Early Before the compilation of sales of records, the music market measured a song's popularity by sales of
sheet music. The idea of compiling a chart based on sales originated in the United States, where the music-trade paper
Billboard compiled the first chart incorporating sales figures on 20 July 1940. Record charts in the UK began in 1952, when Percy Dickins of the
New Musical Express (NME) gathered a pool of 52 stores willing to report sales figures. For the first British chart Dickins telephoned approximately 20 shops, asking for a list of the 10 best-selling songs. These results were then aggregated into a Top 12 chart published in
NME on 14 November 1952, with
Al Martino's "
Here in My Heart" awarded the number-one position. Both charts expanded in size, with
Mirrors becoming a Top 20 in October 1955 and
NMEs becoming a Top 30 in April 1956. Another rival publication,
Melody Maker, began compiling its own chart; it telephoned 19 stores to produce a Top 20 for 7 April 1956. It was also the first chart to include Northern Ireland in its sample. Before February 1969 – when the
British Market Research Bureau (BMRB) chart was established – there was no official chart or universally accepted source. Readers followed the charts in various periodicals and, during this time, the
BBC used aggregated results of charts from the
NME,
Melody Maker,
Disc and (later)
Record Mirror to compile the
Pick of the Pops chart. Until 1969 the
Record Retailer chart was mainly seen by people working in the industry. The most widely circulated chart was the NME one, as used by
Radio Luxembourg's Sunday night
Top 20 show, as well as by ABC TV's
Thank Your Lucky Stars, which had an audience of up to six million on
ITV.
Official start Before 1969 there was no official singles chart. but this was deemed inadequate for a national chart; by 1973, the BMRB was using
motorcycle couriers to collect sales figures.
Gallup era From 1983 to 1990, the chart was financed by the
British Phonographic Industry (50 percent),
Music Week (38 percent) and the BBC (12 percent). On 4 January 1983, the chart compilation was assumed by
the Gallup Organization, which expanded the public/
Music Week chart to a Top 100 (with a "Next 25" in addition to the Top 75), with the full Top 200 being available to people within the industry. Gallup also began the introduction of computerised compilers, automating the data-collection process. In June 1987, The chart was based entirely on sales of vinyl single records from retail outlets and announced on Tuesday until October 1987, when the Top 40 was revealed each Sunday (due to the new, automated process). The 1980s also saw the introduction of the
cassette single (or "cassingle") alongside the
7-inch and
12-inch record formats; in 1987, major record labels developed a common format for the compact disc single, which was allowed to count as a chart format from December 1987. In May 1989, chart regulations kept
Kylie Minogue's song "
Hand on Your Heart" from entering at number one because sales from cassette singles were not included (they were sold for £1.99 – cheaper than allowed at the time). Following this, the BPI reduced the minimum price for cassette singles to influence sales figures. In September 1989,
WHSmith began to send sales data to Gallup directly through
electronic point of sale (EPoS) terminals. From 1 July 1990, the Chart Information Network (CIN) was formed by
Spotlight Publications (publisher of
Music Week), in cooperation with the BBC and the British Association of Record Dealers (BARD) – representing retailers, including WHSmith,
Woolworths,
HMV and
Virgin – who agreed to exclusively supply sales data to the CIN. A
Chart Supervisory Committee (CSC) represented the BBC, CIN and retailers. The BPI were reluctant to join and "consider[ed] the option of launching a rival chart" For this period, the chart was produced by Gallup and owned by CIN and
Music Week (who later sold it to the BBC and BPI), with around 900 shops providing the data from point of sale machines (though the data was distilled back down to a sample of 250 stores to provide a consistency with the charts of the early 1980s). In January 1991, the CIN became a joint venture between Link House Magazines (formerly Spotlight Publications, later
Miller Freeman, Inc.) and the BPI; they shared the revenue and costs (reportedly between £750,000 and £1 million). During this time, other retailers (such as Woolworths and
John Menzies) began submitting data using EPoS terminals. In June 1991, the BPI reduced the number of eligible
formats from five to four. At this point, Gallup was compiling a Top 200 singles chart and Top 150 albums chart for industry insiders, with the data accessed by subscribing to
Music Week's spin-off newsletter
Charts Plus. (Note: As of June 2024, the Official Charts Company website is still missing much of the data on regards to records in positions 76 to 100 from 13 April 1991 to 5 February 1994.) The growth of dance music culture in the late 1980s had resulted in records with many remixes, though with a single only officially running to 20 minutes this meant that many of the European-style maxi-singles could not be included. Therefore, in June 1991, the rules were amended to include maxi-singles with versions/remixes of one song lasting 40 minutes, standard four track/four song releases getting an extra five minutes playing time, and now four formats contributing to the chart position. Due to this ruling, ambient duo
the Orb were able to have a Top Ten hit with
"Blue Room", a song that was three seconds short of 40 minutes. In February 1993, the research contract for the chart was put out to
tender, with a new four-year contract beginning 1 February 1994 offered. Millward Brown,
Research International and
Nielsen Market Research were approached, and Gallup were invited to re-apply. In May 1993, it was announced that Millward Brown had been accepted as the next chart compilers, signing a £1-million-a-year contract.
Millward Brown era Millward Brown took over compiling the charts on 1 February 1994, increasing the sample size; Gallup attempted to block Millward Brown's new chart by complaining to the
Office of Fair Trading about the contractual clause in which BARD retailers exclusively supplied sales data to CIN, but the
interim order was rejected. In June 1995 the case was dropped, after the clause allowing BARD retailers to supply sales information to other chart compilers was deleted; because CIN retained the copyright, other compilers could not use (or sell) the information. On 2 April 1995, the number of eligible formats was reduced from four to three. The decision came after nine months of negotiations with BARD, which objected that it would adversely affect the vinyl record industry. Although record labels were not prohibited from releasing singles in more than three formats, they were required to identify the three eligible formats. The ruling resulted in the
Oasis single "
Some Might Say" charting twice in one week – at number 1 with sales from the three eligible formats, and at number 71 from sales in a fourth (12-inch) format. Subsequently, CIN sought to develop new marketing opportunities and sponsorship deals; these included premium-rate fax and telephone services and the chart newsletters
Charts Plus (published from May 1991 to November 1994) and
Hit Music (published from September 1992 to May 2001). Beginning in May 1991
Charts Plus featured singles charts with positions 76–200 (plus artist albums positions 76–150, Top 50 compilations, and several genre and format charts). In September 1992, a second newsletter was created:
Hit Music, a sister publication of
Music Week featuring (among other charts) the singles Top 75 and a revived "Next 25". In November 1994,
Charts Plus ceased publication;
Hit Music expanded its chart coverage to an uncompressed (without special rules) Top 200 Singles, Top 150 Artists Albums and Top 50 Compilations. In November 1996, the Artist Albums chart extended to a Top 200.
Hit Music ceased publication in May 2001 with issue number 439. In February 1997, CIN and BARD agreed to a new 18-month deal for the charts. In 1998 the CSC agreed to new rules reducing the number of tracks on a single from four to three, playing time from 25 minutes to 20 and the compact disc single minimum dealer price to £1.79. This particularly affected the dance music industry which had previously released CDs full of remixes, with some labels editing or fading out remixes early to fit them on a CD single. On 1 July 1998, BARD and BPI took over management of the chart from CIN (a Miller Freeman and BPI venture) with new company Music Industry Chart Services (Mics); in August they decided to return to compiling the charts under the name CIN. In the late 1990s, the singles chart became more "frontloaded", with many releases peaking in the first couple of weeks on chart. This helped Irish girl group
B*Witched become the first pop band to debut at the top with each of their first four releases (with the group's singles found at number one in the period between June 1998 to March 1999). Between
1963 and the 1990s, only a few acts had reached number one with their first three chart hits. In the late 1990s, the
Spice Girls and current record holders
Westlife also outperformed this feat, with the former getting six and the latter seven number ones from the start of their careers. In 1999, Millward Brown began "re-chipping" some retailers' machines, in anticipation of the
millennium bug. Some independent retailers lost access to the record-label-funded Electronic Record Ordering System (Eros); it was "too costly to make it
Year 2000 compliant". Toward the end of the 1990s companies anticipated distributing singles over the Internet, following the example of
Beggars Banquet and
Liquid Audio (who made 2,000 tracks available for digital download in the US). On the Official Singles Chart for 22 September 2001, DJ Otzi's "
Hey Baby" became the first single ever to jump to number one from outside the Top 40 when it went from number 45 to number one. "Hey Baby" had charted for seven weeks outside the Top 40 due to imported copies from the Republic of Ireland being available in UK chart shops and the fact that the officially released UK single had the same catalogue number as the Irish import, meaning that the CIN (Chart Information Network) did not list the two versions as separate versions, as they had done with ATB's "
9 PM (Till I Come)", which had charted as five separate entries before the official release reached number one. In November 2001, CIN changed its name to "
The Official UK Charts Company".
Internet era achieved the first number one on the UK Singles Downloads Chart with "
Flying Without Wings" in September 2004. In January 2004,
MyCoke Music launched as the "first significant download retailer". Legal downloading was initially small, with MyCokeMusic selling over 100,000 downloads during its first three months. In June the
iTunes Store was launched in the UK, and more than 450,000 songs were downloaded during the first week. In early September the
UK Official Download Chart was launched, and a new live recording of
Westlife's "
Flying Without Wings" was the first number-one. In 2005, the BBC Radio 1 chart show was rebranded for the chart week ending 16 April, with the first singles chart now combining physical-release sales with legal downloads. Several test charts (and a download-sales chart) were published in 2004. After pressure from elsewhere in the music industry a second compromise was reached in 2006, which now allowed singles to chart on downloads the week before their physical release. The first song to make the Top 40 on downloads alone was "
Pump It" by the
Black Eyed Peas, which charted at number 16 on 12 March 2006. Three weeks later, "
Crazy" by
Gnarls Barkley became the first song to top the charts on download sales alone. As part of the revised rules, singles would be removed from the chart two weeks after the deletion of their physical formats; "Crazy" left the chart 11 weeks later from number 5. This was in addition to the existing rule that to be eligible for the chart, the physical single had to have been released within the last twelve months, supporting the general view that the chart reflected the top-selling "current" releases. On 1 January 2007, the integration of downloaded music into the charts became complete when all downloads – with or without a physical equivalent – became eligible to chart, redefining the UK singles chart by turning it into a "songs" chart. "
Chasing Cars" by
Snow Patrol returned at a Top 10 position (number 9, just three places below the peak it had reached the previous September), while "
Honey to the Bee" by
Billie Piper (following a tongue-in-cheek promotional push by
Radio 1 DJ
Chris Moyles to test the new chart rules) reappeared at number 17 (nearly eight years after its original appearance on the charts).. This date also saw the reintroduction of maxi physical formats being allowed to have 4 unique tracks and 25 minute running times. In October 2008, P!nk broke the 1982 chart record set by Captain Sensible's "Happy Talk" for biggest Top 40 jump to number one, when "So What" vaulted from 38 to 1 (a statistic which was matched in 2022 by Adele). The first number-one song never released physically was "
Run" by
Leona Lewis, the 11th song in total to reach number one on downloads alone. Unlike the previous 10, it did not receive a physical release in subsequent weeks (although it was released physically overseas, such as in Germany where the price of a record counted toward the chart position and not just number of units sold).
Christmas number ones In 2009, "
Killing in the Name" by
Rage Against the Machine became the
Christmas Number One after English DJ
Jon Morter and his wife Tracy launched a campaign to make sure that an act from the ITV talent show
The X Factor was not number one for the fifth time in a row. Influenced by
John Otway's 50th birthday hit single fan campaign, which saw Otway's "
Disco Inferno"-sampling single "Bunsen Burner" reach number 9 in 2002 without being stocked by
Entertainment UK-associated retailers like
Woolworths, the encouraged people on
Facebook to download the song the week before Christmas. When "Killing in the Name" hit the top spot on 20 December 2009, it became the first download-only single to become the UK Christmas number one and received a
Guinness World Record for "Fastest-selling digital track in the UK" after selling 502,672 units that week.
Streaming era It was announced in June 2014 that as of Sunday, 29 June, audio streams from services such as
Spotify,
Deezer,
Napster, O2 Tracks,
Xbox Music, Sony Unlimited, and
rara would count for the Official Singles Chart, to reflect changing music consumption in the United Kingdom. The final number one on the UK Singles Chart to be based on sales alone was "
Gecko (Overdrive)" by
Oliver Heldens featuring
Becky Hill. On Sunday 6 July 2014, the
Official Charts Company announced that
Ariana Grande had earned a place in UK chart history when her single "
Problem" featuring
Iggy Azalea became the first number-one single based on sales and streaming data. On the chart of 16 August 2014, Nico & Vinz's "Am I Wrong" jumped from number 52 to number 1 in its sixth week, after the streaming hit (the first single ever to chart in the Top 75 on streams alone) became available to purchase. On 10 March 2017, Ed Sheeran claimed 9 of the top 10 positions in the chart when his album
÷ was released. The large number of tracks from the album on the singles chart, 16 in the top 20, led to a change in how the chart is compiled with tracks from a lead artist eligible for entry limited to three. Also the idea of Standard Chart Ratios (SCR) and Accelerated Chart Ratios (ACR) were introduced, with ACR halving streaming points for records that have been in the charts for a while (which includes most catalogue tracks, excepting certain cases), the effect being that a number of hits have plummeted out of the top ten with drops of around 20 places one week only to level off again the next. Due to these factors, on 20 July 2018, "
Three Lions" by
the Lightning Seeds,
Frank Skinner, and
David Baddiel beat the Lewisham & Greenwich NHS Choir record for number one chart fall and got the
Guinness World Records' award for "largest chart drop from number one on the UK singles chart" by going from number one to number 97. In 2018,
Future (publisher of "Louder Sound" publications such as
Metal Hammer and
Classic Rock magazine) acquired
Music Week publisher NewBay Media. Future ran the publication monthly from March 2021, so a bespoke monthly Official Singles Chart Top 75 started to be published from this date alongside
monthly albums charts and specialist/genre charts.
2020s On 1 January 2021, "Don't Stop Me Eatin'" by
LadBaby dropped down the Official Charts Company's singles chart to number 78 and so became the first new track to drop out of the Top 75 ("hit parade") from number one. In doing so it broke the record for shortest stay in the hit parade for a number one single (as in
The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles list of Top 75 singles chart records) with only one week in the Top 75. A week later, "
Last Christmas" by
Wham! became the first record to disappear completely from number one spot, exiting the Official Charts Company Top 100 chart with no placing on the chart (week ending 14 January 2021). As "Last Christmas" replaced "Don't Stop Me Eatin'" by
LadBaby, which had dropped down the singles chart to number 78 on 1 January, it was the first time in chart history that two back-to-back number ones had disappeared not only from the BBC Radio 1 Top 40, but the Top 75 as well (though as "Last Christmas" didn't have a chart placing, "Three Lions" is still credited with the record-breaking fall at
Guinness World Records). It was the fourth time since 1952 that the number one had been replaced at the top by another version of the same song, with two versions of "Answer Me" in 1953, two versions of "Singing The Blues" alternating at the top in 1957, and
one-hit wonder Frankee having an answer record to the number one by Eamon in 2004. "
Sausage Rolls for Everyone" made LadBaby join
B*Witched as an act who managed to get their first four singles at number one (with LadBaby having no other hits in their discography), and beat
the Beatles, who had four Christmas number ones over five years between 1963 - 1967, with the Liverpudlian group missing out in 1966 (The Spice Girls also had three consecutively in the 1990s). "
Sausage Rolls for Everyone" was also credited as the 70th Official Christmas Number 1 by the OCC, who had also announced that "Killing In The Name" by Rage Against The Machine had been named as the 'UK's Favourite Christmas Number 1 of All Time' in a poll commissioned to celebrate this Christmas Number 1 race. LadBaby secured their fifth Christmas No.1 in a row on 23 December 2022 with "
Food Aid", officially surpassing the Beatles when it came to overall Christmas Number 1s. On 7 January 2022, after it had returned to number one for an additional week, "Merry Christmas" became the first record with SCR streaming status (Standard Chart Ratio) to completely drop out of the Top 100 from number one, exiting at the same time as "Sausage Rolls For Everyone". The chart published on 7 January 2022 also saw the first instance when the entire previous week's Top 10 singles (actually the Top 13 singles) had exited the chart. It was not only the Top 10 singles that had disappeared from the chart, but a record breaking 54 singles which had disappeared from the UK Top 75 (including 52 Christmas-themed tracks). This week's chart saw those songs replaced by 12 new entries and 42 re-entries, the largest amount in chart history. In June 2022, the Netflix show
Stranger Things used "
Running Up That Hill" by
Kate Bush in their fourth season, which resulted in the record (which had previously charted in 1985 via EMI and in 2012 via Kate Bush's Fish People record label) re-enter the charts at number 8. On the Official Singles Chart Top 100 of 10 June 2022 to 16 June 2022, the record climbed to number two, even though it was revealed to be the most popular track of the week in the United Kingdom and even though all versions (regardless of it being an album track, live version or remix) now counted to its chart position. Sales for the week had the number one record, Harry Styles' "As It Was", on an SCR total of 55,768 sales, compared to Kate Bush's number two on an ACR sales total of 44,739. Encumbered with ACR, a rule introduced in 2017 to push down a number of long-running 'recent' hits but applied to all catalogue recordings over three years old, saw all totals for Bush's streaming data halved, so that she got one sale for every 200 plays from her 7,470,792 premium audio stream total and one sale from every 1,200 plays of her 1,029,666 ad-funded audio stream total. Added to premium video streams and digital downloads she ended up with the total of 44,739 sales rather than the 83,613 she would have done with an SCR listing. On 14 June 2022, it was revealed that the Chart Supervisory Committee (CSC) had given the record an exemption from the ACR accelerated decline rule, with the record now on an SCR listing, giving Kate Bush the chance to get another number one, more than 44 years after her previous number one ("Wuthering Heights") and the first number one for her own record label, Fish People (as EMI-Universal are no longer the rights holders). On 17 June 2022, "Running Up That Hill (a Deal with God)" reached number one on the UK chart and not only did Bush get a second number one, but also the OCC revealed that she had broken three of their chart records. With the gap of 44 years between appearances at number one, she eclipsed Tom Jones's 42-year gap between "
Green Green Grass of Home" going to number one and his appearance as a featured vocalist on the Comic Relief song "
(Barry) Islands in the Stream," along with
Rob Brydon, Ruth Jones and Robin Gibb. She also replaced
Cher at the top of the list of oldest female artist chart-toppers at 63 years and 11 months, compared to the 52 years that Cher was when "
Believe" topped the chart in 1998. Jones and Bush are also on the Top 10 list of oldest artists to score a UK Number 1 single with Bush placed fifth. The last record Bush broke was the one held by
Wham!'s "Last Christmas", for the track that has taken the longest time since its initial release to reach number one with "Running Up That Hill" released in 1985 and getting to the top 37 years later, beating Wham! by a year. ==Inclusion criteria==