the charts are stagnating again.

i download legally from Bleep because:

a) great, weird stuff that's hard to find elsewhere (Ryan Teague, Bibio, El Perro Del Mar, Paul D Miller, Virus Syn, rare Isolee, Fairmont, Bob McFadden and other ace people you've never heard of) unless you sift for ages

b) 50% goes to the artists

c) DRM-free, meaning you can play it on anything, and it's usually 320kbps now so the quality is as good as can be whilst still compressed and tagged.

d) this sort of thing needs support from digital music-lovers

e) i am having it off with the creators of Bleep, obv.

The Pussycat Dolls? Well done!

Sadly it wouldn't. Because the kids would think he's "old", and they seem to be more preoccupied with the age, looks and image of the performer than the actual quality of the music.

Btw. there are 20 singles throughout UK chart history that have topped the charts for longer than "Crazy", and there seemed to be around 10-15 singles that did also top them for 7 weeks.

7 weeks is not dramatic. It is kind of the way it is supposed to be. One new chart topper each week is a sign of bad quality, which was also the case when the likes of Bryan Adams, Wet Wet Wet, Whitney Houston, Boyz II Men and Mariah Carey stayed on top of the UK or US charts forever back in the early to mid 90s.

This is the record we need released:

Been out all night, I needed a bite
I thought I'd put a record on
I reached for the one with the ultra-modern label
And wondered where the light had gone
It had a futuristic cover
Lifted straight from Buck Rogers
The record was so black it had to be a con
The autochanger switched as I filled my sandwich
And futuristic sounds warbled off and on
Chorus :
The Black Hit Of Space
It's the one without a face
It's the one that doesn't fit
You can only see the flip
The Black Hit Of Space
Sucking in the human race
How can it stay at the top
When it's swallowed all the shops?
As the song climbed the charts
The others disappeared
'Til there was nothing but it left to buy
It got to number one
Then into minus figures
Though nobody could understand why
(Chorus)
I couldn't stand this bland sound any more so I walked towards my deck to
turn it off. All I could see was the B-side of the disc which had assumed a
doughnut shape with the label on the outside rim. I reached for the arm
which was less than one micron long but weighed more than Saturn and time
stood still. I knew I had to escape but every time I tried to flee, the
record was in front of me.
The Black Hit Of Space
Get James Burke on the case
It's the hit that's never gone
Time stops when you put it...

I download through Bleep, Beatport, Dancetracks, Kompakt and others on a weekly basis. It makes a lot more sense to buy a 320K rip of a tune for $1.50-$2.50 than to pay $12 for an import single. Plus, you can hear a big difference between a crappy 192K P2P rip and a 320K rip from a legitimate source when you play tunes on a club system.

Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding
World Cup World Cup
Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding
World Cup World Cup

The great thing is, it doesn't need any work.

I would like to legally download huge great 20 minute krautrock tracks. Is this possible?

so long-running No 1s are a sign of good quality (eg Wet Wet Wet in the UK), but a No 1 each week is a sign of bad quality (eg Wet Wet Wet in the US)???

is the milian single out properly yet? the milian single has made me reassess her as the greatest artist this century has yet produced.

I predict Marcello is mildly embarrassed by this in five years time. It's a pretty good song - the production is really plodding, I think, the kind of thing everyone likes a bit (whereas everyone LOVES other Song Xs, viz "Hung Up")

(xpost, obv)

I can't even see how it's bigger than something like "Hey Ya".

and then two years later you remember you awesome they were, plus with added nostalgia value.

i do actually think 'crazy' is a genuine Song X! i think the production is crap BUT compared with the bluntian acoustica and britrock revival drivel which is getting all the attention at the moment, it's veritably neptunes-esque. and for the casual consumer (who are the ones who really drive Song Xs) that's what probably appeals.

also i don't think we can overlook cee-lo's voice, that really is amazing.

when people say this song is plodding, what do they mean? the tempo? it's 'Da Funk' speed so does 'Da Funk' plod too? 'Da Funk' sounds 'madder' i suppose, 'ironically'. but 'Crazy' is a SONG. it's not meant to be 'Hey Ya', and the backlash on that was pretty severe. 'Crazy's success is a huge surprise i think, despite what Ronan says being correct re catchiness/Hornby-approval).

DM does some nice stuff with the moody strings and choiri think, esp. changing ther notes around on Cee-Lo's second verse.

Where does "Where Is The Love?" feature in all this?

There's studium mass appeal and there's punctum mass appeal.

Song Xs usually happen in the summer.

There's a special hell somewhere where that fucking Bryan Adams song is still number one, I'm sure.

this is nuts

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-36794105

Drake's single only topped the sales-only chart in the first three weeks of its reign. It's only the inclusion of streaming data (where 100 plays count as one sale) that has given him a lock on the number one spot. And that's something that's starting to worry the music industry, because now that the charts measure consumption rather than purchases, they have practically ground to a halt.

In the first six months of 2016, there were 86 new entries in the UK singles chart. Ten years ago, that figure was 230.

I noticed the other week that the top eight singles in the UK didn't change (not even order) over two weeks, which is... strange.

ten years ago the number of new entries only spending one week on the chart was probably also super high, so no use pretending the chart was problem-free then either. even 'big' hits would frequently enter at their peak and spend a pitifully short time in the top 10 for the majority of the digital music era until recently.

it's pretty common for the industry to have to adjust how it works its product after the charts undergo semi-radical methodological revisions. when soundscan and broadcast data systems numbers were first implemented for the hot 100 in 1991, the main finding was that, on the radio and retail sides, the strongest hits were both breaking much faster and sticking around much longer than would have been reflected by the old survey-based methodology. in order to keep 'playing the charts' as an effective means of marketing singles, some in the industry tried a bizarre series of strategies to try to manipulate the new methodology in their favor. others realized they could market songs to radio, and their parent albums to consumers, without the assistance of singles retail whatsoever. the result was that the hot 100 was both more and less representative of the current state of pop singles consumption for the greater part of the entire 1990s decade. by the time things were 'figured out' (around 1999) and the charts started seeing decent turnaround of singles that were actually popular, not just popular because labels wanted them to appear as such, the singles retail market was in its death throes due to the combination of unsustainable strategies the labels had assumed during those years.

i think this time around the industry won't have to bumble around as long to figure it out. or at least i hope. (they may very well kill the digital downloads market, though. r.i.p. itunes!)

Ed Sheeran. Number 1 AND 2 for 5 weeks straight.

His music's always been piss and shit, tbf.

Interesting thread here:

In a fitting end to the 2010s, Jeff Bezos is responsible for the last Number 1 Single of the year, Ellie Goulding's "River" (by Joni Mitchell).

Here's how:

1. You can't find it on Spotify, Apple, Google.
2. That's because - aside from Youtube - it's Amazon exclusive.

and...

— dan barker (@danbarker) December 28, 2019

wow, hadn't heard anything about that! Crazy story!

it was posted in the system glitch thread

https://www.billboard.com/charts/decade-end/hot-rock-songs

that's pretty grim. i can only handle about four of the top twenty.