Sunday, April 29, 2007
Chart Attack
Some people are getting quite excited by the prospect of chart history being made this afternoon. Although given that chart history seems to be made on a pretty much daily basis these days it's hard to get too worked up about it. This time it's those lovable, happy go lucky, in no way completely dull and derivative dullsmiths the Arctic Monkeys who are getting people all worked up, which is, at least, something that they pretty much fail to do with their music. This time it's the fact that, when it's all announced later on today, they're likely to have 18 songs in the charts, which does sound quite an impressive feat and, indeed, would be if it wasn't for the fact that "The charts" doesn't, as you might expect, mean the top 40. In fact it refers to the Top 200 which, given that you only need to sell roughly seven copies to make it into the arse end of the chart, makes it somewhat less of a feat that they're claiming it to be.
It's all down to the fact that download sales of any track, whether an official single or not, are now considered chart eligible, so it's likely that this sort of thing will happen on a regular basis now around the big releases, which means that in time this kind of chart event will amazingly be even less interesting than it is now, if such a thing is possible, even if it does seem rather unlikely that bands will ever get more than a couple of songs in the actual top forty at any one time. Some people reckon that, if The Beatles and Apple ever bury their differences and allow Beatles songs to become available on iTunes, then they'll take up pretty much every position in the charts, although quite where this apparently massive group of people who like the Beatles enough to download their entire back catalogue the minute it gets released, but not enough to bother ripping the CDs themselves is going to come from hasn't yet been made clear, but we're sure they're out there somewhere. Probably hiding in cave near a Wifi hotspot.
It's all down to the fact that download sales of any track, whether an official single or not, are now considered chart eligible, so it's likely that this sort of thing will happen on a regular basis now around the big releases, which means that in time this kind of chart event will amazingly be even less interesting than it is now, if such a thing is possible, even if it does seem rather unlikely that bands will ever get more than a couple of songs in the actual top forty at any one time. Some people reckon that, if The Beatles and Apple ever bury their differences and allow Beatles songs to become available on iTunes, then they'll take up pretty much every position in the charts, although quite where this apparently massive group of people who like the Beatles enough to download their entire back catalogue the minute it gets released, but not enough to bother ripping the CDs themselves is going to come from hasn't yet been made clear, but we're sure they're out there somewhere. Probably hiding in cave near a Wifi hotspot.
Labels: Arctic Monkeys, Charts
