Chart positions and play.com, cdwow.ie?

eth0_

I was wondering this morning - if you buy a CD from somewhere like Play or CDWOW, does it count towards chart position? Obviously they're very cheap, but if they don't have links with the chart monitoring companies, i'd rather buy a CD from HMV if it was by a band I am a big fan of.

Anyone know?

Doctor J

I wouldn't think so. Are the CD's not coming from abroad? Surely to point of sale is where the sale is registered and that's where it would count, if it does at all.

eth0_

Originally posted by Doctor J
I wouldn't think so. Are the CD's not coming from abroad? Surely to point of sale is where the sale is registered and that's where it would count, if it does at all.

To be a bit more specific, i'm talking about the UK chart, not the Irish one...I don't give a sh1t about the Irish one, you only have to sell about a hundred singles to get to number 1 here.

John

I think some sites are linked to the charts. I know if you buy downloadable tracks from Mute they count towards the UK charts. I can't help you anymore than that. Can you email one of these sites and ask?

grumpytrousers

I was wondering this morning - if you buy a CD from somewhere like Play or CDWOW, does it count towards chart position?

I would almost stake (what's left of) my good reputation on saying that it doesn't count. You leave things open to some semblence of chart rigging then, you see.

For instance - say a band decides they want to break the UK market, (or at least get 'noticed') then all they'd have to do was email their fanbase and ask 'em to buy the album from an online place, thereby getting the album cheaper and with added 'chart' punch as well.

Now, obviously if it's a small up'n'coming Irish band whose fans number their

a) Mothers
b) Girlfriends
c) pets

even all 12 of 'em going out and buying from CDWOW still won't trouble the UK top 40, but you get the idea...as t'internet doesn't have 'discernable' national boundaries, online sales of physical products like that would skew the natinoal charts, and 'promotional tool' that they are, the record industry wouldn't like that.

Doctor J

Again, it'd depend on where the CD is shipped from and if the seller is affiliated with the chart. Most shops don't contribute to the charts, it's usually the few larger retailers who would provide samples of sales which make up the chart.

eth0_

Originally posted by Doctor J
Again, it'd depend on where the CD is shipped from and if the seller is affiliated with the chart. Most shops don't contribute to the charts, it's usually the few larger retailers who would provide samples of sales which make up the chart.

Well that sucks, what about all the indie shops like Road Records? It would be easy for Play, amazon etc to have only sales to UK customers count toward the UK chart.

grumpytrousers

Well that sucks, what about all the indie shops like Road Records?

Isn't the concept of Indie that it, like, doesn't, man, play the, like system, dude.

It would be easy for Play, amazon etc to have only sales to UK customers count toward the UK chart.

aye - it would. But of little discernible benefit to them. F*** it. I mean - I realise it's exasperating that you can't affect the charts of another territory from your own chair.

If it was, I'd have blown any money I could find and put Richey Kavanagh on Top of the Pops ages ago...

robbie1876

I can contribute a bit to this topic, as we spent a good bit of time finding out how the chart works when we released our single in May.

In Ireland, the charts are compiled by Chart Track on behalf on IMRA. When a store sells a CD, the barcode scanner is connected to a device that has been installed by Chart Track which logs the sale. Most stores including independents have this device installed.

Chart Track then take a random sample of stores each week to compile the charts. For us, this was a major risk, as we only had our CD in about 20 shops out of 80 that have Chart Track installed. There was a chance that Chart Track's sample wouldn't include any of the shops we had sold our CDs at!

As it happens, they included all HMVs, Tower and Road in their sample that week. That was where we sold most of our CDs. They counted about 75% of our CDs we sold, which is probably about the same for anyone else I guess.

Road's online sales counted because they physically scanned the CDs in the shop before selling out. We were looking at putting the CD up on Amazon, but Chart Track didnt count it. They are only trying to get a sample of what has been sold, not the total sales figures as such.

If you want to help out your Irish band in the charts, buy from an independent Irish store that has Chart Track installed.

sceptre

Originally posted by grumpytrousers
I would almost stake (what's left of) my good reputation on saying that it doesn't count.

Your miniscule reputation is safe. From the FAQ on www.theofficialcharts.com (them what do the real UK charts (they also do that crappy other one (the Hit40UK one) where they include an airplay factor (and probably ringtone sales for all I know) but people tend to ignore that unless they notice someone at number one on CD:UK a week early and wonder why):

Q. How are the Official UK Charts compiled?

A. The Official UK Charts Company uses a sophisticated computer system that takes retail sales information from any UK store selling in excess of 100 pieces of audio or video per week (excluding garages and mail order clubs).

Over 5,600 retailers for the 'Universe' for the Charts panel - including all the major high street chains and approximately 600 independent stores - are linked to a central computer that reads the barcodes of every item as it is sold.

The Official Chart returning stores cover 99% of the singles market, 95% of albums and 80% of the video market. Advanced weighting methodology is used to arrive at the total number of units sold. A number of security checks to detect sales irregularities are in place to ensure the Charts are a true reflection of the UK's most popular records.

The information is collected from Sunday to Saturday and the Official Chart is finalised between the close of business on Saturday for noon the following day. The first reveal of each new Official Chart is from 4pm on Sundays on BBC Radio 1.

They've also been doing test runs on download charts (from the official outlets rather than the likes of BitTorrent:)) since last November but they haven't included these in the actual chart yet.



That site is pretty handy for finding out what was number one when you were born as well btw (unfortunately the Bay City Rollers in my case)

DotOrg

amazon.co.uk doesn't count towards the chart because they don't want their competitors knowing how many cds they're selling

cd-wow is based in hong kong so it may affect the hong kong charts but wouldn't affect anything outside of there

play.com is probably the same as amazon

hmv.co.uk does count towards the charts in the uk