Photo: Press
Ed Sheeran’s planet shagging success has led to calls for an overhaul of the UK singles chart.
His new album, the irritatingly titled ÷, currently bestrides the charts like a colossus in the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand and all over Europe. It’s the fastest selling album by a UK male artist. Just pause for a second and let that sink in.
And it seems that some people have allowed that fact to sink in and taken further time out to soberly reflect on Sheeran’s almost total domination of the UK singles chart. With all 16 of the album’s tracks currently residing in the UK Top 20, questions are being raised about a chart that seemingly crushes the efforts of other artists. So should a review of how the charts operate be called for?
The Guardian reports that Alison Wenham, chief executive of the independent music body Worldwide Independent Network, said: “Having Ed Sheeran dominate virtually the whole of the Top 20 is indicative of the fact it is evolving and the rules will need to be examined fairly regularly in terms of the conversion – how many streams equals a download.”
As previously reported on Gigwise, 150 streams on services such as Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer among others is equal to one physical sale. Some industry figures have called for an increase in the number of streams to equate to a sale while others have called for a revamp.
Jon Webster, president of the music managers group MMF,falls into the latter camp: “You should be looking at two different things: what’s happening in streaming, and what’s happening in sales. You can’t mix them. It ends up in two different metrics and that’s the problem.
“When you were a kid and you bought a single, if you played it 500 times over five weeks it was still only one sale. But now we’re having that 500 times over five weeks in the chart. We live in a different world, and we need a different chart for a different world.”
Elsewhere, the BBC reports that Ed Sheeran has been confirmed to appear in the next series of Game Of Thrones. Producers have refused to respond to rumours that Sheeran will play every role in the fantasy series.
