WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

1
00:00:00.140 --> 00:00:03.540
The battle for Christmas number one is a British
music tradition.

2
00:00:03.540 --> 00:00:07.430
To be at the top of the charts on Christmas Day
is to have a place in history.

3
00:00:07.430 --> 00:00:09.640
Sometimes, serious pop acts have managed it:

4
00:00:09.640 --> 00:00:12.730
the Spice Girls did it three times in a row.

5
00:00:12.730 --> 00:00:16.070
Sometimes, it was more of a
mid-90s fever dream.

6
00:00:16.070 --> 00:00:19.150
♪ “Blobby, oh Mr Blobby…” ♪

7
00:00:19.150 --> 00:00:21.050
Some of the importance of the
Christmas Number One

8
00:00:21.050 --> 00:00:23.730
comes from the UK music industry’s official
charts,

9
00:00:23.730 --> 00:00:27.640
which are based purely on music sales,
not on airplay.

10
00:00:27.640 --> 00:00:31.830
Every pop music radio station in Britain could
play a track every hour, on the hour…

11
00:00:31.830 --> 00:00:35.680
and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference
if no one walked into a music shop,

12
00:00:35.680 --> 00:00:38.350
opened their wallets, and actually bought
the physical single –

13
00:00:38.350 --> 00:00:42.219
or, later, paid to download a digital file.

14
00:00:42.219 --> 00:00:44.110
That doesn’t really work these days.

15
00:00:44.110 --> 00:00:47.170
If you go back to 1952, when the charts were
first launched,

16
00:00:47.170 --> 00:00:50.340
a guy called Percy Dickens basically just
used to get on the phone

17
00:00:50.340 --> 00:00:53.510
and call up 20 of his mates who worked in
record shops

18
00:00:53.510 --> 00:00:56.750
and just ask them, what records were popular
that particular week?

19
00:00:56.750 --> 00:00:58.760
And it was as basic as that.

20
00:00:58.760 --> 00:01:00.660
So for most of the history of the charts,

21
00:01:00.660 --> 00:01:02.539
what we've done is we've counted sales,

22
00:01:02.539 --> 00:01:05.990
because that's the way that consumers - music
fans -

23
00:01:05.990 --> 00:01:07.990
have been able to access their music.

24
00:01:07.990 --> 00:01:11.280
Every year, hundreds of music acts release
novelty Christmas singles,

25
00:01:11.280 --> 00:01:13.200
hoping to be the one that makes it through
the dreck

26
00:01:13.200 --> 00:01:16.220
and gets to the top of the charts. And almost
all of them fail,

27
00:01:16.220 --> 00:01:18.670
although it’s pretty heartwarming when they
do succeed…

28
00:01:18.670 --> 00:01:20.880
because it usually means that the winner of
the X Factor

29
00:01:20.880 --> 00:01:23.290
has been beaten down into second place,

30
00:01:23.290 --> 00:01:26.910
and people seem to enjoy it when Simon Cowell
doesn’t win.

31
00:01:26.910 --> 00:01:30.600
But calculating the numbers now is trickier
than it used to be.

32
00:01:30.600 --> 00:01:36.480
For the last 2½ years, we've been not just
counting sales, but also adding streams in

33
00:01:36.480 --> 00:01:37.480
there as well.

34
00:01:37.480 --> 00:01:40.820
We convert the streams to sales by dividing
the streams by 100,

35
00:01:40.820 --> 00:01:42.509
and then we put it all together.

36
00:01:42.509 --> 00:01:50.619
The 100 is essentially an estimate of the
value of a stream versus the value of a download.

37
00:01:50.619 --> 00:01:55.110
We're actually changing that from the beginning
of 2017, to 150,

38
00:01:55.110 --> 00:01:57.220
because what we're seeing is a massive shift

39
00:01:57.220 --> 00:01:59.840
in terms of the number of streams that are
being generated

40
00:01:59.840 --> 00:02:02.610
and the number of sales that are being made
as well.

41
00:02:02.610 --> 00:02:05.820
Spotify, and Apple Music. Deezer, and Tidal.

42
00:02:05.820 --> 00:02:11.510
Amazon have both Amazon Prime Music and Amazon
Unlimited. We count those as well.

43
00:02:11.510 --> 00:02:13.950
There are other, smaller services on top of
that.

44
00:02:13.950 --> 00:02:18.670
But pretty much any audio streaming service
you'll be using, we count.

45
00:02:18.670 --> 00:02:21.970
You’ll notice something missing from that
list of streaming services:

46
00:02:21.970 --> 00:02:25.750
the official UK chart doesn’t count YouTube
views.

47
00:02:25.750 --> 00:02:28.519
In theory, YouTube could track music use:

48
00:02:28.519 --> 00:02:30.450
but it can’t tell whether you’re listening
to a song

49
00:02:30.450 --> 00:02:32.680
because you’re there to listen to music…

50
00:02:32.680 --> 00:02:36.290
or just because someone’s decided to soundtrack
their multi-million-view video

51
00:02:36.290 --> 00:02:38.670
with Bing Crosby’s White Christmas.

52
00:02:38.670 --> 00:02:43.310
We've never counted video, and consumption
of video, and we're not doing so now.

53
00:02:43.310 --> 00:02:45.590
That said, obviously we're always talking
about it,

54
00:02:45.590 --> 00:02:49.310
it's a big debate within the industry, about
whether it should or it shouldn't count.

55
00:02:49.310 --> 00:02:52.709
That may change at some point in the future,
but not quite for now.

56
00:02:52.709 --> 00:02:55.260
I don’t know who’s going to be Christmas
number one this year.

57
00:02:55.260 --> 00:02:57.660
And neither do the folks here, at the official
UK charts company,

58
00:02:57.660 --> 00:02:59.060
at least as I record this,

59
00:02:59.060 --> 00:03:02.519
although I suspect probably they’ve got
a pretty good idea by now.

60
00:03:02.519 --> 00:03:05.069
At 5:40pm on December 23rd,

61
00:03:05.069 --> 00:03:07.459
BBC Radio 1 will make the announcement,

62
00:03:07.459 --> 00:03:09.799
and – at least for this year –

63
00:03:09.799 --> 00:03:11.680
someone will still be entering the history
books.