General Chat

[astogirl24]

So if that is the case how do they decide on which position the album should be? And how do they keep it uniform with other retailers?

Over here they print the sales figures per week. Although some of the album's sales figures do cause me to believe there is some serious foul play.

Whoever buys a Girls Aloud Album should be neutered.

[Di]

Glad to hear you arrived home okay a little worse for were maybe, sounds like your mates girlfriend had a erm... interesting night though. Si maybe you should come to Sheffield and show me how to have an awesome night out. you got to bring you mates as well and NO I didn't mean these Variety is the spice of life. Not that I don't want to promote safe sex, but I do and everyone should do it more often. Blimey I'll think I stop digging a deeper hole for myself right here. Di waits for all the smutty, sarcastic comments coming her way very soon

God Dan sounds like you'd have had more fun/room at a cattle market than at the Lincoln Christmas Market .

At least you had a better evening apart from a touch of dodgie music here and there.

I hear it's someones birthday today, I could not afford a strip a gram so here's the next best thing

Edited December 6, 2005 by Di

[Dan F]

Very subtle Di!

Ta midduck!

[Di]

  Very subtle Di!

Ta midduck! 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thats I, it's okay chuck!

[Lolzi]

I miss the original crazy frog. It was originally just an advert for ring tones and it was so funny.

They took it too far

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I know, it will get old soon, it won't last forever!

[starrychris]

Topping the charts means nothing.

I know for a fact that the top 30 in stores such as Sanity, Target, Kmart etc. are bought positions.

ie. the record company pays the store money to put the CD in the top 30, its not the top 30 selling cd's for that store.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

That is not true. The ARIA charts are based on actual sales of CDs by customers, calculated when scanned through the barcode when bought by customers. There are pages about it on the ARIA website.

Edited December 6, 2005 by starrychris

[Andy]

I wasn't talking about the ARIA charts, I was talking about the store top 30s.

But speaking of ARIA charts, its not how many CD's bought by end customers, it's how many CDs are bought by the stores.

That's why some CDs go platinum before they are even released because stores have bought heaps of copies if they think it will be a good seller.

Selected stores send an estimate of sales and these are ranked against what all the retailers have bought to achieve what they call 'weighted sales' and that makes up the chart.

And of course the retailers and/or ARIA are not going to tell the public that the charts are bought ie. rigged. The same way that they flybuys scheme is purported as a loyaly scheme designed to make you shop at certain stores, when in reality its main purpose is to collect behavioural data and create customer profiles and link a transaction to an individual.

Anyway, you can be naiive and belive exactly what they tell you, but I know for a fact that positions on the major retailers charts are bought, having worked as the 2IC of the music department in one of the stores.

Our instore top 30 was made up primarily of sales, but your position could be boosted in all the stores if you paid the head office a certain amount of money.

We were also one of the stores that contributed sales information to ARIA, and most of the time we just sent them how many CDs we got ordered, because it was too complicated to work out actual sales to customers numbers without doing time consuming stocktakes. And even then, most CDs have at least 2 APNs.

[starrychris]

No. Gold and Platinum status of CDs are based on what's sent to stores, but the actual chart rankings are based on actual sales.

This is from the ARIA website:

How is the ARIA chart calculated?

ARIA collects recorded music sales data from the majority of Australia's music retailers. The data from each store is matched with the ARIA database and the sales figures are extrapolated to achieve a 'best estimate' of the actual overall sales of each title. Titles are ranked according to their 'weighted' sales figures.

How often is the ARIA chart calculated?

The ARIA charts are calculated once a week on Sunday. They are based on retail recorded music sales within Australia for the week from the preceding Sunday to the Saturday prior to calculation. The new charts are usually uploaded to the website on Sunday night Eastern Australian time.

They even talked to someone from ARIA on Sunrise about a year ago and he confirmed this.

There are even lists of every single store in every single state of the country where CDs purchased there count directly towards the rankings on ARIA charts, which are pretty much all the big stores.

[starrychris]

And here is a list of all the stores in the country that count towards the ARIA charts.

http://aria.com.au/pages/arianet-chart-stores.htm

"Over a thousand music retailers (and etailers) across Australia contribute their weekly sales information to ARIA for the calculation of the ARIA charts. "

At least the calculations of ARIA charts are reliable, unlike something like television ratings. ARIA are able release to the media the exact figure of sales obtained from music retailers across Australia. Something like television ratings however are simply complete estimate's tested from only a few hundred houses in each state. I think THAT is an unreliable source, not the ARIA charts.

Edited December 6, 2005 by starrychris

[Dan F]

Well it's going well so far! As I said in the other thread I got some choccies off my housemate and his lady, my best mate bought me the 'Lost Season 1 Part 1' DVD boxset and also the original Willy Wonka on DVD

And to make things better I've just been voted to be Director for our big TV Programme next year!

Back in the studio in an hour and then we're straight off to Frankie & Benny's for a meal