New Year, New Chart Book?

As 2024 dawns, and life returns to normal after the holidays, I’ve launched a new chart book, and in this blog post we shall discuss the series and plans for 2024 – and also if I managed to achieve the plans I had for 2023!

New Chart Book!

This is new to the website, but those who subscribe to the 85 Years of Billboard series have already received it. The second volume of the Billboard Pop Charts (1950-1959) has been issued, price £10, covering the end of the Best Sellers In Stores Chart and the short lived Top 100, as well as the start of the Hot 100 and full chart data on the Bubbling Under The Hot 100 chart, begun in 1959.

I can’t see a book that has been published inducing all of this data, though of course the original weekly charts are available as printed in volumes from Record Research.

As 2024 progresses more volumes of this will be published covering the pop charts, though I should mention that the high volume of charts for the 1940’s and 1950’s volumes does not return until the more modern era and Streaming/download charts appear – the 1960’s will just be the Hot 100 and full Bubbling Under data, though I may through in the Adult Contemporary chart.

Looking Back On 2023

I did not manage to achieve all I wanted during 2023, but I did achieve a lot that I felt was important and was absolutely amazed at the response to some of the books I was able to produce.

The year completed my 70 Years of The UK Singles Charts series, begun in 2022, and that was a huge undertaking, covering over 60,000 entries for the main singles chart (1952-2023) and hundreds more when you add in the other charts I included along the way.

I was overjoyed at the response the series got, and you can still purchase the books, either as single years or as decade sets.

I was similarly surprised when I issued my book on the Gallup charts (1983-1989) which also included chart data from 1980-82 and full sales for the Top 200 from 1983-1989 for the first time. This has become my best seller and fastest seller.

As mentioned above, I also started my next series, 85 Years of Billboard charts, which begins 1960 on 9 January 2024. Whilst subscriptions have been edited so that they now start with 1960, the 1940’s and 1950’s can still be purchased as single decades.

The 1960’s volumes will show the rise to a group from Liverpool and how they took over America.

Looking Ahead To 2024

I learnt a long time ago not to release too much information on forthcoming plans as when things slip, people get – understandably – upset that the deadline was not met.

2024 will, of course, be dominated by the 85 Years of Billboard series, leaving little room for much else. I still have a lot of data to go through and verify ahead of each books issue, so it may well be that all I can achieve is my target of getting the data for the whole set verified by the end of the year. Roughly 50,000 to be added/sorted/checked etc to ensure accuracy and my target is to get to that point by the end of the year.

I know my readers will also want other books as well, and I do want to make a second volume to the Album series, covering the 1970’s, and whilst I do turn my attention to that at times, I have just over 300 albums I need to find durations for. Some I am resigning myself to not locating – for now – as these are albums not released to streaming services and not deemed worthy of remastering for a modern audience in their original vinyl form. Almost all come from the Mid-Price charts, with 233 of them (currently) sitting on these (or the Budget) listings.

I do also want to put out more books on the data within the database, and welcome suggestions of things I could produce.

The Future

One of the ways that Artificial Intelligence can help with making life easier is that – whist it can not think for itself and so (for now) can not entirely replace the human – it can help write code really quickly. I’ve been using it to update aspects of the database to speed up checking and export. It can also be used to assist with creating an online database, which is something I want to build as I want to move more of the data online over the coming years. To do this though I need to learn more things about how it can all be set up and how I can – easily! – ensure that it is secure.

If you know about this type of stuff then do please get in touch (but if your just trying to sell me a website redesign like many of the emails I get thats fine, thank you, but no thanks!)

I also want to make some use of Discord as that does seem an interesting way to engage with people.

For now though, I better get back to the 50,000 Billboard entries!