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Liam Carey reviews
V o l u m e # 1 3 3 0 J u l y 2 0 0 3
OI, STOP MESSING ABOUT!
The UK Singles Chart is not what it used to be. Concentrated first-week sales, virtually no climbers to speak of at all these days, and a general public apathy towards a Top 40 boasting little in the way of long-term interest for chart-watchers. So, tell us something we don’t know.
Well, it seems the music industry is at a crucial crossroads, facing a dilemma which could spell the end of the singles chart in its traditional incarnation. Created in 1952 by the NME to replace the outmoded Sheet Music listings, the UK chart has seen over 900 records make #1, but there are genuine fears that the landmark 1000th chart-topper might never happen. This is because at its current becalmed turnover rate of Number Ones (the slowest since the mid-90s) it could take another three years, and with sales plummeting by more than 30% in the first quarter of 2003 the future of singles themselves, let alone the chart, is in real doubt.
To illustrate just how dire the situation is, the Year-To-Date rundown of the biggest-selling singles in the UK includes just one release that has passed half-a-million sales; the lame Comic Relief-inspired teaming of Gareth Gates and the Kumars on Spirit In The Sky, which has sold 550,000 copies so far. The alarm bells begin, however, when the rest of the top 10 reveals a paltry six singles with sales over 250,000 copies, and a long-running hit such as Evanescence‘s Bring Me To Life (4 weeks at No.1) isn’t among them. For all their ubiquity, the likes of Christina Aguilera‘s Beautiful and Cry Me A River by Justin Timberlake have yet to sell even 200,000. Further down, boyband-of-the-moment Busted have sold just 100,000 copies of their chart-topping You Said No.
Others, such as Liberty X, Mis-Teeq, Delta Goodrem and S Club, are also suffering.
There’s no hiding from the fact that, plainly, singles simply aren’t selling anymore. But what to do about it?
With a typically myopic outlook the BPI, understandably alarmed at their self-inflicted crisis, are seeking to reassess the structure of the UK chart; possibilities include shifting the publication date to a Friday, and the age-old nugget of introducing added elements into the mix such as airplay.
Of course, neither option will rectify the mess the record companies, with the demographic advertising-driven aid of the media, have made of the singles market. The chart format, which has been in place for over 50 years, of a Monday-Saturday retail window with the resulting tabulations compiled for publication shortly after (the next day, in fact, since September 1987) is pretty foolproof. If the chart has lost both its credibility and now its potency, no amount of smoke-and-mirror tricks will hide the real reasons for the record-buying public’s waning interest and monetary investment in it. Namely:
- Tracks are premiered and/or aggressively promoted on high rotation as much as six weeks before the single is available to purchase in the shops. By the eventual time of release, saturation point has long since come and gone, and willingess to still part with £3.99 is quite naturally on the slide.
- Pricing singles at more than 50% less on the week of release only, before hiking everything up to the £3.99 maximum pricepoint thereafter, is always going to skew the nature of chart activity towards first-week sales and swift drop-offs.
CIN rules governing formats are ridiculously convoluted and often nonsensical. The plethora of multi-format singles, endless remixes, and baffling tracklistings that allow a CD without the recognisable version of the song, might satisfy the demands of fanbases and the all-pervading dance music culture, but the Singles Chart was designed to reflect mass popular tastes and appeal to everyone, casual buyers included. CIN need to lay down stricter, clearer and fewer regulations that simplify what is allowed rather than kowtowing to the pressures of record companies always trying to flout the rules.
Performances and presentations of singles are rarely close to the recorded version that appears on the actual single. Somewhere, in the cause of ill-judged worthiness, miming has become the ultimate dirty word for Television producers. Yet, if the music heard on a programme is invariably misleading to the potential consumer (and the quality of the sound for live renderings on shows like TOTP and CD:UK is woeful), what purpose does it serve to the wellbeing of the UK chart?
Finally, there is far too much music issued every week. All the labels are striving for the same Holy Grail – huge profits – but in copying each other to the point where most of the new acts launched are facsimilies of something already heavily represented, they are merely slicing up a diminshing pie in ever smaller pieces. Increasing competition in a deflated market makes little sense, but still they persist in flogging acts who have nothing new to say, and nothing new in their music. The astonishing rise in female artists – and endless stream of airbrushed, derivative, vacuuous acts clearly designed to succeed by means of overtly sexual appeal and nothing else – reeks of the cynical, unimaginative and manipulative obssessions of today’s industry; run by arrogant halfwits and controlled by grey accountants.
All of these aspects of our 21st-Century marketplace climate need to be addressed before it’s too late. The current set-up doesn’t work in terms of overall sales, and it’s arguably killing pop music in the process. It’s impossible to give the public everything they want (numerous remixes, 12″ double-packs, spreading as many as 5 or 6 B-sides across two or more formats) and have that reflected in a fair and structured weekly chart. Time to choose.
In an age when revenue from ringtones of popular songs eclipse that of singles sales, perhaps any attempts to revive the market are doomed. Until the industry comes out of denial, and tackles perceptions and trends of their own making, sales will continue to fall and the chart’s relevance will decrease even further.
Page Content copyright © Liam Carey, 2003.
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Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.