The rumoured-for-a-while changes to the official UK singles chart have finally been announced recently. As expected, downloads are going to be counted as soon as they're available, rather than only a week before physical release, as HMV, Virgin et al have at last dropped their objections. Probably because they've all but given up the ghost on the single completely; looking at the measly space alotted to singles in even their flagship stores is pretty depressing.
The new rules don't come into play until January 1st next year, so we stay with the current slight stupid situation for a while, although a new year is a reasonably good time to change.Except that a more unexpected change in the new rules is that there's no need for a single to be specified by anyone (I guess as it would be impractical to enforce?) and with January always a particularly low selling, weird time for the charts anyway all kinds of weird things are going to happen. Expect Oasis to have 5 songs in the top 40, or something.
Anyway, those potential teething troubles aside, this is a very sensible move. If people are buying singles as downloads, that's what should be represented. As long as no one persuades them to go with including airplay, we should have a fine chart for a while yet.
Oh, and 4 track singles (or more, if some are remixes) will be allowed to count for the charts once more! Which is great, but about 4 years too late.
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