"Dancing Star": #1 (Official Physical Singles Chart/Official Singles Sales Chart)

[Nickname]

"Dancing Star" #1
@officialcharts

Official Physical Singles Chart
Official Singles Sales Chart
UK 10 May 2024
https://officialcharts.com/charts/physi ... les-chart/
https://officialcharts.com/charts/singles-sales-chart/

[telys]

Is this the chart including "everything"?
Does this mean their 5th nr 1?

[Spittingcat]

Includes paid for downloads. Doesn’t include streaming.

[Leonidas]

Not in the UK top 100 singles.

[Ramzy]

Would love to know how many copies they're selling to get this - looking back at their history on the singles sales chart, this is their first number one since it launched in 2016 and most of their singles haven't got near the top ten. But I can't believe they've genuinely sold more than a handful of Dancing Star CDs. Anyone know where we can get the data?

[Disco.]

Would love to know how many copies they're selling to get this - looking back at their history on the singles sales chart, this is their first number one since it launched in 2016 and most of their singles haven't got near the top ten. But I can't believe they've genuinely sold more than a handful of Dancing Star CDs. Anyone know where we can get the data?

#2 in the singles sales chart sold 1,927 copies ( downloads) (Music Wekk data) So 2000 + ish most likely.

[Ramzy]

Thanks!

[moxlox]

Wahey! That's cool.

Interestingly it shows chart progress, which until last week must come from the downloads. It says:

4 weeks in top 100
3 weeks in top 75
2 weeks in top 40
1 week in top 20
1 week in top 10
1 week at number 1

Order week on week was 36, 65, out of top 100, 92, 1

Rejoice and relish

And you know streaming doesn't count anyway......

[leesmapman]

I'm impressed, really didn't expect this.

[Spittingcat]

People buy Pet Shop Boys singles still. Even if only digital, because of their reputation for still delivering proper b-sides and worthwhile remixes. So much of the main chart is just people streaming album tracks and single track singles… it’s long since stopped being a singles chart based on people being actually willing to buy something. As such it’s a junk chart (I’m not saying the music is junk, plenty of quality in there, just that the chart itself is meaningless in terms of measuring what people will actually hand over money for).

[Gabby]

"What if..." Spotify/Apple Music didn't exist.

Although arguably there'd be more physical releases by other artists adding to the competition.

I actually like that there is a chart for this - streaming acts as a bit of an anomaly when it comes to sales.

[Old Soak]

"What if..." Spotify/Apple Music didn't exist.

Although arguably there'd be more physical releases by other artists adding to the competition.

I actually like that there is a chart for this - streaming acts as a bit of an anomaly when it comes to sales.

It's no different from when commercial radio stations did a hybrid of sales and radio play - totally wrong. Streaming culture has killed off many record shops - it should be physical and download only to count. If you don't pay specifically for a product why should it count as a sale? Paying a £10 a month licence to listen to stuff via a tinny mobile phone speaker from Spotify et al is not it IMO and should count for nothing. Room 101 territory

[MartinWright66]

"What if..." Spotify/Apple Music didn't exist.

Although arguably there'd be more physical releases by other artists adding to the competition.

I actually like that there is a chart for this - streaming acts as a bit of an anomaly when it comes to sales.

It's no different from when commercial radio stations did a hybrid of sales and radio play - totally wrong. Streaming culture has killed off many record shops - it should be physical and download only to count. If you don't pay specifically for a product why should it count as a sale? Paying a £10 a month licence to listen to stuff via a tinny mobile phone speaker from Spotify et al is not it IMO and should count for nothing. Room 101 territory

It's an impossible situation. The reason they count a stream of 1,000 as a sale is because it's "kinda" representative of the subscription the user is paying and it's "kinda" a measure of what charts should be - an indication of the popularity of a song.

Having said that, equating 1,000 streams to 1 sale is, well, a thumb in the air job. And it's not even consistently applied around the world. Also, what measures are in place to stop some fan repeatedly playing the song automatically, etc...?

The meaning of the charts started to become eroded when downloads became a thing. Streaming has ramped that up by... oh, I don't know - shall we say 1,000?

But, honestly, charts are meant to measure popularity right? How in God's green earth do you do that nowadays? Probably why most people pay much attention to them anymore. They're becoming irrelevant.

[Ramzy]

Having said that, equating 1,000 streams to 1 sale is, well, a thumb in the air job. And it's not even consistently applied around the world. Also, what measures are in place to stop some fan repeatedly playing the song automatically, etc...?

I don't think it's an exact science but I'm going to defend it - the number of eligible streams one person can make per day is capped at 10, which means you can't make more than 70 eligible streams a week - way below the equivalent of one single sale. If anything, I think that's unfair towards artists whose music is primarily if not entirely distributed through streaming, which is most of them. I think the limit of 1,000 may have been chosen as an estimate of the lifetime value of a physical purchase, though I'd say that number is far too high given very few copies sold will make it anywhere near that number of plays.

But like you say, the charts are and always have been intended as a measure of popularity. That meant simply counting copies sold in the days when there was no other way for the public to consume music. But now that's become essentially a niche way to listen to songs, it'd be mad for the charts to focus only on sales. Dancing Star being number one in the UK because of 2,000 copies would be preposterous.

I'd love to see PSB topping charts again as much as anyone, but that's only "fun" if it's done fairly and meaningfully. The race for the albums chart when Nonetheless came out was actually kind of exciting - it wouldn't have been if the rules were stacked against Taylor Swift such that the consumption patterns of her hundreds of thousands of fans were ignored. Like it or not, her album was more popular in that week than PSB's, just like Brothers In Arms and Bad were more popular in their respective weeks on top than Please and Actually. Getting to number 2 in that environment is a victory, not a defeat.

[MartinWright66]

Add Paul Simon to that list too.

Bloody "The Rhythm of the Saints". At least I *think* that's what stopped Behaviour from hitting top spot.