User talk:80.41.80.109

How long is the chart?
Hello

The length of the chart, and how much of it is "official," has been something of a thorny issue for some time. The Official Charts Company themselves have complicated things by giving out ambiguous statements.

Presumably there is no upper limit to how many chart positions can be compiled. The only determining factor is what currently available technology will allow. The OCC choose to make No.200 the cut off point, but their own website lists just the Top 100. To get the 101-200 section you have to be a subscriber to chartsplus online magazine, but this section of the chart is made available mainly for the benefit of industry insiders.

The notion that whatever length of chart the OCC compile has to be official simply because the OCC has the word "official" in its full title, is contradicted by its own statement that the official chart is just a Top 75, but then they put the complete Top 100 on their website without separating the 76-100 section from the rest of it. So what is the official chart then?

In the days before download sales were integrated into the chart, the 76-100 section was not an accurate reflection of sales. Records that had been going down by at least a certain amount were excluded, allowing others to move up artificially. As a result, the 76-100 section was never taken into account when compiling chart statistics (e.g. the number of weeks a disc had spent on the chart). The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles also ignored it.

Since the integration of download sales into the chart, the whole of the Top 200 (for both singles and albums), has been an accurate compilation with none of that exclusion nonsense. This means that in theory there is now nothing to stop a longer list forming the basis of chart statistics. However, the magazine Music Week and the website uk.launch.yahoo.com still take No.75 as the cut-off point, even calling the lists "The Official UK Top 75 Singles" and "The Official UK Top 75 Albums." On top of this, the Virgin Books of British Hit Singles and Albums (the successor to the Guinness books which are no longer publshed), still take only the Top 75 as the basis of the information they provide. I see no logical reason for this. I'd love it if they would go below No.75, but they are standing firm.

To sum up, it would probably be best to say that the Top 200 is official in name only, and the Top 75 remains the only part of the chart from which statistics are compiled. It's a pain in the arse but there it is.

Hope this info. has been useful.

Regards Tonythepixel (talk) 22:52, 30 September 2009 (UTC)