Record Business Top 100 charts

Superpop Top 100 June 1979 to January 1980

I'm interested in music charts in general, not just those used by the Real Chart. Back in the late 70's a paper was published that was aimed at the pop market. It was called Superpop, sadly it didn't last long. But it was good while it lasted. At first it featured the British Market Research Bureau's top 75 chart, copying the style it was laid out in trade paper Music Week. Perhaps because it was also used by rival music paper Record Mirror, at the end of June it changed to a chart published by another music trade paper Record Business Magazine. There top 100 chart was being used by commercial radio stations for some time before. R.B.'s top 100 started in 1978! 

It had several advantages for Superpop, the first being it was a top 100! It was also claimed to be more accurate as it used a sample of 300+ shops, whereas the top 75 used only a max of 250 shops. However it also used an element of radio airplay in determining the chart positions. So it was more like the USA chart in that respect. However it also suffered from chart hyping like the other one. Though Superpop went bust in January 1980, taken over by rival Record Mirror, Record Business continued to produce a top 100 chart till the middle 80's I understand. The top 40 or 30 being broadcast by Independent Local Radio Stations till it's close, when the switched to the MRIB top 75, another chart that used airplay, but not in the top ten.

Superpop was printed on newsprint and each page is about A3 in size. Having recently got an A3 scanner I decided to scan the pages to show you all.

However I should tell you that the sheets are not in good condition. The pages have become a bit tatty in places. Also they were folded for storage, so they are creased as well. The newsprint has aged too. Worse still cuttings have been removed from them, so there are holes!

A couple of the chart pages have not survived, or due to holidays are absent.

There's some scribbles in places too, however some of it is helpful. Such as the weeks in charts (blue pen numbers) and green lines under records that fell out the following week.

There are some good things too. Such as radio stations playlists for the week in question.

The ones that include the top 75 charts (playlists) have often local sales top ten of the radio stations, except Radio Hallam who always supplied their hit picks! 

Here's a sample so you know what to expect!

Here are the links to the Superpop pages. I couldn't upload the full file so I have split them into 4 files. You get two months of chart for each file. The purple links will work now.

superpop-top-100-june-july

superpop-top-100-aug-sept

superpop-top-100-oct-to-nov

superpop-top-100-dec79-to-jan-80

This last one contains odd bits of charts I found from broken up papers (at the end page).

These two have just been found....

superpop-jan-19-1980-last-ever

superpop-aug-11-1979 Refers to list of No1

PS I have not kept any of the full issues of the paper, only these bits of chart pages.

New Information

I have been given scans of the Record Business Top 100 Charts from the start in 1978 to 1979. However because they are big PDF files and also taken from the British Library I cannot post them here.

Nevertheless I can try and extract the charts and post them here. This might take some time! And what format they will be in I don't know yet. But please don't request them. They will be uploaded here when I have sorted them.

I did try to put the PDF images into Serif DTP. It's supposed to recognise the fonts and type and convert it to text. It didn't recognise even the large typefaces and made the whole thing just an image file.   

Have now scanned the 1979 charts as there are less of them. Quality is OK, you should be able to read them. Thought they would come out better, but as the A3 scanner is playing up I had to use the Epson printer scanner, which is very slow at scanning. Great for printing, but crap at scanning. The Cannon printer scanner I had was great at scanning and rubbish at printing! Ah well you can't have both!!

Record Business Magazine split the chart into two sections 1 to 60 then 61 to 100. They also had a "ones to watch" section, if these are there they are included. The charts date from January to March.

Many thanks to the British Library for them.

Record Business 1979 PDF

 

I have also been sent photocopies by a Blog Reader of the Record Business Charts for the whole of 1980. I have split the charts into two files. They are black & white copies of the coloured pages. The scans are originals and show up the flaws of the copier such as out of focus text. The first file has all the charts from January to May. The second file has all the charts from June to December. Unfortunately the person that copied them either forgot to do the August chart pages that contain the 61 to 100, or was not able to do them. So you will only see the 1 to 60 pages and a blank sheet will the words that the page is missing. He has also sent me some of the other years and these will be posted shortly.

 

Record Business 1980 charts January to May PDF

Record Business 1980 charts June to December PDF

British Library Copies
I have also been contacted by Stewart Hardman who has visited the British Library in London and copied the chart pages with his Camera Phone. Now this is not as easy as it sounds. For the Record Business Magazines are in tightly bound volumes so the pages will not go flat. And because the camera lens is not as adjustable as the human eye the depth problem can cause the pages to go out of focus. So some pages are harder to read than others. I think in some he has compensated by taking another shot of the page. He's also done some of the Album Charts that R.B. did. Some of these shots I have noticed he captured other charts such as the Independent Single Charts, though they are from complete. Stewart tried to do the 1979 albums, but the results were too poor to upload to the site. 
Record Business 1979 Singles
Record Business 1980 singles Page 2 only   
Record Business 1980 Full albums
Record Business 1981 Singles Part 1
Record Business 1981 Full Albums
Record Business 1981 Singles Part 2

 

I thought you might like to see these interesting snippets form the actual pages of Record Business telling us about how the chart was compiled.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Network Chart

Following on from the Superpop charts, a company called MRIB started to produce a chart mostly for Independent Local Radio Station's that combined together to broadcast The Network Chart. Only the top 30 was broadcast between 5pm and 7pm and was in direct competition with the BBC chart. It had one advantage over the BBC chart in that it was compiled by Friday a few days before the transmission of the show. This meant that is was faster than the BBC chart who were broadcasting the chart the week before! However unlike the BBC chart it had an element of Radio Airplay in it.

It was carried by the pop paper Number One, which came out midweek and therefore had to carry the previous Sunday chart. I collected the paper and I can now present the Network Chart to you. Starting with 1985.

However.... It seems that I can't find the January charts, except one, so they start in February!!!

Number One presented them without any dates on the pages. But they did include the last week, weeks in chart, highest position, figures. Though I think you'll find that the highest position are not always right!! I have marked the ones that have fallen out. And put what I believe is the date. Another number is inked on some charts, these are the Number One Issue Numbers.

Update - missing charts from January and from the main file have been found and are in the marked linked.

network-chart-1985 001 Lone Jan Chart

network-chart-1985 Full list

network-chart-1985 missing charts

Network charts 1986

1986 Network Chart July to December 

1986 Network Chart January to June

Network charts 1987

network-charts-1987 full year - give or take a week!

Network charts 1988

The first set of these charts copied the style of the 1987 charts. They again are not complete, but some do include the album, video, indie 45's, dance 45's and heavy metal 45's. 

I scanned them at only 240 dpi, first without using the descreen setting. Printed material can't show shades as seen in pictures etc so they are converted into dots, this fools the eye (or more correctly the brain) into seeing the shades. However a scanner or camera when making an image producers weird visual effects when it sees a screened image. This might make them hard to read. I scanned this batch using a HD monitor and when I looked at the finished results, I found them hard to read.  You will be pleased to here that I have now rescanned them with the Canon at 400 dpi. The old low quality one kept to show the difference.  

network chart 1988 jan to march (low-quailty)  

Network Chart 1988 Jan to March HQ 

The next set of network charts were scanned at 300 dpi with a descreen. 

Number One Magazine decided to change the design again. They put on a huge logo for the Network Chart and split the top 10 away from the top 75. Also the top ten included the covers of the singles. Like with me this proved to be popular with those who wanted to use these pictures for tape covers. So you will see some missing! The top 75 went on the next page with some of the other top ten charts. The albums went on to a third page. Since it takes about just over 3 minutes to scan one of these pages. I decided to leave off the album page. However the good news is I will scan the entire batch and post it at a later date. 

As always there are missing issues. Though I can't find any trace of them! But I do remember one issue they put a free gift of some scratch and sniff cards. But it smelled so bad we had to chuck out the entire issue!!!

There is one of the 11 to 75 section missing. The top ten is there, but I can't find the rest!

I have recently come to the conclusion that if there was a holiday or something that would cause a big delay to the production of the Number One paper then the issue was never published. However for some reason the issue number - such as issue 248 in the 1988 series - was treated as if it was printed and then the next one actually published was given the next number (249) rather than giving it issue 248. This was perhaps done to avoid production errors when supplying artwork to the printers. Or maybe the issue was indeed "sett up" but never sent to the printers!  

I have split them up for ease of scanning and for those who haven't got a good download speed!

network-chart-1988-march-to-may (new-style) 

network-chart-1988-may-to-oct  

network-chart-1988-oct-to-dec 

Network Charts 1989

network-chart-1989-no-299-337-march-to-dec

network-chart-jan-to-march-1989

MRIB -1989-best-sellers 

Number One continued to use the new style of 1988 till March 89, then changed over to doing it sideways on. Or Landscape A4 rather than Portrait. However they run it too close to the edge of the paper and the scanner cannot fit the entire page on. However this only effects an advert for a record on the bottom. The charts are intact. There is one or two images cut out. This does effect an Indie chart.  There's an amusing mistake on one page of the January to March PDF. It's on issue 294 (8/2/89). A photo of Sam Fox is credited as being Morrissey!

I've used the A3 scanner for both of these PDF's. It's quicker when scanning though is prone to a few more errors. However it does create larger PDF files.

Various Charts and other items

network-chart-1987-various-charts

MRIB-1988-best-selling-singles

how-charts-are-formed

Now a first! A Full issue!!!

Number One May 7 1988 full mag 

Thanks to the purchase of a new scanner, the Canon LIDE 220, I can scan things much quicker and produce a decent PDF file of multi pages. So I have done a test of the scanner with a full issue of the paper. Due to the fold action some of the pages moved so there is some side cutting off, especially as the paper wasn't quite A4 in size, but it's very readable the quality. The issue was picked at random and there was a page that had something cut out. But if you have never seen the paper it does give you a feel as to what it was like. The file is 10MB in size - 42 pages.  

As requested by blog reader, I have scanned the Dance, Independent etc, not covered or included in the other Network Charts. Sadly many of these were not kept or are mixed up. I have used the A3 scanner to get them, but the side effect is to leave a black border around not "A3" sheets. If you wanted you could get it removed using a PDF editor if it's a problem.

Also included in this section is a single sheet of the MRIB best sellers for 1988.

Plus On the PDF called "How Charts are Formed" is various articles from Pop Papers on the differences between the MRIB and Gallup Charts, an interview on how Mark Goodier did the Radio One top 40, a 1983 article on the Dataport machine used by Gallup, plus Pete Waterman from 1989 on chart sales. 

NETWORK CHARTS 1990

The charts compiled by MRIB continued to be used by Number One Magazine till it's demise in August 1990. In this set of PDF's are included the top 75, chart triv page, 75 albums, plus a multitude of top ten charts featuring Indie, Metal, Video and Film.

With all of these it makes them big files. So I have split them up. Starting with Part One which covers January to March. 

Part two has the first chart missing altogether, the entire issue is also missing. There are two missing odd charts, which has been cut out from the main body of the magazine. These are missing at the moment, but might turn up later.  A third was found and added at the end, together with the id page it belongs with. The last chart featured has the front and rear covers of the magazine, plus the page contents page. If you look closely at this it shows that it has been issued by the BBC.    

network-charts-1990-part-1

network-chart-1990-April-to-August Part 2 

Number One did reappeared on September 29. But it had been taken over by BBC Magazines. As a result they changed the charts to those used by the BBC IE: CIN/Gallup. I suppose you would expect that, since the BBC pay for the CIN chart!!! Also you wouldn't expect them to use the chart used by Independent Radio, the competition to the BBC Radio One.  However the magazine was just competing with Record Mirror by using the Gallup Charts, being just a little more "glossy" than RM as it became known. But it was up against Smash Hits too. In the end the BBC ended "Number One" and just put out "Top of The Pops" magazine instead.  

RECORD BUSINESS & NETWORK CHARTS FROM SOUNDS POP PAPER 

Thanks to another Chart watcher Dave Taylor I'm able to bring you scans on PDF's from another Music paper called Sounds. These all date from 1981 to 1985.

Sounds (as you will see) from the first few 1981 charts started by using the Official Chart. Sometime in the year it switched to the Record Business Chart top 100. Later on it went over to the MRIB chart.

These are an excellent collection of charts and don't just included the singles charts. As there are albums and Independents just to name a few.

The scans themselves were done by Dave Taylor, who I would like to thank for them. Sounds was a newsprint paper and didn't use colour (at least not on these chart pages). Newsprint goes yellow over time and so hence the colour of the scans.  

As with all these Pop Papers deadlines on holiday days mean missing charts. However there are some gaps in these PDF's that probably won't account for them. I suspect either Dave didn't have a copy or they have got lost in time.

I am sad to report that since these charts were done that Dave Taylor has passed away.

1981 and 1982 are the completest ones he has sent. Though 1982 stops short in the first week of December.

The 1983 PDF consists of just two charts for January.

The 1984 & 1985 start in December of 84 and end in the middle of February 1985.

sounds-charts-1981

sounds-charts-1982

sounds-charts-for-January-1983

sounds-charts-1-December-84-to-February-85

Various Charts - as requested by blog readers!

As requested by reader CSR (see comments below) I have scanned what's left and what I have so far found to a PDF file of the Various Charts featured in Number One paper. Sadly there's only 13. Plus one or two have been chopped up a bit. They consist of: USA singles and albums (top 30 Billboard), UK Dance 30, Independent Singles 30, Readers' Chart, Writer's Chart, Video top 10. Plus a top ten chosen by an artist. The Dance, Independent, Video charts are all compiled by MRIB. 

They were scanned with the A3 scanner, even though they are only A4 in size as it's quicker. I've put a white sheet of paper around each page to stop the black background of the scanner. I could do them as an A4 scan, but the Epson scanner is much slower when you increase the quality. Having said that the A3 scanner is playing up, so any future ones might have to be done with the Epson. This issue has now been resolved thanks to the purchase of the Canon.

Various Charts 1985 PDF

Melody Maker article from the year 2000

In this article by music paper Melody Maker from May 2000, the paper speculates about if the charts still matter or have they gone down the toilet, thanks to boy bands, girl bands, and UK garage acts! 

And they hadn't even heard of One Direction and The Saturdays!

melody maker review of charts PDF 

   

Music Papers - New link

Below is a link to an American site that has started to upload full editions of the various Music Papers both from the UK and USA. Though not yet complete there are loads of downloadable PDF files of the weekly pop papers, including Record Mirror, Disc, Melody Maker, Record Business and even some Music Week's. As well as the Billboard and other American charts. Have a good look for it includes publications for anything to do with the TV and Radio world. 

To save a file, right click on the file and select "save link as". Otherwise it will open the PDF file.

Files in Grey are not yet available. They will also copy any old papers you have (postage costs included apparently, but check first). 

I have selected the Record Mirror page for the site. But you can select any of the others from the menu "Music Magazines" and then Music Industry. 

 

 american radio history - Pop Papers  

 

Chart Runs

These below are chart runs of various charts, including for the first time Music Echo Charts! Music Echo was one of the first papers to publish a top 100 chart. And it did so at the height of the 1960's when the Beatles were at full power from 1964 to 65! These chart runs are being supplied to me by Blog reader Kjell Naas. He has worked very hard to sort out these chart runs and his hard work will be much appreciated by all who see them. 
I also have the original PDF of the charts, see below.

Chart runs by the way are listings of each hit week by week. For example: The Beatles - I Feel Fine: 1,1,1,1,2,2, etc....

Music Echo Top 100 chart runs
 

Independent Local Radio Charts

I can now bring to you Capital Radio Charts starting with the very first top 40 charts from 1974. Capital Radio was the first ILR station to start broadcasting in 1973, covering the London area. The charts were devised by the station itself based on the musical policy of Capital. Therefore unlike the proper charts they were not based on sales of a record. This makes them much faster at picking up new hits. Though not all records made the Capital Chart. The station would exclude records it didn't like or thought were too silly to play on air. Just because a record was a top seller nationally didn't mean it would ever see a position on Capital's chart. Likewise many records that have become known as turntable hits (because they were played by DJ's a lot) also didn't make the sales charts, but have made these charts. 

Capital broadcast these charts on a Saturday and a few listeners noted them down on sheets of paper. Thanks to a couple of these listeners I can bring you these charts. Of course when human beings write down things from the radio, they can misspell the names and titles of the records. If they missed the DJ saying the name or if the DJ didn't say it, then the person writing them down might get the title from the song. And as artists sometimes say words in a song many times, but call the song something different - errors will appear in the listings. 

Capital also would put records in their chart that only they had access to at the time. The public couldn't actually buy the records for at least another week. Or they had just been issued they day before the chart came out. In-fact it's possible that some records featured on these charts never made it to record shops, whilst other made it weeks later. 

For all these problems of spelling, correct titles and artists, release dates. Readers should search the original titles on the 45 Cat website.

The first of the these Capital Charts from 1974, were written down by Howard Pizzey and John Shirley. The copyright on these 1974 chart(s) belongs to them. Anyone wishing to use them for publishing purpose should contact me, using the comment box below (mark it Private - so it won't get published on the blog) and I will forward the request to them.     

Capital Radio Top 40 charts 1974 (PDF)

The 1975 and 1976 Capital charts will be posted eventually!

A Request... If anyone wrote down any other Independent Local Radio charts - not the network charts which are on here - could they send me a copy of them so I can put them on this section of the blog. To contact me just post a message below in the blog comment box and mark it private, so it doesn't get published and I will get back in touch with you. 

Music Echo Charts from the 1960's.

 Music Echo published a chart that was larger than the top 50 that features in the British Hit Singles books. They started with a top 100 on December 3 1964, which was credited to Mersey Beat.

They continued publishing a chart till 1966, but by that time it had gone down to a top 50. Although it was always meant to be a top 100, the actual size of the chart varied a lot. The paper's explanation for this being low sales among it's panel of shops. 

Although these charts are interesting, simply because they are bigger and therefore included more records. I find them to be less accurate than the other charts of the period. Perhaps this was because they probably didn't use enough shops to get a proper balance. Records do see to drop out and return too often. The lack of shops taking part will explain why they have to drop the chart to a 75 and a 50 at times. Nevertheless they do have some odd records in the charts which are not found in the other charts. The charts varied in design over the period in question with some fitting on one page while others go over two. The images were supplied to me by Alan Smith in a PDF format. I have merged them together to form a single file. The original images are poor quality photo copies of the newsprint. One should also be aware that the artists and titles of the records have sometimes been changed by the Newspaper. And are sometimes are not what is credited on the original records. Readers are advised to check each title of a not so well known track on the 45 Cat site. 

The first file is the very short (4 pages) for 1964.  

Music Echo Charts 1964 New

The 1965 charts are split into two PDF files. The first January to the end of June and the next July to December. Most of the pages are orientated Portrait style, though some are turned on their side. If the chart was too big to fit on an A4 sheet when being photocopied, then the rest will be reproduced on the flowing page. There are two odd fragments of charts from 1965 left over. These could be duplicates or second versions of the charts. They can be found on the end of the 1966 charts.
The 1966 charts run from January to April and as I said are only a top 50.

Music Echo Charts January to June 1965 New
Music Echo Charts July To December 1965 New
Music Echo Charts January To April 1966 New