{"id":3649,"date":"2017-01-07T20:16:42","date_gmt":"2017-01-07T20:16:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3649"},"modified":"2017-01-07T20:16:42","modified_gmt":"2017-01-07T20:16:42","slug":"charts-6-january-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=3649","title":{"rendered":"Charts – 6 January 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0chart for the week\u00a0after Christmas is\u00a0traditionally\u00a0an oddity; the Christmas singles all disappear, a bunch of tracks getting year-in-review airplay rise to fill the void, and not much else goes on. \u00a0This year, we have added wrinkle. \u00a0When streaming data was added to\u00a0the\u00a0chart, it raised a new issue for the chart. \u00a0Instead of just counting sales, there was now a subjective element: how to weight sales against\u00a0streams? \u00a0They went for 100 streams = 1 sale. \u00a0Starting this week, that’s been changed to 150, which tilts the balance\u00a0somewhat back in the direction of sales (though if streams keep growing, it won’t be long\u00a0before we’re back where we started).<\/p>\n

Is this a\u00a0more refined view of the respective value of sales and streams (whatever “value” might mean in this context), or\u00a0just\u00a0an attempt to get some more movement into the chart, which was\u00a0unusually\u00a0sluggish in 2016? \u00a0Probably the latter, because while the chart is officially there to measure popularity, its unspoken function is to serve as a publicity device; and to do that, it needs people to pay attention; and to get people to pay attention, it needs stuff to happen. \u00a0But\u00a0you can make a case that\u00a0things had\u00a0become imbalanced: tracks that were selling strongly but lacked streaming support were missing the top 40 altogether.<\/p>\n

So:\u00a0has this change upended the world?<\/p>\n

1. \u00a0Clean Bandit – “Rockabye”<\/strong>\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

No. \u00a0“Rockabye” spends its ninth week at number one, and what’s more, it’s there on the strength of streams. \u00a0(In sales, it’s number 2 behind Rag’N’Bone Man.)<\/p>\n

As it turns out, the impact of the re-weighting is more modest. \u00a0A lack of streaming support is no longer fatal to a strong seller making the chart, but the world is not exactly turned upside down. \u00a0There’s a bit of reshuffling of the tracks already in the upper reaches, but nothing worth going into detail with.<\/p>\n

16. \u00a0JP Cooper – “September Song”<\/strong><\/p>\n