UK Charts/ Midweeks 2023

[GinAg (39)]

It's the big Christmas clearout week. Probably of most interest to Moopy is Sam Ryder holding out in the top 10 albums, although not at no.1. Also Bloody Mary upto 16.

Singles

1 RAYE & 070 Shake - Escapism. (27,611)
2 SZA - Kill Bill (16,023)
3 Central Cee - LET GO (14,892)
4 Rema - Calm Down (14,202)
5 Bugzy Malone & TeeDee - Out of Nowhere (12,701)

6-10
6 Taylor Swift - Anti-Hero ^
7 Metro Boomin, The Weeknd & 21 Savage - Creepin' ^
8 Sam Smith & Kim Petras - Unholy ^
9 Meghan Trainor - Made You Look ^
10 Lewis Capaldi - Pointless ^

11-20
11 venbee & goddard. - messy in heaven ^
12 David Guetta & Bebe Rexha - I'm Good (Blue) ^
13 Drake & 21 Savage - Rich Flex ^
14 Harry Styles - As It Was ^
15 Tiësto & Tate McRae - 10:35 ^
16 Lady Gaga - Bloody Mary *
17 Oliver Tree & Robin Schulz - Miss You ^
18 Dean Lewis - How Do I Say Goodbye ^
19 Lewis Capaldi - Forget Me ^
20 JVKE - golden hour ^

21-30
21 Eliza Rose & Interplanetary Criminal - B.O.T.A. (Baddest Of Them All) ^
22 OneRepublic - I Ain't Worried ^
23 Anne-Marie & Aitch - PSYCHO ^
24 Tom Odell - Another Love ^
25 LF SYSTEM - Afraid To Feel ^
26 SZA - Shirt ^
27 SZA - Nobody Gets Me ^
28 Eminem - Mockingbird ^
29 Clavish feat. D-Block Europe - Rocket Science ^
30 Beyoncé - CUFF IT ^

31-40
31 Stephen Sanchez - Until I Found You *
33 Ed Sheeran - Shivers ^
34 Headie One - 50s *
35 Ed Sheeran - Bad Habits ^
36 Lil Uzi Vert - Just Wanna Rock *
37 Chris Brown - Under the Influence ^
38 P!nk - Never Gonna Not Dance Again *
39 Joel Corry & Tom Grennan - Lionheart (Fearless) ^
40 The Killers - Mr. Brightside ^

Albums

1 Taylor Swift - Midnights (7,222)
2 SZA - SOS (4,678)
3 The Weeknd - The Highlights (4,398)
4 Ed Sheeran - = (4,253)
5 Sam Ryder - There's Nothing But Space, Man! (3,990)

6-10
8 Eminem - Curtain Call: The Hits
9 ABBA - Gold: Greatest Hits

11-20
11 Fleetwood Mac - 50 Years: Don't Stop
13 Queen - Greatest Hits
14 Whitney Houston - I Will Always Love You: The Best of Whitney Houston
15 Lewis Capaldi - Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent
16 Metro Boomin - HEROES & VILLAINS
17 Ed Sheeran - ÷
18 Oasis - Time Flies: 1994-2009
19 Olivia Rodrigo - SOUR
20 Little Mix - Between Us

21-30
22 Elvis Presley - ELV1S: 30 Number 1 Hits
24 Michael Jackson - Number Ones ^
25 George Michael - Twenty Five
27 Harry Styles - Fine Line
28 Taylor Swift - folklore
29 Oasis - (What's the Story) Morning Glory
30 Taylor Swift - 1989

31-40
31 Eminem - Curtain Call 2
33 The Weeknd - Starboy ^
34 The Beatles - 1 ^
35 Becky Hill - Only Honest On The Weekend ^
36 D-Block Europe - Lap 5 ^
37 David Bowie - Legacy ^
38 Taylor Swift - Lover ^
39 Ella Henderson - Everything I Didn't Say ^
40 Bob Marley & The Wailers - Legend ^

 

[Pipo]

Ed Sheeran's Bad Habits & Shivers are STILL Top 40 since 2021?

 

[Funky]

The lack of new songs to replace the Christmas clearout is depressing

Well there ARE new songs, but the industry is no longer set up to support new music, so...

 

[Berly]

Jesus the album chart is like a greatest hits chart.

Amazing top 2 singles though love that for them

 

[GinAg (39)]

So last week's no.1 album dropped off the chart entirely (I think it was Buble).

 

[ManicKangaroo]

It was, yes

 

[Shoat]

It's not even just the greatest hits clogging up the album chart. There are 68 studio albums in the top 100; but only 20 of them were released in the last year.

It's all just very STALE.

 

[POP!]

Can there not be a current albums and catalog albums counterpart? The US has that.

 

[lolly]

Can there not be a current albums and catalog albums counterpart? The US has that.

They really ought to. What's the rule regarding how old an album has to be to qualify for it?

 

[Ellie]

I used to hate the fact that compilations were separated from the chart though. The Now series would regularly have ordinarily been #1 by quite some margin, but it never registered on the official album chart.

 

[lolly]

I used to hate the fact that compilations were separated from the chart though. The Now series would regularly have ordinarily been #1 by quite some margin, but it never registered on the official album chart.

Mixed feelings about it, to be honest. I remember being pissed off when artist albums were denied #1 because of Now compilations.

 

[octophone]

It's not proper "sales", it's just people streaming old shit. That's just how people listen now. It's horseshit that these albums just clog up the charts.

 

[lolly]

It's not proper "sales", it's just people streaming old shit. That's just how people listen now. It's horseshit that these albums just clog up the charts.

And as @Shoat mentioned in the other thread, some of the 'new' albums aren't album listening either, just old hit tracks being added to existing album playlists so streaming from those tracks then get added to sales for that album.

 

[Diddy]

I think you just need to let it go, it’ll never come back and you’ll only be sad if you fight it

And if they exclude all this stuff it’ll just end up like the physical singles chart, or Lucille - incredibly easy to top without much effort

 

[octophone]

And as @Shoat mentioned in the other thread, some of the 'new' albums aren't album listening either, just old hit tracks being added to existing album playlists so streaming from those tracks then get added to sales for that album.

Yeah, that is really sneaky.

 

[octophone]

it’ll just end up like the physical singles chart, or Lucille - incredibly easy to top without much effort

That's a double basil

 

[GinAg (39)]

Only two songs fell on the entire top 100. Everything else was a climber, new entry or re-entry.

 

[GinAg (39)]

Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac gets it's 17th week on the chart, and I Wanna Dance With Somebody it's 20th.

Meanwhile Heat Waves is on 108 and Mr Brightside on 343.

 

[lolly]

I wonder how much money LadBaby ended up making?

They would be better off launching a campaign in November promising to NOT release a song if they can raise a greater amount. I'd happily chuck a tenner in.

 

[Ellie]

And as @Shoat mentioned in the other thread, some of the 'new' albums aren't album listening either, just old hit tracks being added to existing album playlists so streaming from those tracks then get added to sales for that album.

Sounds like the modern equivalent of the re-release with bonus tracks.

 

[octophone]

I wonder how much money LadBaby ended up making?

They would be better off launching a campaign in November promising to NOT release a song if they can raise a greater amount. I'd happily chuck a tenner in.

For some reason, he never comments on this...but, y'know, nice house.

 

[GinAg (39)]

Nice house for a massive cunt.

 

[octophone]

Sleazy bastard, doing the Tories work for them. Promoting sausage rolls isn't exactly going to benefit the country in the long term, is it?

 

[MegaDolly]

The album chart will be all over the place now it includes video streams. Ed, Harry, Taylor and The Weeknd will be clogging up the top 10 for ages. It’s unfair for smaller artists with new albums who won’t debut as high as they might under the old chart.

 

[Ellie]

The album chart will be all over the place now it includes video streams. Ed, Harry, Taylor and The Weeknd will be clogging up the top 10 for ages. It’s unfair for smaller artists with new albums who won’t debut as high as they might under the old chart.

Why would anyone want watch an Ed Sheeran VIDEO?

 

[MegaDolly]

Why would anyone want watch an Ed Sheeran VIDEO?

One comment under Bad Habits is “Man his music is the best but he is really, really ugly”

The video streams will definitely be an advantage for the bigger artists which I think showed this week.

 

[lolly]

Why would anyone want watch an Ed Sheeran VIDEO?

It's how a lot of kids listen to music, isn't it? I spent a lot of time with my 15 year old nieces over Christmas and New Year and they don't use Spotify or an audio streaming service - but they were listening to YouTube on phones and tablets, regardless of whether they were actually watching it at the same time.

 

[Ellie]

It's how a lot of kids listen to music, isn't it? I spent a lot of time with my 15 year old nieces over Christmas and New Year and they don't use Spotify or an audio streaming service - but they were listening to YouTube on phones and tablets, regardless of whether they were actually watching it at the same time.

Obviously that was a rhetorical question.

But I get it. Without Premium you may get an ad at the beginning of a short video on YouTube but you can still create playlists for free and watch anything at any time. Free version of Spotify is pretty crap with limitations and Amazon music app only has a limited number of songs. YouTube makes more sense for the increased variety.

Still a shame that music videos peaked more than 20 years ago and there haven’t been many iconic ones in the last decade.

 

[Funky]

What does watching a music video have to do with albums??

 

[lolly]

What does watching a music video have to do with albums??

I guess they are desperate to get the numbers up. From nme.com:

The UK Album Chart will begin counting video streams from the first week of 2023.

The move has been introduced by the Official Charts Company to take into account the increasing variety of ways in which people consume music. The change was discussed for several months by the Chart Supervisory Committee, which comprises representatives of record labels, retailers and digital services from across the industry.

Video streams will be treated the same as audio streams. The streams will feed into the SEA-2 methodology, which is designed to calculate the overall popularity of an album and prevent viral tracks or videos from skewing the album charts. The method, which has been in use since February 2015, aggregates the streams of an album’s top 16 most streamed tracks and neutralises the top two tracks to the average of the other 14. The total is then divided by 1,000 and counted as one album stream.

Video streams have been counted in the singles chart since 2018. At the time, there was a consensus that video streams could skew the overall charting of albums because videos are usually played separately to full albums.

However, the Charts Supervisory Committee has since altered its stance, believing that videos are now more comprehensively integrated within the album listening experience. Video streams now account for 6.7 per cent of total music consumption in the streaming market.

Charlotte De Burgh-Holder, Official Charts chair, said: “As the music market evolves, so too does the way we measure success. Official Charts have always set the gold standard for chart compilation, and their addition of video to the albums chart reflects their dedication to always having the clearest picture of how the UK consumes their favourite music.”

 

[lolly]

Still a shame that music videos peaked more than 20 years ago and there haven’t been many iconic ones in the last decade.

But I guess when most 'consumption' (bleurgh) is on 6 inch screens, why strive for anything iconic?

 

[Jark]

Why would anyone want watch an Ed Sheeran VIDEO?

some people are unfortunately very disturbed.

 

[Jark]

It's not proper "sales", it's just people streaming old shit. That's just how people listen now. It's horseshit that these albums just clog up the charts.

there's really no proper solution to this though is there?

remove old/recurrent albums to make it strictly current and everything outside of the top 15 (on a good week) will be doing tiny numbers. remove streams from counting as sales and you'll have a sales chart that basically just represents fans making multi-format purchases and a tiny trickle of sales thereafter.

people still listen to albums but with spotify dominant, there's no sensible way of tracking that anymore. i'd be happy to just have separate physical sales and streaming album charts with no main album chart.

 

[MegaDolly]

Most artists release YouTube official audio when their album is released but the number of video streams could be inflated if they have released popular songs already and if they release an official video for a single with the album. It might not make much of a difference but it would’ve been interesting to see the breakdown last week with Ed, Harry, The Weeknd and Taylor who have a few official videos for their album songs.

 

[octophone]

there's really no proper solution to this though is there?

remove old/recurrent albums to make it strictly current and everything outside of the top 15 (on a good week) will be doing tiny numbers. remove streams from counting as sales and you'll have a sales chart that basically just represents fans making multi-format purchases and a tiny trickle of sales thereafter.

people still listen to albums but with spotify dominant, there's no sensible way of tracking that anymore. i'd be happy to just have separate physical sales and streaming album charts with no main album chart.

It's less about the absence of a solution and more about the absence of a non-manipulable solution. Take out 'old' albums and the labels will find a way to get them back in: the recurring Greatest Hits albums will simply be replaced with a different one. Take Oasis - "Time Flies" is taken off streaming and replaced with "Wonderwall - The Very Best Of Oasis" which maybe swaps out a couple of less successful singles for an album track and a popular b-side, rejigs the running order and voila, a "new" release which does the exact same thing until it too expires. The other thing we've seen happen is albums being remixed in a way that is entirely undetectable dribbling out of an Amazon Echo speaker - would these be considered "new"? If so, then there's the loophole.

The album may be one of the more serious victims of internet culture; the speed with which something becomes old news and stale buns (and therefore, uncool) is simply not consistent with an album being marketed for a 12 month period. This is, of course, not sustainable for an industry that made itself rich by selling the same things over and over again. A song or two will have a long life but not a whole album. and if you didn't 'buy' it in the first place, how do you 'sell' it going forwards?

 

[Funky]

I’m still trying to understand the downside of having a separate but recognised catalogue chart for both singles and albums.

The old charts only measured sales not listening and therefore new music was prioritised. We still all really want a chart for new music for the sake of the artists we like and for the sake of the music industry staying buoyant and fresh. They’ve completely changed their stance that charts now need to reflect listening habits and it just makes the chart irrelevant. There’s less and less correlation between fresh music and the charts, which now mostly take into account passive, repetitive playlist listening.

 

[VoR]

Yeah I don't subscribe to Jark's assessment at all, particularly for singles. There are songs racking up millions of streams which never even crack the top 100. Just to use a gay-friendly example, Rina Sawayama has never had a top 100 on her own, but This Hell has 20m streams already. Let's say that was enough for it to peak at #27 for a few weeks, or something. Would that really be worse than Mr Brightside and Glass Animals being around for yet another week?

 

[Pipo]

Why would anyone want watch an Ed Sheeran VIDEO?

Hence Lyric Videos? They count towards the charts anyway don't they?

 

[lolly]

Hence Lyric Videos? They count towards the charts anyway don't they?

I think if they are official, yes.

 

[Shoat]

I read Jark's comment as being specific to albums rather than singles, and I'd probably agree with him. Even though there's a huge dearth of newer releases in the album chart... even with the GH and old "classics" clogging everything up, it still took less than 5k to get into the top 10 this week. Remove the GH's and that threshold would be even more pathetic.

I'd probably go for a purchased-albums only chart (so that the niche indie faves have something to enjoy), but scrap the main album chart in favour of a general "artists streaming chart" simply totalling everything up for that act (I wouldn't even bother trying to lock it down by album).