Hit40uk dumps CD sales

In article <48ba01aad2a2f57c37e98e7ec54e0b87@jiglu-wc>, (Address removed) (Simon Crees) wrote:

*From:* Simon Crees <(Address removed)>
*To:* Anorak Nation <(Address removed)>
*Date:* 07 Jan 2009 22:27:39 +0000

The commercial radio chart show hit40uk is to no longer reflect CD
sales in its weekly countdown. This historic move comes after
figures show 96 per cent of sales in the charts are downloads only.

Did I get it wrong then – I thought the Beeb were already doing that?

2009/1/7 Simon Crees <(Address removed)>:

Personally i am surprised that CD sales of singles are now so low.I
expected maybe 60 to 70 % but 96% effectively means the CD format is
dead now for singles sales. I have not seen any figures for album sales
yes but would suspect the percentage to be significantly lower but in
this rapidly changing media world , anything is possible.

Not too surprised that singles sales are at that level.. However I do think that album sales will hold up for now as it's much cheaper and more effective to buy an album from an online retailer and then rip it at whatever quality you want to your mp3 players. That may change in the future as already prices are coming down for (legally downloaded) songs. Amazon have launched a new service and Apple are reducing the price of their itunes songs. And both have moved away from the ridiculous DRM protection releasing them as either high quality mp3 at 256kbps or AAC at that rate.

Still think that people will buy CDs for a good while because of

1) You get a physical product with sleeve notes, pictures etc
2) You get a backup of the data should your hard drive crash
3) You get the best quality with linear PCM audio which you can rip at whatever rate you want for your music player.
4) You get something that you can play anywhere almost, no matter how luddite the folk you visit!
--
Regards,

Geoff

Did I get it wrong then – I thought the Beeb were already doing that?

I have not listened to the sunday evening Radio one singles chart rundown for ages now but the Radio one website shows a singles chart – which presumably is combined CD and downloads , and seperately lists just a downloads chart. A number of specialist genres of music types also have their own dedicated chart.I think its a great shame that the single is no longer a physical medium. I, and i suspect most of the rest of you Anoraks have a collection of old singles and its as much the remembering what the record actually looks like and what record label its on that sticks in my memory as the actual song thats on it. Bygon days !

In article <23ccaa1189ae45be2c54032be647b9ac@jiglu-wc>, (Address removed) (Simon Crees) wrote:

genres of music types also have their own dedicated chart.I think
its a great shame that the single is no longer a physical medium.
I, and i suspect most of the rest of you Anoraks have a collection
of old singles and its as much the remembering what the record
actually looks like and what record label its on that sticks in my
memory as the actual song thats on it. Bygon days !

You wouldn't suggest that if you had to lug thousands of the damn things into Halls and Working Mens Clubs when you started as a DJ. 12" singles made it even worse.
As for the collection, I gave up as soon as I could replace them with CDs. A simply flight-case, still heavy but not as bad as snap,crackle and stuck needle vinyl, with thousands of tracks to entertain people – much better.
I do agree that remembering what a vinyl sleeve or even picture disk looked like was a real plus point when you needed to find a single quickly. BUT, have you ever tried to get the needle on the tractor shaped single Combine Harvester in a hurry – yeah I know who would want to, but it's NOT EASY!!!!!!! :-)

So rather than bygone days, I hoped I could have said be gone days, but watching telly the other morning it seems anoraks are taking over as there is some crazy new interest in the 7" single – gawd, they'll be wanting radio stations on ships next.

As it goes the MD of a Slovak station came to see me today to pick up some production material and he's quite into UK radio history. We laughed about the fact that today we can put all the material he needed on one CD whereas a few years ago we would have been lugging tapes around and if they got cold it was a disaster :-)

So no, I'll stick with me modern day stuff Guv and if you want I'll play it through a valve Amp if it makes you happy :-) But, for me a few nice flights cases, no jewel cases either just sleeves, and I'm a happy camper.

Eric

Eric Tesug <(Address removed)> said:

So no, I'll stick with me modern day stuff Guv and if you want I'll play
it through a valve Amp if it makes you happy :-) But, for me a few nice
flights cases, no jewel cases either just sleeves, and I'm a happy
camper.

Eric

I dunno if it'd because I never bother to look, or if it's because they don't exist, but I can't remember the last time I saw a single that wasn't in a private collection.

Do shops still sell them ? If not, it would be pretty difficult to use sales of them for compiling a chart, wouldn't it ?

In article <c3561219a2cf92a9f8352962743a6050@jiglu-wc>, (Address removed) (Peter G. Millington-Wallace) wrote:

Do shops still sell them ? If not, it would be pretty difficult to
use sales of them for compiling a chart, wouldn't it ?

I didn't see any in TESCO's tonight :-) Plenty of albums, but no singles. To be honest they're not cost effective to make. Why would people pay for a single when for a little more you can get the Now 9999 with oodles of tracks – any self respecting music person should be able to tell you which tracks would be in the top 40, 20, 10 or top three.
So making compilations isn't rocket science. I'll get me coat now :-)

Eric

Bloomin 'eck la', you still muckin around with them old fashioned CDs? Wassamatter with mp3s?

Seriously though, I went down the same route as you, replacing a load of my vinyl albums, first of all with cassette tapes in the 70s/80s and then later on with CDs. For the last 10 years, I've been more than happy to embrace mp3s.

Mind you, on the Northern Soul scene if you want to be thought of as a serious DJ, you still have to go the vinyl route. As far as I'm concerned it's the message not the medium that matters and I can't get excited about a chunk of vinyl that's scratched to high-heaven when I can get the same piece in pristine condition on CD or MP3.

However, even though I no longer have one, there was something to be said for a superb quality valve amp, they really had such a warm sound.

I started off another round of new "computers for beginners" courses at work – I was describing the world of IT that I entered in December 1970 when I was working on ICL mainframes and contrasting it with today's world of a "computer on every desktop". Today's power to the people world wins hands down anytime and the same goes for music technology.

Alan

Alan Milewczyk aka The Pole with Soul
Soul pix on the net at http://www.soulman1949.com
Soulman1949's Blog at http://soulman1949.blogspot.com/

Eric Tesug <(Address removed)> said:
 any self respecting music person should be able to tell you

which tracks would be in the top 40, 20, 10 or top three.
So making compilations isn't rocket science. I'll get me coat now :-)

Eric

But now you've changed the subject from "singles" to "tracks". That's cheating !

Eric Tesug <(Address removed)> said:

Did I get it wrong then – I thought the Beeb were already doing that?

The 'Official Chart' lot (as used by the BBC) count both downloads and physical product sales, and combine them together to make the official chart (personally, I ignore the other charts as, apart from the top 10, they are based on airplay. In other words – they are made up and don't actually reflect what people are buying!).

The 'Official Chart' lot only count downloads from a week before the physical product is available, and then onwards for as long as a physical product is actually available. Other than under these conditions, they don't count downloads, which seems wrong to me. Downloads should be counted at all times, imho, although I guess that means we'd be stuck with the same tracks in the chart forever.

Christopher England <(Address removed)> said:
Eric Tesug <(Address removed)> said:

Did I get it wrong then – I thought the Beeb were already doing that?

The 'Official Chart' lot (as used by the BBC) count both downloads and
physical product sales, and combine them together to make the official
chart (personally, I ignore the other charts as, apart from the top 10,
they are based on airplay. In other words – they are made up and don't
actually reflect what people are buying!).

That's what i assumed was being done by the bbc with the singles chart or as they prefer to call it ''the official chart'' with the downloads being listed seperately. Although i was talking about what you might think of as the personality of vinyl singles in my previous post , i am the first to embrace new technology and have my entire music collection in MP3 format on my laptop computer which is connected to my amp and speakers at home for ultimate accessability and space saving.I even put my cd player up in the loft about two years ago as it was taking up space and i found i never played cd's. Theres always the dvd/cd drive on the laptop if i did want to play a cd for any reason. I can definately relate to having to carry around heavy boxes of vinyl records for mobile discos when i was much younger – it must be bliss now for a mobile dj to turn up with a laptop , amp ,speakers and light boxes and your ready to go. I think cd singles would have lasted longer as a format if they were not such poor value for money compared to an album by the same artist. I don't know why they stopped doing those very small cd singles that fitted in a recess in the drive tray and contained just the one track a few years ago – i guess they were just too fiddly. The current ones with usually three or four mixes of the same track at around three to four pounds in price make albums seem excellent value for money in comparison.