to a chart which is recorded at OCC has the date that OCC give for that chart (and week number)
• The year, decade etc. must match the year at OCC
• Firsts and lasts must match OCC lists (eg. first number 1 of 2010s)
• Arithmetic must be true for OCC lists (eg. X spent 3 weeks in the chart in 2003)

Btljs (talk) 11:21, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

100% agree. When I started my project of tidying up the year end charts (which I put on hold precisely because of this issue with Hadji) I sought out the views of a few other editors who seemed to take most interest in the 'xxxx in British music chart' pages, including Deb, Tuzapicabit and A Thousand Doors. I suspect if you asked their opinions they would also agree with you, it will just be Hadji who will disagree. I would have suggested canvassing opinion on one of the relevant WikiProject pages, such as Record Charts or Pop Music, but I don't know how active they are: I tend to just frequent WikiProject Music and WikiProject Albums as they seem to be more active. Richard3120 (talk) 11:45, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

PS Was it 1968 when chart dates changed to w/e Saturday? I know the BMRB took over the compiling of the charts in February 1969, and this was the first time a chart was properly based on sales – hence there is no point even trying to list a year-end sales chart before 1970, as previous to this they are all based on a points system. Richard3120 (talk) 11:50, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

August 1969 is given here in nb3. Although nb2 right next to it kind of contradicts it by saying the OCC dates (Saturdays) are used throughout. There is certainly some wriggle room when it comes to 1960s charts because there were lots. If we get anywhere near a consensus on pages going back to the 80's I'll be happy.

Interestingly I was listening to Pick of the Pops with Tony Blackburn today and he said that today's chart was from "week ending Sep 28th 1991" which was a Saturday - so the Beeb (despite having an understandable attachment to Sundays - are using OCC dates for archive charts (not current ones though http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/chart/singles - understandable if you are actually promoting a radio programme) Btljs (talk) 15:01, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

BMRB took over on 13 February 1969, so I'm not sure what the August 1969 date refers to. There should be little problem getting a consensus back to 1983 – Gallup took over chart compilation from BMRB at the start of that year, and with them came an increase in the number of panel shops and computerised returns (rather than the postal returns that BMRB relied on). The upshot was that chart compilation became far more accurate and none of the charts from 1983 onwards have ever been disputed. This isn't the case for BMRB charts, particularly 1970 to 1976 which have been the subject of much debate: the album sales in particular have been substantially revised and year end charts changed... the problem is that I can't find any verified sources for the revised charts, which makes it difficult to include year end album charts from the 1970s in Wikipedia. Richard3120 (talk) 15:38, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

UPDATE: Just checked my copy of British Hit Singles and 'nb3' is absolutely right, the chart dates are given for various midweek days from 1960 up until August 1969, I'd never noticed that before. But as you say the OCC website then uses w/e dates of Saturdays throughout the 1960s... another example of where the OCC confuses matters, rather than be the authority source. Richard3120 (talk) 16:04, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

That's much better. Thanks. I'm still working my way through previous years so please bear with the double entries at the start and end of each year. Btljs (talk) 20:16, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

No problem – you're doing a great job, I know just how time-consuming and thankless a task it is. :-) Richard3120 (talk) 20:32, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Size of chart

Just a small query: the descriptive bits talk about 'new entries' 'fastest climbers' 'biggest falls' etc. I'm assuming these are in the top 40? Should this be explicitly stated somewhere? I think the OCC uses the term 'chart' to meant top 40 as in "All About the Bass becomes first single to chart on streaming alone" it was at fifty something last week I think and now 'enters the chart' at 33? Is this consistent throughout chart history? I remember the BBC moving from top 20 on Sunday to top 40 in the late 70's. Was a chart hit still a top 40 hit before this? Btljs (talk) 21:19, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Good question. I am pretty certain that 'fastest climbers' etc. referred to within the text of these Wikipedia articles and on the OCC website refers to the Top 40 only. However, the old Guinness book of British Hit Singles always judged these things on the Top 50/Top 75 as a whole. I think the expansion from Top 20 to Top 40 happened around May 1978, if memory serves correctly – I would think that in 1978 any chart commentary that existed would only have been within the trade magazine Music Week and Spotlight's sister publication Record Mirror. Richard3120 (talk) 21:33, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

A quick search reveals Guinness World Records saying: "In 2009, Lady Gaga (USA, b. Stefani Germanotta) clocked up a total of 150 weeks on the UK singles chart, with 90 of these weeks inside the Top 40." so they mean whole chart (top 100 I assume). So these articles should make it clear that they refer to top 40 for things like 'weeks on chart'. Btljs (talk) 21:49, 29 September 2014 (UTC)

Notable events

I realize that it's impossible to get agreement on whether there should be weekly summaries or not - and for the most part, I don't mind them. But, my problem as a reader is that if I want to find notable events that happened in a particular week: they are not there - just a repetition of the number one (which I could find from the table) and a few climbers and fallers (which are often not notable outside that week). By notable I mean things like Clean Bandit's Rather Be becomes the highest-selling January single since "Spaceman" by Babylon Zoo in 1996 or even major chart upheavals like July's inclusion of streaming for the first time. This is, after all, an article about the charts.

As a contributor I'm left with the option of adding these to the weekly summary or to the lead. The lead is already too long, in my opinion, and although I do add them into the weekly summaries they are lost amongst the rather banal facts like so and so dropped a place to number 2 - that is what usually happens to a displaced number 1! It might be notable if it suddenly dropped out of the top 10 or something.

So, I'm asking - not that I'm very hopeful - could we have notable events in the weekly summaries? Not "Happy" by Pharrell Williams returned to number 1 for a fourth non-consecutive week but "Happy" by Pharrell Williams became the first song for over 50 years and only the third ever to return to number 1 more than once. Btljs (talk) 07:54, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Well, I'm with you on this one – I've said before that I don't believe anyone cares what the biggest faller from three weeks ago or whatever is, and I agree that the "notable events" as you describe them above are far more important and of greater interest to the wider public. Richard3120 (talk) 09:32, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

That type of weekly summary would be far more preferable than what's done now (by a single user by the way). That way we don't need this weekly recap and it can read like an actual encylopedic article than some summary in a trade magazine, and the tables show what was number one each week anyway. --Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars^{Talk to me} 19:10, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

References

Sortable tables

Would anyone object to the number 1 tables being made sortable? I know it would mean getting rid of the multiple row things but it adds facility to rank by weekly sales or to quickly tot up how many weeks an artist has spent at number 1. Btljs (talk) 09:03, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

I always wondered why we didn't just have an extra column before the sales column which contains the total number of weeks that record had spent at number one, so as to save you counting up the rows (although in this day and age, any record that spends more than a week at the top is a rarity). I'm undecided about making them sortable: as you say it means having to list Ed Sheeran's x eight times, for example, and I don't know how important it is to rank the number ones by sales – if it's an unusually high or low number (e.g. Christmas number 1) I would count that as a "notable event" that could go in the weekly summary. Richard3120 (talk) 09:37, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Of course the sales shouldn't be there anyway as nobody ever puts the source (even though we all know that someone somewhere subscribes to musicweek and then puts it on forums where everybody else gets it). I take the point about multiplying Multiply though. The singles it would make less difference to, as they mostly stay only a week as you say. Tbh I've gone off the idea even since I posted it. Btljs (talk) 16:18, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Downloads charts

As the download chart number 1 is nearly always the same as the main number 1, couldn't we scrap this table and just have a marginal note on the main chart when there is a difference? Anything to reduce the length of this page. Btljs (talk) 22:30, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

This page can also be reduced greatly simply by paring down the weekly chart summmaries which is excessively long and detailed. Only one editor, the one who adds the info, seems to be in favor of it, and he doesn't respond to requests, so based on some of the discussions above there appears to be some consensus to do just that. --Starcheerspeaksnewslostwars^{Talk to me} 21:34, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I've had this discussion with Btljs and I think we both agree with you – I've stated before that I'm sure nobody goes looking for the highest climber in the chart of Week 37 or whatever, never mind from previous years. I was more concerned that he was using a different dating and week numbering system from the official version used by the OCC and all chart stats books, but he seems to have rectified that now. Richard3120 (talk) 22:03, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Ah, but have you seen all the top 10 pages like this? All those start of year dates to sort out...Btljs (talk) 22:27, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

If you think this chart was excessively detailed, 2011 in British music charts is excessively detailed. They have also published who's climbed a few places as opposed to the weeks highest climber and they also have a full chart summary of the albums chart. They have even published re-entries which are not important. hadji87 (talk)

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