The Official Charts Book Series

[madmurray]

Has anyone got these books?

Ive just ordered the 60s one to see what it is like before I purchase the rest.


The Official Charts: The Sixties is an essential gathering together of all the UK’s Official charts, week-by-week, as the full published chart, chronicling the shifting fashions and trends of that most memorable of decades. That means more than 500 weeks of both singles and album charts. These are the charts recognised by the music industry as their official rundowns (as curated today by the Official Charts Company – and made available at OfficialCharts.com). This means the charts broadcast by BBC Radio 1 and Top Of The Pops, and published by music industry magazine Music Week. This is the first time the full charts have been gathered together in the same place in a printed volume and is the latest in a series of books which, over the coming months, will make up a collection of volumes spanning every week of the UK’s Official singles and albums charts from 1952 to the present day. Also included are the accompanying EP Charts, which were published between March 1960 and December 1967. Published at the same time as this title is the companion volume, The Official Sixties Hits Book. The additional volumes on the rest of the UK’s great chart decades are coming your way very soon.




www.amazon.co.uk/Official-Charts-Sixties-Graham-Betts/dp/173148559X/ref=pd_aw_sbs_14_10?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=173148559X&pd_rd_r=cd1c3604-efa1-4f5b-a7bb-d0b6e21fda8e&pd_rd_w=GOWDC&pd_rd_wg=Z8lFZ&pf_rd_p=0208d703-a674-4413-8899-c3889837d212&pf_rd_r=QJ4H19XFFASP94XKTF26&psc=1&refRID=QJ4H19XFFASP94XKTF26

[Robbie]

I've got the 70s and 80s Singles chart books. They are both great, reproducing the weekly charts. And it's the full charts too (Top 50 to 6 May 1978, Top 75 from 13 May 1978 onwards). I'm going to get the 1960s chart book next. The 1960s book also includes EPs and Album charts as well as the Singles chart. For the 70s onwards the Singles and Album charts each have their own book. I'm less interested in the album charts so I doubt I'll bother buying those separate books.

Graham Betts, the author of the books, is also a poster over at ukmix and has contributed to the Official Chart Book thread under the poster name Hotspurman

www.ukmix.org/showthread.php?120797-The-Official-Book-Series

[vastar iner]

Is there anything in them though that you can't get online?

[madmurray]

Jan 10, 2020 21:36:58 GMT 1 vastar iner said:

Is there anything in them though that you can't get online?

I got the book yesterday and it is really good.

Every weekly chart in the 60s which is split over 3 thirds. First third the singles chart, second third the eps chart and finally the album chart.

A great resource to have at your finger tips.

Im going to get the 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s ones.

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[musicchronicle]

I'd like to add my praise to this series.

There are essentially two types of books.

The Official [Decade] Hits Books are like the old Guinness books, but much better. Every artist gets a high quality up-to-date biography, and the singles and albums are listed together chronologically, rather than separately, or in different books. Furthermore, the albums entries include full track lists. They retain the chart entry week, peak position and weeks on chart information of Guinness, but add things like sales certifications and a symbol to indicate US number ones.  

Whilst all of this information is available elsewhere, it isn't available in one place. I also know that Graham Betts has gone to extreme lengths to check and double-check its accuracy.

The Official Singles / Albums Chart: The [Decade] books are week by week chart listings. These are very similar in format to the OCC's chart archive on its website. However, the books possess several advantages. Firstly, they have eliminated errors.  The books are also more rigorous on re-entries versus new entries. But ultimately, whether these books are for you is not dissimilar to whether your preference is to own music in a physical format or to stream it.   I find the OCC website to be prone to crashing and I find the adverts and click-bate really annoying. Obviously, the books are distraction-free, and once you have a copy, your access to them is no longer at the mercy of your ISP, broadband provider or the OCC's website itself.

For what its worth, I've now bought all of the Official Hits Books, the 80s Singles and Albums books (which I used to help compile the Music Chronicle 1980), and I am steadily buying all of the other Singles and Albums books.  By my reckoning there will be 20 books by the time the series is finished, which means a £400 outlay for the full set.  That's a lot of money, but if you love the charts and music history then there are few better, more absorbing publications.

[bengy99]

You may be interested to learn that Amazon have issued Kindle versions of The Official Charts - The Sixties.
Only costs £9.99 instead of £20 for the paperback version. It includes the UK’s Official singles and albums charts from 1952 to the present day. Also included are the accompanying EP Charts, which were published between March 1960 and December 1967. (2,330 pages)

One advantage of e-books (versus their print equivalents) however is the search function, which can be used to search for any titles, artists, labels or even key words, using the search function built into your e-reader or tablet app.

The free sample for The Official Charts - The Sixties will be auto-delivered wirelessly to your iPad.

If you click on Look Inside you can read this,



Sold via Amazon's Kindle store, the books can be viewed via Kindle devices or the Kindle apps for Android and Apple mobile and tablets. The full list of titles is as follows:

The Official Charts: The Fifties.
The Official Charts: The Sixties.
The Official Singles Charts: The Seventies.
The Official Albums Charts: The Seventies.
The Official Singles Charts: The Eighties.
The Official Albums Charts: The Eighties.
The Official Singles Charts: The Nineties.
The Official Albums Charts: The Nineties.
The Official Singles Charts: The Noughties.
The Official Albums Charts: The Noughties.
The Official Singles Charts: The Tens.
The Official Albums Charts: The Tens.

[vastar iner]

We actually know how close "Please Please Me" was to taking over at the top of the Record Retailer charts - according to the raw data, as reported, it was in a dead-heat with Frank Ifield.

[rubcale]

Not that it matters but during the 1960s BBC Radio 1 make up their own chart being an average of the others?

[bengy99]

@ rubcale - you should have a look at,

www.ukmix.org/forum/chart-discussion/chart-analysis/10418185-the-ultimate-averaged-chart-the-bbc-chart-re-imagined

[vastar iner]

You can sort of shortcut that by looking at the BBC chart, and break dead heats by whichever record was higher in Melody Maker and NME.