Posted by Fred Clemens on August 17, 2008 at 12:29:05:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Oldies: The New Hot Thing posted by Marty Brooks on August 17, 2008 at 10:50:24:
>>If you really want to use charts at all, you have factor in the total amount of actual sales in a given week, chart position and longevity. And even then, you'll miss some great music.<<
All too often, Chart statistics are taken out of context. As you said, "Charts are relative".
Consider a (so-called) #1 record picked at random from the Billboard Charts, "My Girl" by the Temptations. For the 13 weeks that it Charted there, it was only #1 for just ONE week. That's ONE WEEK! It was #12 for two non-consecutive different weeks, but you'll never hear it touted as a #12 record. Having debuted at #76, the week before it disappeared it was #29. And all those other numbers in-between: 41, 8, 5, 4, 3, 2, 7, 9. What about those numbers? They don't count??
I say we count those numbers into the equation, add them all up and divide that by the number of weeks it Charted. "My Girl" was therefore a #16 record.
But wait!
That would be taking all of those numbers out of proper context again. Each of those numbers was figured when taking in the then-competition for it's value. ALL of the Chart figures would have to be re-calculated for the duration that "My Girl" was on the Charts, just over three months worth! And to be fair, even THOSE songs would have to be given the same consideration when refiguring their relative status (just as they were calculated in the first place). But that would be more trouble than it's worth, so I won't even attempt such a monumental feat.
If that weren't enough to make you go crazy, and to put you more at ease, those numbers have absolutely no relavance Today whatsoever! Consider where "My Girl" is Charting NOW. (Nowhere) Consider that it left the Charts well over 40 years ago. It certainly got tons of airplay in between all that time, (probably thousands of times more than when it was Charting), but you never saw it mentioned in Billboard again, did you?
So why had it still been getting airplay all these years? It certainly wasn't because people were buying alot of copies of the record still. You take a record that happened to have been popular for a relative short while (13 weeks), and because it made it to #1 for just ONE of those weeks, because it was in the Top 10 for 8 weeks, because it was Top 40 for 11 weeks...? That's all well and good for gathering statistics, but it's Today that really matters. To validate playing a song on what happened statistically so many years ago simply baffles the mind.
Or not.