Official Singles Chart on 29/12/2017

Amber Run - Fickle Game is one of the songs of the year!

https://youtu.be/Xu3_bNLR328

Ralph Taylor - Limit. Best pop soul song of 2017!

https://youtu.be/R2LSwFXb38s

Daft Funk - Gettin' High Tonight - one of the best dance songs of 2017!

https://youtu.be/PeapEGrL2CY

"Brave Captain" by Big Big Train, a song about the English WWI pilot Albert Ball. Greetings from Flanders / Belgium.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ehm_bHR8c3M

I doubt that Ed will dominate the charts in 2018. 'Happier' is the only single left to be released from '÷', and at most he'll have 1 single from his next album towards the end of the year. '÷' will fall throughout the year, as well.
Streaming isn't broken, but I do agree that it could do with some refining in the way that streams count towards the chart. Rather than having a flat ratio for all streams, I think that having different ratios for paid streams and free streams is the best way forwards. Something like a 100:1 ratio for paid streams (Spotify Premium, Apple Music, etc.), a 200:1 ratio for free streams (Spotify Free, Apple Music Trial, etc.) and a 400:1 ratio for YouTube streams should work quite well. 150:1, 250:1 and 500:1 could also work, though I think that paid streams should be worth more than streams are currently.
While on the singles chart streaming is king (it makes up around 93% of the entire singles market in the UK), on the albums chart sales still take precedence. The all-time record for streaming in the albums market in the UK was around 47%, and while I don't have any figures for this week just gone, in the previous week streams accounted for just 22.6% of the total. Last week's #1 on both the main chart and streaming chart, 'Revival', sold just 19,400 of its 131,622 total from streams. And 'Revival' was a huge streaming album. Which means that '÷' sold even less than that of its 120,546 total from streams, since it was #3 on the streaming chart, plus '÷' sold 109,000 in physical sales alone last week. Also, at the beginning of October '÷' had 1.7m pure sales and 511,000 streaming-equivalent sales. Even with '÷' being the biggest streaming album the UK has ever seen, it still gets the majority of its sales from pure sales.

Put it another way, if streaming didn't exist and you could only buy singles via digital downloads or actual physical copies bought in a store, would the top 40 be full of so many Xmas songs? I doubt it. Perhaps someone into chart stats can look back at the pre-streaming era to see if so many Xmas songs charted so high inside the top 40 - top 20. From memory, I think Wham's Last Christmas was the most popular but I can't remember it charting as high as number 2 on re-release. I doubt many people have actually paid to hear all these old Christmas songs (see next paragraph!).

But of more significance - I think my point about FREE Spotify streams is 100 percent valid and does make the concept of streaming rather absurd. Why should any free stream count to a so-called single 'sale'. I doesn't matter what ratio you have - free streams should not be part of a 'sale'. It's an oxymoron! As long as free streams count as sales I don't consider the chart to be accurate or legitimate (no offence meant, just the way I feel about it). Why doesn't the OCC and record companies ditch the current singles chart format and just call it the Official Streaming Chart. The only singles we'll ever encounter is at a dating website. :P

We could fix that issue by having the OCC ditch the terms "sales" and "singles", and instead replace them with "points" and "songs". If all of the Christmas songs had a certain amount of chart "points" this week instead of having a certain amount of "sales", would that help you to feel like that chart was a bit more legitimate?
I don't think that free streams should be completely excluded from the chart, as that is how a lot of people listen to music nowadays, but I do believe that they should be worth less than paid streams, and you are right in that these streams are not "sales" in any sense of the word. Again, the term "chart points" (similar to the US) would fix this slight issue.
Just making it the Official Streaming Chart wouldn't work at this point, but in 5-10 years we will see a chart where sales have all but lost their power and streaming is the only real factor, in a similar way to how digital downloads were the only real factor in 2013/2014, when physical single sales had all but died out and before streaming counted towards the chart.
And in a cruel twist of fate that I feel like you might enjoy, Ed Sheeran manages to have 4 songs in the Sales Chart Top 40 this week, but only manages 2 in the Streaming Chart Top 40 and only gets 1 in the Official Singles Chart Top 40.

James, you can find that out by looking at The Sales Chart

Rather than having a flat ratio for all streams, I think that having different ratios for paid streams and free streams is the best way forwards.

Yup. This is how the US charts will be doing it starting next year.

Why?

I mean why should popular songs which people listen to and buy be restricted from entering the charts? It's obvious that people would start listening to Christmas songs at this period so why should they be prevented?

Definitely agree with you on this one, and this includes the manipulative "300:1 ratio" and "3 per artist" rules that they implemented not so long ago.

Radio 1 counted down the biggest songs of the year today, unlike the usual weekly Top 40 singles of 2017.

At last!!!

Because sadly he's popular

Yes, I agree he is nothing special. People just buying what everyone else is buying is boring zzzz

crazy how people just can't like music these days. lmao.

"Galway Girl" is SO good.

I completely agree! I wish that got as much popularity in the US as it did everywhere else in the world.