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From today (Sunday) the official Top 40 charts, for both albums and singles, will be based solely on downlaod sales. Sales of CD's, etc, from shops will not be included in the count ever again, from today forth. Do people think this is good or bad? I am not in favour of it because I like to have a hard copy of a CD. It means you get album artwork, lyrics to all the songs, usually photos of the band/artist in the CD booklet and so on. This will mean the end of the record store before long. And not having hard copies of your music spells the end of collector's items, album artwork, limited editions, the ability to get your thing signed by the artist if you ever met them, and so on. I think it is a bad thing personally.

Well said Max. It's all very well having your music on your PC or MP3 player, but what about when your hard drive gives up the ghost or you lose your ipod or whatever... yup you lose all your music collection as well.

I much prefer to buy CD's for the reasons you state, and then rip all the tracks to my h/d just for convenience. Then when the drive goes kapput, I've still got all my music.

Are you sure?

I thought it was Hit40UK that was doing that, not the official charts?

I was of the impression that 'hit 40 uk' WAS the official charts. The chart they compile goes out on 130 differnt radio stations in the UK apparently.

I think the 'Hit40 UK' is what was once the Network Chart & goes out on all the commercial locals throughout the UK.

Hit40UK is now based on both downloads and commercial airplay only.

The latter was always a stupid idea considering the reliance on set playlists which are often very restrictive in commecial radio. A new act will probably always have to prove itself on the official chart before commercial takes notice.

Info on the official charts here:

"I was of the impression that 'hit 40 uk' WAS the official charts."

No, distinctly unofficial.

Even more unofficial now.

I do recall there were two charts years ago. When you watched Top Of The Pops on BBC1 it had a differnt rundown to CD:UK the following day (TOTP was on on Friday's in it later years). Bizarre! So maybe they will still count CD sales in shops towards some chart of other...

max_tranmere wrote:

> I do recall there were two charts years ago. When you watched
> Top Of The Pops on BBC1 it had a differnt rundown to CD:UK the
> following day (TOTP was on on Friday's in it later years).

That's because TOTP used the offical chart released the previous Sunday. The following day's CD:UK was usually a clever guestimate taken from the current week's midweek chart position - i.e. an attempt to predict the official Sunday chart the next day. They often got it wrong, because Saturday's sales figures are frequently the deciding factor.

> Bizarre! So maybe they will still count CD sales in shops towards some chart of other...

The official chart still does.

Will CD singles still be around for a while yet?

If so, it's a bit of an own goal really for Hit40UK as the official chart will now be the only chart for both CD and downloads sales.