Chart Books - $20 off

EdisonLite wrote: Thanks for the info. My biggest interest is for the '70s and '80s, so if I find this book, it will be interesting to see where the songs peaked on the UK charts in that 20 year period vs. the Guiness Book peaks, which are the only peaks I currently know of for UK singles from that period.

There is another chart that kept on going thru the 70s & 80s = Melody Maker. Record Mirror ceased compiling their own charts in 1962 and started carrying Record Retailer charts. Disc ceased compiling their own charts in 1967 and started carrying Melody Maker charts. NME and Melody Maker kept producing their own charts until June 1988. The NME charts are in those books I mentioned, available in used copies from Amazon, I strongly recommend them.

Melody Maker charts were not published in a book, but I can direct you to a website.

The 70s Melody Maker singles charts are here:
https://www.ukmix.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=102595&hili t=tiscali

The 80s Melody Maker singles charts are here. The years jump around, but they're all in there (I think). Note that in June 1988 Melody Maker (and NME) ceased compiling their own charts and started carrying the MRIB charts, which take over here up thru Dec 1989:

https://www.ukmix.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=95375

One other tidbit of info, prior to Feb 1969, all the 5 major independent music paper charts produced their own charts by averaging the chart positions of their reporting record shops. Each shop would report their top record sellers each week to their home music paper, but in ranked form, a Top 30 or so, that did not include actual sales numbers. NME and Melody Maker continued with this methodology thru June 1988. The national SALES based chart was started in Feb 1969, and they totaled up actual sales from their reporting record shops. First known as the BMRB chart, then Gallop, then CIN, then Official. Record Mirror, Record Retailer, and the BBC carried and used this new chart starting in Feb 1969. But it took years for the new calculation method to stabilize and become reliable, and for the 'industry' to finally accept it. So the NME and Melody Maker charts were still very meaningful way into the 70s, some would say up thru 1979.