UK singles chart turns 70: time to say goodbye?

As the UK singles chart celebrates its 70th birthday this week questions have been raised over its modern-day relevance.

“Once a key part of British life”, said Sky News, with the weekly radio countdown to the coveted No.1 occupying its “once unmissable Sunday slot”, the impact of the chart has “mostly dwindled with the charts not seen as anywhere near as relevant as they once were”.

“If an artist went to number one in the decades after the chart’s 1952 inception, it would guarantee them household name status,” said the news site. But “with the new millennium came streaming and downloads and the end of big music shows such as Top Of The Pops”, which subsequently diminished the chart’s influence.

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‘Unloved and ignored’

Its “grip on public imagination” seems to have “slackened completely”, said Alex Petridis in The Guardian. “When was the last time you read a news piece about a hotly contested ‘battle’ for No 1?” he asked readers.

Streaming was added to the singles chart in 2014 and although the way it is measured has changed, in the UK 100 paid streams or 600 free streams have generally equalled one sale. Many feel this has made the chart an irrelevance compared to the days when only physical record sales determined positions.

The charts’ “traditional audience of tweens and twentysomethings” have had their listening habits “changed completely as a result of streaming”, explained Petridis. This means that, at 70, the singles chart “finds itself largely unloved, ignored and dismissed as irrelevant”.

The singles chart is an “unruly hodge-podge of gimmicky collaborations, TikTok spin offs and YouTube viral sensations”, wrote Neil McCormick in The Telegraph. He described the chart as an “absurd anachronism” and said it’s ��time to scrap it”.

‘Healthier than ever’

Writing for The Independent, Nick Duerden said that “over its lifetime, the chart has taken both the country’s cultural pulse and set its agenda”.

While the chart “may be quieter now, a shadow of its former self”, he continued, “who, at 70, isn’t?” Duerden added that it “lives on, a tirelessly dedicated shop window to what’s up, what’s down, and who, for the next seven days at least, is reigning supreme, top of the pops”.

“The charts still inform a lot of people about what’s going on and what artists they should look out for,” Danny Corr, head of marketing at Roadrunner Records, told Vice.

Indeed, said the NME, while “a new generation of kids may be getting their music for free”, at the same time they are “getting into more music than ever” and therefore the charts are “healthier now than they’ve ever been”.