It's 2016. We have flying cars and chutes that feed us breakfast. Money is made of gas. We are so in the future, it's ridiculous.
Why then, dear reader, does the current album chart look like this?
Robbie Williams. Elvis. Bon Jovi. Michael Ball. Michael Buble. Michael flipping Buble.
They aren't even the most successful Michaels. They're eclipsed by Jackson and George. But it's not that which riles me.
It's 2016, not 1927. These five folks date back to the time we used pagers for social reasons. Back to the time dial-up internet meant you had to write to Readers Digest to request your ration of bytes. Back when we brushed our teeth with chimney sweep brushes. If you could afford teeth.
Alright, old fogeys probably sell better in the lead-up to Christmas. No record company's going to risk losing the next new thing in the swamp of seasonal sales. I bet the best-selling things in pound shops right now are carriage clocks, denture glue and snuff.
But there's definitely a domination of physical product here. Boil the chart down to just streams, and instead the top five is Drake, James Arthur, Justin Biebpipe, Ed Sheeran and Kanye. Much fresher blood. So what we're seeing in the current album chart are strong old-school Adele-style sales of supermarket CDs.
In short, streaming is dead, old people are alive, and Michael Buble is definitely not the most successful Michael in town.
I wish the chutes thing was true.
Further Fats: Here is the latest pop chart, apparently (2014)
They aren't even the most successful Michaels. They're eclipsed by Jackson and George. But it's not that which riles me.
It's 2016, not 1927. These five folks date back to the time we used pagers for social reasons. Back to the time dial-up internet meant you had to write to Readers Digest to request your ration of bytes. Back when we brushed our teeth with chimney sweep brushes. If you could afford teeth.
Alright, old fogeys probably sell better in the lead-up to Christmas. No record company's going to risk losing the next new thing in the swamp of seasonal sales. I bet the best-selling things in pound shops right now are carriage clocks, denture glue and snuff.
But there's definitely a domination of physical product here. Boil the chart down to just streams, and instead the top five is Drake, James Arthur, Justin Biebpipe, Ed Sheeran and Kanye. Much fresher blood. So what we're seeing in the current album chart are strong old-school Adele-style sales of supermarket CDs.
In short, streaming is dead, old people are alive, and Michael Buble is definitely not the most successful Michael in town.
I wish the chutes thing was true.
Further Fats: Here is the latest pop chart, apparently (2014)