The Ultimate Ego Chart

On the UKMIX Forum is chart claiming to be the "Ultimate Chart of the Sixties". Plus The Definitive Chart Of The Fifties And Sixties" But over the period of time that it's been running it's revealed that it's more about someone's ego than record charts.

It started with the premise of correcting the faults associated with the BBC's own chart of the period. A little history is needed at this point. After the NME produce a chart (in 1952) based on what record shops were selling as opposed to one based on sheet music sales. A few years later several other music papers started to do the same. By the middle of the 50's there were several competing charts from all the papers. They all used the same method. They asked record shops to send or phone in a list of the best selling records for a particular week. They did not ask them to send in the actual sales of each record, just what was selling the most. Most sent in a top ten. Though years later the papers were asking for a top 50. Rather than print these top tens from the shops, though Record Mirror did for a time - naming the shops too! The papers assigned points to the positions so the number one would get the most points. And depending on the asking total, the lowest position would get the least points, or just one point! Each paper used different numbers of shops talking part. Judging by the Record Mirror these shops were mostly London area. But since none of the other papers listed the shops used, we can't tell the spread of shops over the UK. Although they all claimed to produce a national chart. So that's the background. Now the BBC needed to broadcast a chart and since they couldn't use a chart that was made by a private enterprise. And certainly didn't want to pay one of them for it. They devised their own chart. To get a top twenty, they took all the music press charts and then assigned points to them. I don't think they used 20 points for the top spot and one point for 20 on each chart, but reversed the figures. However which way they did it they were simply adding up the points to produce a top 20 of all the papers. The problem however was they didn't do a very good job of these charts. And under a points system you get records that end up with tied positions. In fact many of the component charts suffered from this same problem. Another obstacle was the fact the BBC saw each paper's chart as the same. Even though many had far more shops taking part than others. In the end the BBC had a real problem as by the end of the 60's many of the Papers started to stop compiling a chart due to the expense. Some just published another's paper chart. This cut down the number of charts used by the BBC. And in one week the BBC chart suffered a several way split for the number one record. With that the BBC had enough. The got all the chart papers together and said to them all we need a national chart based on counting the records purchased and not based on points. Unfortunately both the NME and Melody Maker could not agree to this, mostly because of the cost of making this chart. So carried on using the old system and making their own charts. The BBC got together with the Record Industry and asked a marketing company called The British Market Research Bureau to compile a Top 50 based on sales from record shops, sending in the figures rather than a list of best sellers. At first the BMRB chart was not very accurate at all and had loads of teething problems. The number of shops willing to do this system was small at first. But on average around 250 shops were sending in diaries to BMRB. When the first British Hit Singles book came out in 1977. The compilers of the book decided to use the Record Retailer chart for the chart of the 60's. Despite it being the least accurate and using the least amount of shops. The BBC at some point also adopted the Record Retailer chart and confined to the dustbin the averaged chart they had used at the time. The BBC doesn't even like talking about it. Of course the use of the Record Retailer chart as the "Official Chart" for the 60's upset a lot of people. And some thought that the BBC chart could be sorted out to produce a chart of the 60's.

Enter Mr Tibbs on UKMIX.  He had the idea of adding the points up of all the charts of the 60's and then factoring in how many record shops each chart used. He developed a spread sheet to do this and put in other factors to stop tied positions. 

Of course the original charts were flawed as they took no comparison to the size of each shop or to how many records they had sold. In one shop the number one might have sold 20 copies and in another 150 copies. Each shop got the same points for the number one record.  Mr Tibbs also selected the most shops they had on board for each paper. But during the period covered reports vary on the amount that each paper used. Plus of course stores such as Woolworth never took part. By 1964 some 8,000 shops were selling records. Melody Maker was sampling at the most 110. 

Since not all charts ran a top 50, and NME only did a 30, Mr Tibbs had to stick with a top 30 only. But his intention was only to make the BBC chart more accurate. 

So He began posting the top 30 on UKMIX and several posters started questioning things and adding other details.  So on the 106 post he had a meltdown and posted this:

   After a great deal of reassurance from people he continued to post the charts. But it was the first sign of future trouble with him. 

In post 190 he's now thinking his charts on the best thing since sliced bread! 

Of course we do know the sales figures from that era, that's what's the Real Chart does! But he never acknowledge the Real Chart. The criticism of his methods would however come up again from several posters and at times the moderators of the site had to step in and control the situation. Resulting in posts being removed. Also several posters (including Mr Tibbs) altered or deleted posts. So what on UKMIX now is not a true reflection of the messages. But you can get an idea in post 267, which again resulted in a threat by him to stop posting the charts. At the time I thought he was acting like a spoilt child. But he's not a young man. In fact he's older than me and I'm 60! In Sheffield we would call him a mardy bum! 

 Nevertheless when challenged as to how made up his chart was, since in some cases record entered the top 30, from one chart having the largest number of shops, which were on the Real Chart at 70! He continued to defend his chart. But as far as he knew the chart, might have used only 60 shops not the 110 he said and even then only a small percentage might have that record at 70 in the Real Chart, in their best sellers list.  In post 457 he claims that his methods are open to all, which was a dig at the Real Chart. 

I pointed out to him on several occasions that any charts of the period would by definition copy each other as they were displayed in shops and the public who bought the records also looked at the charts in the music papers. One time I listed the Real Chart positions aside the top 30 he came up. This being done to show how often close the positions on the Ultimate Averaged Chart were to the Real Chart. With only about five records that were selling better than the papers and the odd Woolies record in the 1965 period when the store was only selling the Embassy Label records. Not included in any chart of course. But in didn't like it one bit, as of course it showed that his chart, excluded records. For example a record might be at say 7 in the Melody Maker chart, which had the most shops, and much lower on the other charts. His averaged chart, would probably give a position either halfway between the lowest places and the highest place. Sometimes even the lowest place. When if you looked at the Real Chart the Melody Maker was quite correct in the seven place and all the other charts were wrong. And then again it could be the chart with the fewest shops, which was always the Record Retailer that had the correct slot. But in post 464 he tells me not to post things to do with the Real Chart and gets all protective about his chart. 

 Later on things get into a heated debate and the moderators take action once again he pulls out and lots of the posters urge him not to do so. He also requires people to use the "like" button and clearly he needs it as an ego boost. In 635 he has another childish tantrum.

The next message has nothing to do with his charts at all really, but gives him a real ego boost. Many forums, like the film and music industry, have awards for the year and like them things get nominated that have no chance of winning. Largely because nearly all Forums are cliques and they have their own agendas with the same things winning each year. However due to the fact of the size of the Averaged Chart thread it got nominated in the UKMIX awards. So in post 1355 Mr Tibbs is pleased. 

 It doesn't win of course and Mr Tibbs ego suffers a real bashing. Even though nobody had been having a go at him for ages. He has another tantrum and threatens again to pull out of posting the charts. Post 1414 shows how much he wanted to be "famous" for posting these charts. At least on UKMIX.  He talks about "friends" and that he felt snubbed. 

He didn't of course, even the award organiser of UKMIX had to post a message assuring him that it wasn't meant to be the way he talked about in post 1414.  These days the chart has continued after completing the charts up to the point when BMRB stepped in and put and end to the BBC chart. He continued to do the earlier 60's. But these days he's well protected. He even changed the name to the "Ultimate Averaged Chart" . I pulled him up on that making out it was the best chart going. He also has developed a policy of indirectly attacking my comments on his charts. In one chart of the 60's I told him a certain record was top that week. It was outside the top ten on his chart. He told me in plain ways that it was impossible for the record to be number one that week and his Ultimate chart proves that. In the early 60's the papers used even less shops and I told him that his 300 shops do not account for all the shops in the UK at that time. He must have known that I was talking about it being top on the Real Chart, but he ignored that. My resulting post resulted in an infraction, this is what I put:

   The Definitive Chart Of The Fifties And Sixties" is pretentious to say the least. Not at least the ones done at the time! Some might object to that if the people that did them were around. And if you knew who I have been, you would know that sarcasm could have been my middle name. But there's more heaven than meets the eye my dear Mr Tibbs.    

Correcting the BBC chart of it's faults was one thing, but saying what he has done on the back of the objective shows a level of ego beyond belief and that the whole of the Ultimate Averaged Chart was just one giant ego boost for Mr Tibbs. 

He now intends to do the same like what he did to the 60's charts and 50's for the 1969 and 1970's charts. Even though the BMRB chart was using sales and the NME and Melody Maker used points. I have looked at both the NME Chart and The Melody Maker charts for the year 1970 and compared to the BMRB chart.  They both suffer from the lack of effect of Top of The Pops performance on the chart after the show. Whereas the BMRB does indeed at times respond to the TOTP effect, sometimes not as much as the Real Chart, but it's there. 

He did at one time say he wouldn't go there (posting charts after 1969) and recently I posted a message saying to Robin of Loxely (a user name of course) that it really shouldn't be done. Straight after Mr Tibbs posted a message saying he would do it. That was the last straw for me. I couldn't let him continue to belittle me and it's impossible to have any dialogue like this without getting a complete ban on UKMIX. So I decided it was best to make this special post to show that Mr Tibbs "Ultimate Averaged Chart was really only about his ego and not a chart of the 50's, 60's, or if he goes there, 70's. 

There are in fact many ways that such a chart could be made up from using the charts of the period, his being actually a poor way of doing it.   

Update 17 June.

A few weeks ago Mr Tibbs started were he left in 1969 doing the Ultimate Chart, even though the BBC had dropped that way of compiling the chart and started the British Market Research Bureau (BMRB) chart. He also made the extraordinary decision to use a sample number of 85 Shops. The same as what the Record Retailer chart used. For some reason he's got into his head that the new chart compilers simply couldn't get shops to take part. However from the few Record Retailers that are online, one a few weeks into the new chart clearly states compiled by BMRB from 300 retailers! Before I quit posting on the thread I argued with him and others that BMRB would have been contracted by the BBC and the others engaged in funding the chart and they wouldn't have stood for a chart compiled from the original 85 stores of Record Retailer. It's highly likely that BMRB had the 300 shops filling in diaries of sales to send to them. It's likely too not all 300 diaries were posted in time to produce a chart. But I doubt for one minute that it was as low as 85! Judging by known later reports the average might have been around 250. But Mr Tibbs doesn't intend to change to above 250 till well after 1970. 

Of course the real reason is that he doesn't like the BMRB chart at all. And giving it 300 shops would make it dominant. As the largest paper based one he uses he only puts on 250 shops. Of course the odd thing is that we do not know if the other charts had shortfalls in the number of shops supplying them with information. But Mr Tibbs on the other hand uses the BMRB honesty on shortfalls in shops against them. But the other charts tended to remain tight lipped about the levels of shops taking part. And though he has been told there was a drop off in the shops used by Melody Maker (currently 250) and the NME (200 shops) he doesn't know when these happen. Most of the archive of BMRB is however not accessible and the number of reports of low levels of shops are not commonly available. Few have been published too. 

I asked him to start another thread for these charts using BMRB, but he didn't and when I accused him of taking the "piss" - I censored the word on the forum to P*** - after he posted them with only 85 returns. I received another infraction notice from the forum for swearing. I suspect he reported me too.

So I said my goodbyes and haven't posted on that thread since.  But I ask you would the BMRB make a claim that the sampled 300 shops when they were only using 85?  It's a different kettle of fish when 300 diaries are sent out to the shops and thanks to either bad staff practices at the shops or the Post Office losing diaries in the post or delivering them after the day when the count has to be started. BMRB can't be blamed for that! But it would be ridiculous to think that three quarters of the 300 diaries were not sent back to BMRB. Though at one time I thought it was only 250 shops sampled, apparently it was always 300 shops. Though postal strikes caused them serious problems, there were plenty of shops willing to take part. BMRB just had a problem getting the really big stores to take part. And up to 1975 they had no Woolworths taking part. 

One last thing is that we can't be certain that many of the same stores were being sampled by the chart makers. Especially after the BMRB chart started. I think it's almost certain that some of the Melody Maker and NME stores were supplying sales information to BMRB, with 300 stores, there was bound to be an overlap.  

Update 15 July 2021.  

The nonsense continues. Several people put in a link to a website that has the information that following the introduction of the British Market Research Bureau Chart, in 1969 that by the end of 1969 both the New Musical Express and Melody Maker reduced the sample size down to 100. So when he started the 1970 charts, what does Mr Tibbs do? Nothing of course! He maintains the NME chart numbers to at 200 stores and Melody Maker at 250! Though he claims that the reduction wasn't done till 1971, when the BMRB chart he claims got more respect. Which I don't see any evidence for at all. The real reason of course it would mess up his system. For some completely unknown reason he has the shop returns for BMRB at 125. When of course they were using 300, with at least 250 returns on time for the chart. That aside if he knocked both NME and Melody Maker charts down to 100 each there would be no difference to the points system he uses and if two records were at say 10 on one chart and 11 on the other and the same record was vice-versa on the other chart he would have a tie as to where to put the two records. But again the main reason why he's not knocking the shop numbers down is that would give the BMRB, even on his lower shop system, the advantage over the other two. Which is why he didn't want to use the 300 shops in the first place. Even giving the 250 returns for BMRB, that would cancel out Melody Maker's control of the chart and give the same point system ties. 

At the end of the day Mr Tibbs chart therefore for 1970 is even more flawed, than the 1969 chart he's just completed. For one thing he's done no personal research on the charts published by NME, Melody Maker. He's simple gone on the hearsay or talk of various people. Some of these people did do some research talking to various people involved in the production of charts. However in many cases they were going on the general facts of the chart production, not the week to week running of the charts. So Mr Tibbs has never contacted anyone from the NME to find out if each week they did have 200 shops taking part, or if the numbers varied from week to week. Which by the sounds of things happened to the BMRB chart, but he refuses to give them a 300 shop count. Nor has he contacted anyone from either paper or look around to confirm that these papers were still using the figures he quotes after the end of 1969. He says he's going on what Dave Taylor said about them, that the change didn't happen till 1971. Dave was a chart fan and worked in radio. He contacted me about the Real Chart and thought it was very accurate. He even told me once that he found evidence that the Official Charts Company was fiddling the charts. That aside, Dave died a few years ago and so can't now confirm the information Mr Tibbs said. In looking into the compilation of the charts for the two papers, I have come across a book on the history of the New Musical Express and have ordered it. I should have it by next week. It might answer the question of the chart compilation. But I doubt it!! 

Although Mr Tibbs said the 1969 to 1971 charts are just for fun, the attacks by himself and other members of UKMIX on the BMRB chart in the thread are constant. Whereas nobody attacks the other charts for there many faults. He's just started the first 1970 chart. And one of his component charts - the NME - has a Jonathan King record at 30. It was only 62 on the Real Chart. The record therefore being hyped into the NME chart to get it that high. Hardly surprising with Jonathan King. He probably had people or himself buying up the record that week in the known NME stores which could be got for a fee. Indeed many writers of books have commented on the practice of getting hold of the lists for a fee. However I can't find any trace of anyone who has one of the lists. If anyone does have one let me know! 

I have tackled him on the issue, but he hasn't changed his mind. While he was doing the 1969 charts, I couldn't get any jibs in having not yet got around to them myself. But he's doing the 70's charts now so I can now get the digs in using the Real Charts, which as you can gather will annoy him. He doesn't quote me. He either responds by using someone else to respond with or just makes a statement. He thinks I am the only one that doesn't agree with him. But on that he's wrong, as I have private messages from UKMIX members saying the same thing as me.  The book about the NME doesn't answer the questions. But it does make it clear on some things. For instance each member of staff had to phone one of the shops on the chart list and get the results of sales. But later on one member of staff had a team of six to do it. But even by 1967 it was only 150 shops! Allowing the staff to phone up the shops could have resulted in chart fiddling. Since one staff member could have put greater numbers or a higher slot for the shop for a favourite artists. Plus if record companies got to know this was happening it would be easy to bribe staff to get higher slots for chart records. Wages on the music papers seemed to have been linked to the paper's sales. So it wouldn't have been too difficult to slip staff cash on the side. They could even bank it and due to the fact that weekly income could vary, the tax man wouldn't pick up on either! 

A new flaw                                          

Currently Mr Tibbs has gone back to doing the 1950's charts. Using NME, Record Mirror to do the 1956 charts. Using a the same method of shops. Later in 1956 Melody Maker started a chart. And he added that chart on the basis it was 20 shops. However the Melody Makers are available for that period on the American Music and Technology paper and book site. So I was looking at the papers and discovered that Melody Maker actually listed the amount of shops and who they were as this example shows:

I only looked at a few papers, but it shows that the amount of shops was between 30 and 33 shops each week that varied. I posted the same image on the site. But Mr Tibbs afterwards didn't say anything nor did anyone else. Instead he posted the next chart still with only 20 shops for the Melody Maker. The fact that he never bothered to check to see what was in-front of eyes or look at the Melody Maker shows that his calculations are wrong. 

One thing you notice in the image above is that Brian Epstein's NEMS (North End Music Store) is listed. This is also listed in the shops from Record Mirror. Thus proving that some of the Record Stores supplied the same papers. Chart Researcher Alan Smith, who Mr Tibbs quotes the numbers of his stores calculations regular, stated that the papers did NOT use the same stores. I never did believe this as the case, so we now have evidence for this. Unfortunately the New Musical Express never listed the stores taking part, even in the days before hyping meant such things needed to be kept secret.  The one thing that Mr Tibbs chart needs to be accurate on is the number of shops taking part and they are NOT the same shops taking part in each chart. However I reckon Epstein at some point supplied them all. Indeed some say that Epstein's sales of the Beatles first single was the result of his shop alone. But since these were point based charts, Epstein's store alone could never a put a record into the top 20, even if the record sold thousands of copies. Though is Epstein's store was in 5 charts, when you combine them, his shop would have got four times the amount of points then any other store. 

As you can see also the spread of shops opens up some representation problems. With London accounting for many sales, while Yorkshire is represented by one Leeds shop! Wales and Scotland don't do so bad. While the small coastal town of Scarborough has a say!     

Apparently there is information that lists of the chart shops used by such as NME could be purchased on the "black market" when chart hyping became a thing in the late 50's. However I have never seen one of these lists, nor has any other chart researcher that I have known. So if you do have a list of them from that period, I would love to see it.