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BBC Launches Downloaded Music Charts
PReDiToR writes "The BBC today aired its first chart rundown of downloaded music. 'The Official UK Download Chart is based on the most popular, legally downloaded tracks in the UK. It's compiled from the sale of permanently owned single track downloads and doesn't include streamed downloads, subscriptions or free downloads.' The Chart played on Radio 1, the UK's most listened to station, and will be a regular feature."
From the country that brought us the Spice Girls. No Thanks.
Can this be a reasonably good statistic? Most of the music that I listen to online either comes from online radio stations, Poisoned (mac app), or iTunes. What clout would this have over any other song statistics?
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Wouldn't it be cool to link such a list to bittorrent for automatic downloading? That way, you'd get fresh music that's supposedly good every day. I'd love it. And it would be user selected music -- not the crap the recording industry feels like feeding us this week.
He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
It would be nice if they posted a bit more info. Like for example exactly how the figures are tabulated -- is it a straight weekly sum, or are past results worked in somehow either through strict accumulation or a weighted average... Furthermore, do audio books get tossed into the mix (not that one is apt to win)? It would also be neat to see what formats people were downloading the music in.
..that all the sites are stacked with crap pop music and have hardly any decent real proper music on them.
I just realized that out of those twenty songs, I recognized exactly ... none of them. Sheesh. And I even listen to the radio (Jack FM in Dallas, KGSR in Austin) - I guess my musical tastes aren't anywhere close to mainstream any more.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
I wonder how long it takes for music companies or artists to artifically inflate the "legal downloads" of their music so that people think it is "popular" when they hear it on the radio on the Top 20.
And of course once it is "popular" people will start buying it to see what the fuss is about, thus selling more. Maybe I'm just a skeptic, but it seems like another way to get the same stuff to sell even more. Oh well.
I RTA earlier, but IIRC Radio 2 is the most listened to radio station in the UK, not Radio 1.
Yes I know, nitpick alert... but the subject matter is relating to chart positions :-)
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
... would be a list of the most-downloaded songs that weren't paid for. You could compare that to this list and see which songs are actually worth buying.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
give me a site that lets me download whatever song john peel is currently playing and i'll be happy.
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
I am greatly disappointed in so far as the chart offered automatically discounts legitimate artists that do not choose to sell their tracks online but give them away for free. Examples being Brad Sucks and the Acedia Music Netlabel under licenses such as the Creative Commons music license. It will take something like the BBC or other mainstream music outlets (MTV or other such dribble) to recognize this music distribution model to get artists any exposure. That being said I can see how from a purely practical level that one would have to rely either on the artists themselves or mirrors to provide statistics which may be skewered. In addition, artists like Brad Sucks may get significantly more downloads from the simple fact of being free (in every sense) rather than another indie band that has only pay downloads.
Bah humbug.
P.S. Brad Sucks is one of my favourite bands
...American Idiot is a hit in Britain.
Wouldn't a chart based on downloads on Kazaa/soulseek/etc give a much better indication of the musical tastes of online music downloaders? Because music purchased online through the likes of itunes is just a tiny fraction of the music downloaded. And besides, this chart is probably going to be a whole lot more of the same "quality music" as we see in current real world charts.
One could also create charts per p2p program and maybe even based on geographical location (IP ranges).
But is this the stuff that they're gonna play as the definitive chart on Top of the Pops? Or are they gonna stick with the Gallup chart? And is the Network Chart still around? Apart from being used by independent radio stations that syndicated David Jenson's show, and ITV's excellent DJ-free Saturday morning "The Chart Show," it wasn't really regarded as 'the' chart like the one on TOTP was.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
With any luck, the music industry will have a more difficult time in manipulating this chart, and it will therefore more accurately reflect the musical tastes of the UK's youth.
Until the number of legal downloads FAR surpasses illegal ones, I will get my info from that list
The Spice Girls are a good example, as they were a manufactured band, and this chart is designed to give official validation to a 'chart' that will be even easier for the big labels to manipulate.
The BBC's independence doesn't quite extend to DJs and producers being able to resist big bribes by labels wanting to get their songs onto playlists. Ever wonder why Radio One DJs have big houses and lots of cars? Let's face it, it's not because they are talented.
The BBC has the resources to look at doing a far more interesting chart of what people are really wanting to listen to, by sampling p2p networks, but haven't got the imagination or balls to follow through, as for some reason they are beholden to the big labels.
I pay my licence fee for independence from state interference, how about freedom from big business interference?
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
This will help online music sales in the long run but it will cause the same effect as "top sellers" in the CD market. Of course they're top sellers and they will continue to be since they're the most played music on the radio. That's why radio stations should promote new and notable artists instead of the same crap we've heard for the last three months, maybe that would help artists and encourage a better rotation on the air waves.
Noooooooooooooooooooooo!!!
P.S. Brad Sucks^2. Brad's a nice guy, at least, if seriously outclassed by the Songfight heavyweights (Frontalot, add, JBB, Frankie).
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
They expect the BBC(!) to list the chart of illegally downloaded music? Are you crazy? Next thing would be the BBC publishing a HOW TO on finding and downloading illegal music, maybe even a HOW TO on stealing CDs from music stores. Quite obviously the BBC, one of the most respected (and oldest) TV networks in the world is not going to stoop so low as publicly support the breaking of the law.
Hey, we should have a chart where the statistics are collected from criminals, yeah, basically we go around asking shop-lifters what music singles they steal, because it's exactly the same, and it's never going to happen.
Another thing, it's just not feasible to trace illegal downloads through P2P networks, it's a chart for the UK which means it has to be based on singles purchases within the UK. It would be far too messy to dabble in P2P networks for statistics. This way, they can consult the sites who sell to the UK and get real and honest statistics.
One cool thing that did happen on Top of the Pops was that when Roger Daltrey of The Who was presenting it ...
He introduced the Village People with the line
"Backs to the wall !! It's the Village People !!"
Hilarious
-- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
All sensible people use Audioscrobbler and get their charts. They take into account what people listen to and not what they buy, meaning that it is less skewed towards teenyboppers and one hit wonders (which have low replay values) and fairer towards good bands.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
But legal downloads account for only a tiny percentage of all downloads. So wouldn't it be more relevant to track all downloads, legal + illegal?
If I was selling music, wouldn't I would want to know what's actually popular with the masses?
(Actually, I think I heard that the RIAA companies do obtain illegal-download statistics via back channels for use in their marketing decisions.)
I've been using iRATE for a little over a year now, and have downloaded about a thousand tracks with it. If I were a typical user, then that would suggest that iRATE users all together have downloaded about fifteen million songs, thus far surpassing iTunes' puny one million download total.
Now, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. Some of iRATE's downloads were existing users fetching updates, and not everyone who uses it keeps using it. But it clearly shows that free, legal downloads are potentially dwarfing the paid downloads being tracked by the BBC.
Note that the RIAA doesn't get a penny from iRATE's downloads. They can't complain either, because the copyright holders - the musicians themselved - give permission to us to download their tracks when they post them on MP3 hosting services like the Internet Underground Music Archive.
I discuss not only iRATE but a lot of other places to get free music downloads in my article Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads. Share the link with all your buddies who use p2p.
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Request your free CD of my piano music.
Anyone in LA or OC remember when they were shitty local band Kara's Flowers and used to open for bands like the Aquabats? Congrats on graduating to shitty huge band with a new name and keyboard player. I guess.
It's not inherently bad, but it's simply not music. True art cannot be manufactured. Art can also be good and bad, but that's another story. My ass its simply not music, must idiots here are just stupid enough to follow one persons opinion. I cant believe the rantings that go on about how its manafactured or how "gay" it is. No one cares what it is, if its a song, its a song. If its good its good. Stop analyzing it as if it was a complex programming language u fags...
Useless...... Realplayer.....BBC world as well.
I can't agree with that comment. I never listen to Radio 1, I always tune my car radio to the nearest local station. If you add all the listener figures for the local stations, you'd find Radio 1 is a minority station.
Radio 1 is crap!
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
Because it includes airplay. How this is any indication of popularity with The Kids, I have no idea. DJs play what they're given (except Tony Blackburn).
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I think you'll find that the UK's most listened to station is in fact Radio 2. Radio 1 lost its position during the Matthew Bannister years: See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Radio_1 and http://www.radiorewind.co.uk/1993_to_1997_page.htm .
You can get more information at www.theofficialcharts.com, including all the rules for the new download charts. As with all of the "Official UK Charts" (including the singles chart), the BBC has nothing to do with the compilation. Nothing to do with even commissioning the compilation. The charts are commissioned by The Official UK Charts Company Ltd, which is owned by BARD (British retailers) and BPI (British record companies).
:)
For the other poster, Gallup haven't done the market research for years. It's been Millward Brown since 1994.
Is this new chart useful? Depends on what you want from it. It's not going to tell you what's the best music around today, but what chart does? Like most charts, it will tell you what is popular, and specifically what is popular with people who are happy to pay for their downloaded music. Like the singles chart tells you what is popular with 12 year old girls
(And yes, I do have a connection with The Official UK Charts Company. Didn't get to the launch party last night though - sigh.)
I used iRate a while ago, but I let it lapse because there were certain issues with the version I had that made it a bit awkward to use, and the Debian package hasn't been updated for a very long time. (I attempted compiling it myself a couple of times, but without success.)
It's a neat idea in principle, but there are at least a couple of problems that caused me not to bother using it after a while. (Actually three if you count that it crashed and burned every time I hit the 'next track' button.)
I really do like the concept behind iRate, and I hope it does well. Undoubtedly part of my problem is that I wasn't motivated to jump into the developer community and be more vocal about the problems I was having. Perhaps it's changed a lot since the version 0.3 which I have, but there's still no new debian package, so I haven't had an easy opportunity to update it.
Look at the labelels behind every song; each one is a monopoly label. The BBC has always been used to control the taste of the masses, and since Radio Coroline, it has consistently failed.
It will fail again.
Instead of doing the innovative thing and writing its own software toe take the true pulse of what the public (that pays the soon to be axed licence fee) is listening to, or outsourcing the service out from a legitimate company, they act as servants to the music monopoly. This is being done under the direct orders of Dame Pauline Neville Jones, ex head of NatWest and head of the British QinetiQ defense and security group, whose opinions on "the propaganda war" are interesting to say the least.
No matter what bogus, industry promoting chart they produce, they will be hard pressed to put the genie back in the bottle. As broadband spreads throughout the UK people will increasingly turn to free music, and we will see alternative, meaningful, non corporate charts take their place as the centers of attention.
Charts by people like Audioscrobbler are far more representative and are precisely what I am talking about.
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On the one side, you have music being redistributed, so there's no global total of how many downloads there are. That would make it underreporting.
On the other side, you have ballot stuffers. If you wanted to make an artist popular, download it many times over. How to do that is left as an exercise for the reader, but it is obvious this leads to overreporting.
Oh and yeah, even if this music is release for free (speech or otherwise), there is a motive to ballot stuff. Both to get you fame (as such), as a promotion of commercial songs, to get a record contract or otherwise.
Like it or not, limiting it to commercial songs only is making it fairly certain that the figures represents the songs' actual popularity.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
If you're all done ranting about the quality (or lack thereof) of British music, let's get back to something remotely related to the story...
I'm sure in the UK, as is the case here, there are still some bands that see the value of giving away complete tracks as samples. This system, which does not count free downloads, penalizes the artist by handicapping their chances for a "hit" if they allow free downloads. Even amazon.com has some free downloads... check out "Stress" by Jim's Big Ego - awesome. And free for the downloading.
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
Yeah right! For the sake of our national dignity I would like to point out that radio one is only the third most listened to BBC station: Source rajar
Just because it's manufactured doesn't, automatically, mean it's BAD. The Sex Pistols were practically manufactured and they weren't bad.
However all the examples you have given are bad, Avril, Britney et al have no talent whatsoever and it shows in their music, which is rubbish.
I guess it's the difference between cheap rubbish cobbled together from the cheapest components to buying a quality product which is well designed and made properly ( or the difference between McDonalds and a good resteraunt for another example ).
The problem is the record industry is so hell bent on making money as their only motive that they operate more along the line of McDonalds.
It may exclude some important categories, but it can't be bad to have such a respected organization running a site which recognizes that some music downloading *is* quite legal. It should go a long way to counteract the message, from some *other* organizations, that any downloading of entertainment is inherently illegal, immoral, and fattening.
I'm confused.... every time there has been an attempt to track "illegal" downloads it was found that the people who were computer savvy enough to download music had more wide ranging taste than the UK singles chart... but the most downloaded song is WESTLIFE?!?!
Does this mean that, like the UK singles chart, the whole thing will be driven by 6-12 year old girls? Or is it biased by all those free downloads they have been giving away on coke and happy meals?
That'll be BBC Radio 2. R1 has been shedding listeners for the past ten years.
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