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Paul Haney
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| Posted: 10 September 2020 at 7:48am | IP Logged
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Scanner wrote:
Paul, what was the rationale for not including all 101-150 hits in the Record World book? This is the
only Record Research book I can think of that was published with such a condition that made the book an incomplete
resource. |
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At the time, Joel was only interested in finding "new" titles, that never appeared in other Record Research books.
Eventually, I did the entire research and thus we were able to do the Comparison book.
I would love to see that book expanded with more years and the R&R numbers too. Maybe someday!
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RoknRobnLoxley
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Paul, a question raised in another forum (UKMix) by KingOfSkiffle:
The various UK charts of the 50s and 60s (NME, Record Mirror, Melody Maker, Disc, Record Retailer) were compiled by averaging together record charts of individual record shops. Each shop produced their own ranked chart (without sales numbers), which they forwarded to their home music paper, who averaged all the rankings together. Thus these 5 major UK charts were not compiled by adding together individual record shop sales. Until the new BMRB chart began in Feb 1969 (forerunner of what came to be known as the 'official' chart), which compiled its chart by adding up actual sales of sampled record shops.
Question: When did the 3 major US record charts begin adding up actual sales of sampled record stores to produce their charts?
I note that the Cash Box singles chart from 1944 to sometime in the 70s was based on sales only. Was this sales data based on adding up actual record sales of sampled stores, or was it based on an averaging of rankings of individual record store sales? In the 1940's and the early 1950's, up until sometime in 1955, they showed the "sales per 1000 singles sold" right there on the chart, for the current and previous weeks.
Inquiring minds need to know, ha. Thanks !!
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RoknRobnLoxley
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'baukew' at UKMix discovered a Billboard chart that compiled actual sales starting June-24-1957. I did some more poking around and found this:
Good find baukew !! To clarify for others, this now actual sales based chart was the Best Sellers chart. So up thru June-17-1957, the Best Sellers chart was not based on counting records, and starting the next week it was. The other charts were 'DJ airplay' and 'jukebox play'. These 3 were combined into the Top 100 (1955) / Hot 100 (1958). And combined with the sheet music charts into the Honor Roll Of Hits song chart.
There's an excellent article in the Oct-20-1958 issue of Billboard as well, explaining why they were ending the Best Sellers chart, and were now going to use that actual sales data in the Hot 100 chart going forward. As in, (a) the old Hot 100 had not been using actual sales (even though they had that data from the revised Best Seller charts since June-24-1957) + radio + jukebox, (b) but had been using some kind of 'approximation of sales' + radio + jukebox, and (c) was now going to switch over entirely to actual sales only, no more radio + jukebox !!
Billboard was continually changing the components of the Top 100 / Hot 100 over the years. Originally both were airplay + jukebox + sales, but they kept changing things, taking things out, putting them back in. Sometime after Oct-20-1958 when the Hot 100 went to actual sales only, they eventually added back in radio + jukebox. It's a zoo, but you can read all the changes by looking at the info box at the top of the charts Top 100 / Hot 100 over the years.
Here's the info box blurb on the Hot 100 chart for Oct-13-1958 (the last week of the Best Sellers chart):
"These 100 sides are listed in order of their national POPULARITY, as determined by weekly local studies prepared for The Billboard in markets representing a cross-section of the United States. These studies take into consideration such factors as disk jockey plays, juke box activity, and record sales."
Then the next week Oct-20-1958 when the Best Sellers chart was no more, the info box blurb on the Hot 100 gets changed to:
"These 100 sides are listed in order of their national POPULARITY, as determined by weekly local studies prepared for The Billboard in markets representing a cross-section of the United States. These studies reflect sales registered for each disk up to press time."
Fascinating, interesting...
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Scanner
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| Posted: 11 June 2021 at 12:40pm | IP Logged
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With Record World (1982), Cashbox (1996) and R&R
(2009) all out of print, who owns the rights to these
publications? Billboard purchased R&R and still uses
the copyrighted "Radio & Records" in its weekly
newsletters. Although there are websites for Cashbox
and Record World, neither one is reminiscent of the
magazines published last century...and their chart
rankings often leave me asking "Who?" or "WTF?"
As Record Research has added (and hopefully will
continue to add!) books sourced from these trades, I
have wondered from whom (if anyone) Record Research
needed to obtain permission to publish data from these
magazines when they and the companies that published
them are now defunct. Same issue with Randy Price's
Cashbox site which has the Top 100 Pop and Country
charts. Are these trades considered public domain?
Edited by Scanner on 11 June 2021 at 12:40pm
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thecdguy
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How are the dates for a song's regin at #1 determined? For instance, Whitney Houston's "Saving All My Love For You" was #1 for the week ending
Saturday, October 26, 1985. So is this to say it was #1 from Sunday, October 20 to Saturday, October 26? Or does it go by the issue of Billboard
dated October 26, meaning it was #1 from Sat. 10/26/85 to Friday 11/1/85? In other words, is it Sunday to Saturday or Saturday to Friday? Casey
Kasem always referred to "Week Ending" dates at the end of his show, which made me think it was Sunday to Saturday.
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Paul Haney
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thecdguy wrote:
How are the dates for a song's regin at #1 determined? For instance, Whitney Houston's "Saving
All My Love For You" was #1 for the week ending
Saturday, October 26, 1985. So is this to say it was #1 from Sunday, October 20 to Saturday, October 26? Or does
it go by the issue of Billboard
dated October 26, meaning it was #1 from Sat. 10/26/85 to Friday 11/1/85? In other words, is it Sunday to
Saturday or Saturday to Friday? Casey
Kasem always referred to "Week Ending" dates at the end of his show, which made me think it was Sunday to
Saturday. |
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"Week Ending" means just that. So, it's Sunday to Saturday. Also, keep in mind that in the old days, the
information was already a week old by the time the magazine was printed.
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jebsib
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Paul,
I am curious how this will play out:
Billboard's website has all of their charts online, including all the historical pre-
internet charts.
eg - If you want to see the Hot 100 from Jan 1, 1960, just click on the calendar
icon and voila.
Not often, but I have found some discrepancies between what they are
currently presenting and what was actually published back in the day.
A very small but recent example of one I found today is that they now show
Lionel Richie "My Destiny" at #75 on Hot 100 Airplay (Radio Songs) on 1/16/93,
when it never reached the chart (same with the Wynona song at #74)
At this point, if these discrepancies were brought to your attention, would you
alter the data in your books to reflect the 'new' chart info (assuming BB is
correcting data mistakes that they published years ago) - or ignore it
(assuming BB is just making mistakes)?
The digital world makes things so complicated!
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Paul Haney
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Not sure how and/or if we would approach such discrepancies. I'm inclined to think we'd stick to
what was actually published at the time. I certainly don't have the time or inclination to go
thru every single online chart looking for possible differences!
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RoknRobnLoxley
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What a crazy can of worms. I do know Billboard 'changed' their year-end charts, and were doing so back in the 70s. I bought several of those 'sold by Billboard' chart packages, such as Top 100 singles/albums of the year going back to the 50s and/or earlier. I observed that a few of the 70s charts in the package were different from what they had published in the Billboard year-end issues from just a few years prior.
We need some explanation from Billboard as to why and what they are doing here. Are they revising based on errors, or are they revising based on applying future formulas to past charts. I no likey. If Billboard is going to play this game, they will need 2 sets of charts, one as published back in the day, and one as corrected, subject to multiple future corrections, ugh.
I would agree with Paul, stick to what was originally published.
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kingofskiffle
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I have always assumed they are transcription errors when the charts are copied
down. They seem to be records swapping positions (or at least the ones I
found!) due to possible errors in artist/titles or confusion when printing error
changes a lwk position. Other reasons do abound of course. But I simply
believed them to be transcription errors, rather than an attempt to
correct/amend history.
I would assume that the original data to create the charts, at least for the pre
1991 era, may well be long gone? Even digital databases have errors in them (I
found and highlighted an error in the UK Official Charts Company database
recently whereby their sales database had separated the sales for a version of
a song that should have been combined - error went un-noticed for the last 15
years but it was an example of them making an error, not trying to re-write
history.)
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Paul Haney
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| Posted: 21 December 2021 at 12:52pm | IP Logged
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It should be noted that for many of the charts prior to 1984 (including the Hot 100) Record Research gave Billboard the
weekly files from our internal database. One of my (many) jobs was proofing those files. This was done many years ago. I
can't speak to anything after 1984 (when Billboard began computerizing their charts). Don't forget, humans enter the data,
so there's always the possibility for mistakes.
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jebsib
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More fun: Not sure if RR will ever update their Dance book, but back in the
80s the chart ran 50 titles deep and under the chart was a fluctuating
numbered list of songs called “Breakouts”… (“titles with future chart
potential”). BB’s retro charts are now showing those breakout songs as if
they were on the actual chart back then. (Thus the number 6 breakout
song is listed now as 56 that week.). Which changes the title’s ‘weeks on’
and debut date retroactively if it eventually graduated to the official dance
chart. Mess.
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PopArchivist
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| Posted: 29 December 2021 at 7:36pm | IP Logged
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How's the 1955-2020 annual coming?
Just curious but where does it go from here. I was thinking wouldnt it be cool if you put in the rankings from 1940-1954 so it covers 80 years of music?
I would love something where I can look at all the airplay hits that didnt chart on the Hot 100 for each year of the annual but were huge hits now that they were left out of the new two book set of 1955-1989 and 1990-2021.
You do this for 1990's hits that never charted on the Hot 100. Like having a listing after each year of the classic Non-Hot 100 Airplay Hits for each year. Just a thought...
Edited by PopArchivist on 29 December 2021 at 7:37pm
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"I'm a pop archivist, not a chart philosopher, I seek to listen, observe and document the chart position of music."
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Paul Haney
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We haven't started work on a Pop Annual update yet. There actually weren't that many huge non-Hot 100 Airplay hits
prior to 1990, that was really a trend of that decade. The Radio & Records book (and the upcoming Gavin Report book)
will shine a light on those, but again it's not like they were all over the place.
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thecdguy
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Hey Paul, I think I remember years ago on one of the
Record Research mailers seeing a wantlist of Joel's and
one of the things he was looking for was Natalie Cole's
"Starting Over Again" on Cassette Single. I was just
wondering if he ever found one, because I checked Discogs
and the song doesn't have a listing for a Cassette Single
in the US, just a vinyl 45, 12" test pressing and promo
CD Single. I collected Cassette Singles at the time and
was looking for it myself, but could never find one.
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jebsib
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| Posted: 24 October 2022 at 1:43pm | IP Logged
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Paul - question:
Was just looking through the 2002 Pop Singles and saw that you included all
relevant Airplay / Sales peaks.
Do you recall how you handled that odd transition period in 1991 when there
were two published airplay charts (Monitored vs Playlists)?
Was there a transition date that you used for all data or did you just use the
higher of each hit's two airplay peaks?
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Paul Haney
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| Posted: 25 October 2022 at 4:26am | IP Logged
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jebsib wrote:
Paul - question:
Was just looking through the 2002 Pop Singles and saw
that you included all
relevant Airplay / Sales peaks.
Do you recall how you handled that odd transition period
in 1991 when there
were two published airplay charts (Monitored vs
Playlists)?
Was there a transition date that you used for all data or
did you just use the
higher of each hit's two airplay peaks? |
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Check out the bottom of page xiii of the introduction for
an explanation.
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jebsib
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Thanks for replying.
So a song like Michael Bolton's "Love is a Wonderful Thing" has an official
Record Research airplay peak of #2 (from the playlists chart) despite getting
no higher than #8 on the Radio Monitor (now called Radio Songs)... as the
Monitor did not become the official 'canon' airplay chart till 6/8/91. Got it.
What a nightmare that period must have been.
Edited by jebsib on 26 October 2022 at 1:18pm
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PopArchivist
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I am going to guess its going to be another year or two for the Pop Annual (1955-2022) right?
Also is the 2nd Top Pop Singles Book (1990-2021) coming out soon? I thought it was going to be released this year.
Thanks in advance Paul.
__________________
"I'm a pop archivist, not a chart philosopher, I seek to listen, observe and document the chart position of music."
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Paul Haney
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PopArchivist wrote:
I am going to guess its going to be
another year or two for the Pop Annual (1955-2022) right?
Also is the 2nd Top Pop Singles Book (1990-2021) coming
out soon? I thought it was going to be released this
year.
Thanks in advance Paul. |
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Hoping that the Pop Annual will be sometime next year
(2023).
Top Top Pop Singles Volume 2 will cover 1990-2022 and be
out sometime next year (2023). Obviously, Joel's passing
kind of pushed everything back a bit. It's basically
just me doing most of the work on the books and they take
a lot of time to put together correctly.
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Topic: Questions for Paul Haney...
