Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-gtxcr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T16:13:24.434Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reading the charts – making sense with the hit parade

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 November 2008

Martin Parker
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

One of the formations which helps to shape the meaning of modern pop music is the charts. In theory, the charts define the most popular of popular musics, the goal, the pinnacle of success. Both professionals and audience dedicate large amounts of time and money to producing and consuming this series of comparative market histories produced at rapid and regular intervals. Technology is bent to the service of the research in order that the figures be produced more quickly and with the appearance of accuracy. But why should we be interested in the Top 40 itself rather than its music? Writers on pop have provided us with some detailed descriptions of the charts (Frith 1978; Harker 1980; Wallis and Malm 1984; Street 1986), but few have noted that this level of consumer obsession with sales figures is almost unique to the record industry. Consumers of other commodities do not usually consult a specialist book or magazine in order to discover the past sales history of their favourite brand, nor do they listen to particular radio stations in order to ascertain the best selling product of the week. Why then should the sales results of EMI, Polygram, WEA and others be of interest to their consumers when the same data about multi-national corporations in other market sectors are primarily of interest to market insiders and analysts? An important caveat needs to be added in that popular music is now not the only type of cultural production that foregrounds sales figures. More recently popular literature (the ‘Bestsellers List’), video and films have all begun to use this format but in none of these cases is the chart as central as it is with pop music.

Type
Research Article
Information
Popular Music , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , May 1991 , pp. 205 - 217
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abrams, M. 1959. The Teenage Consumer (London)Google Scholar
Attali, J. 1985. Noise: the Political Economy of Music (Manchester)Google Scholar
Barthes, R. 1973. Mythologies (St Albans)Google Scholar
Bauman, Z. 1983. ‘Industrialism, consumerism and power’, Theory, Culture and Society, 1: 3, pp. 32–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benjamin, W. 1977. ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’, in Mass Communication and Society, ed. Curran, J. et al. (London)Google Scholar
BPI 1987. British Phonographic Industry Year Book 1987 (London)Google Scholar
BPI 1989. British Phonographic Industry Year Book 1989/90 (London)Google Scholar
Chambers, I. 1986. Popular Culture: the Metropolitan Experience (London)Google Scholar
Connor, S. 1989. Postmodernist Culture (Oxford)Google Scholar
Frith, S. 1978. The Sociology of Rock (London)Google Scholar
Frith, S. 1987. ‘The making of the British record industry’, in Impacts and Influences, ed. Curran, J., Smith, A. and Wingate, P. (London)Google Scholar
Gallup, 1988. The UK Music Charts (London)Google Scholar
Gambaccini, P., Rice, T. and Rice, D. 1989. British Hit Singles (Enfield)Google Scholar
Garofalo, R. 1987. ‘How autonomous is relative’, Popular Music 6: 1, pp. 77–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grossberg, L. 1983. ‘The politics of youth culture’, Social Text, 8, pp. 104–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harker, D. 1980. One for the Money (London)Google Scholar
Haug, W. 1986. Critique of Commodity Aesthetics (Oxford)Google Scholar
Hirsch, P. 1990. ‘Processing fads and fashions: an organisation-set analysis of cultural industry systems’, in On Record: Rock, Pop and the Written Word, ed. Frith, S. and Goodwin, A. (London)Google Scholar
Laing, D. 1969. The Sound of Our Time (London)Google Scholar
Middleton, R. 1990. Studying Popular Music (Milton Keynes)Google Scholar
Rothenbuhler, E. W. 1987. ‘Commercial radio and popular music’, in Popular Music and Communication, ed. Lull, J. (Beverely Hills)Google Scholar
Sartre, J-P. 1976. Critique of Dialectical Reason (London)Google Scholar
Street, J. 1986. Rebel Rock (Oxford)Google Scholar
Wallis, R. and Malm, K. 1984. Big Sounds from Small Peoples (London)Google Scholar
Whitburn, J. 1986. Top 40 Albums (Enfield)Google Scholar
Whitburn, J. 1987. USA Top 1000 Singles (Enfield)Google Scholar
Willis, P. 1978. Profane Culture (London)Google Scholar