Never Be The Same Again

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Egg on several people's faces this morning (mine included) as teh SINGLES CHART REVOLUTION OMG turns out to mean:

- A top ten re-entry for Snow Patrol!
- "Maneater" and The Kooks at the arse end of the Top 40! (much as you'd expect in the first chart of the year anyway!)
- JoJo's (excellent) "Too Little Too Late" "would not have been eligible for the charts until next week under the previous rules" - but in the BRAVE NEW WORLD she can enjoy a Top 22 hit!!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6239415.stm for the full EYE-POPPING DETAILS. Including desperate threat at the end of an all-Beatles chart.

In other Top 40 news I am glad to see that Eric Prydz has stepped in to rake in the dough from sort out the confusion surrounding the 8 million bosh versions of Another Brick In The Wall.

Comments

[whalefish.livejournal.com]

The bum end of the chart has gone a bit weird - in the midweeks there was a new entry at 150-odd for Guns N' Roses with Sweet Child O' Mine, and Nirvana were in there somewhere too.

It's a bit of an anti-climax really, I was expecting some sort of CHART APOCALYPSE.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Stuff being old = stuff people are likely to already own, innit. However this does not explain Snow Patrol which 3% of the population already own.

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

The Prydz remix of ABITW is surely the least inspiring version of the lot. Though given his track record, that's hardly a surprise.

The pride with which he told the story of the record on the R1 Chart Show was truly sad to behold. Kudos then to JK and Joel (for first time ever) for taking the piss out of him with their 'Convoy' "remix".

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

Personally, I feel that this makes the charts easier to manipulate for record companies. Let's say, just for example that Blur are reforming (surely not?!!) EMI/Food could decide that 4 weeks before the first single from the re-formed Blur is released, they want to get a bit of publicity stirred up. So they re-release an old single, tell all the fan club members to buy it to get it to #1 and Bob's your uncle. The number of sales required to get to #1 is so small anyway, that any band who wanted one of their old classics to get to #1 could probably achieve it, as long as they get the timing of the release right.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

This assumes that:

i) the level of sales required to get to No.1 will remain low - since the singles market doubled in size last year and is still growing this is by no means a given.

ii) the concept of 're-release' is meaningful for records already available for download. What you're actually talking about is a 'promotional push', which in turn relies on...

iii) the members of Blurs fan club are all mugs. This admittedly is a real possibility.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Given that they're Blur fans, I'm not sure that bumping an old single to #1 just to show that they are The Lads is taking advantage of them, in any realistic sense.

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

Am I confused or will this just lead to re-runs of the whole fuss with The Modern (as they were then named) not getting into the charts, on account of it possibly being mostly the same people (gasp!) wot was buying their single online each time? Or am I misremembering completely?

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

Of course, no one looks back at these things, but here (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6248535.stm) is a (possible) interesting consequence of the change that (oddly) no-one seems to have mentioned.