2006 hasn't been a good year for pop, or for us chart-watchers. We've lost Smash Hits, cd:uk and Top Of The Pops. (Whatever happened to cd:uk's move from ITV1 to five, which was supposed to happen in the Summer?) We've lost a plethora of popsters, from James Brown to half of Baccara, while Pete Doherty remains alive. Where's the (pop)justice?

Today sees the last ever singles chart, after 54 years. Today is in some ways as significant as the decision taken in 1952 to move from a sheet music chart to a chart counting the sales of vinyl.

From tomorrow, it will no longer be necessary to have a physical version of a song available in order to appear in the 'combined' chart, so the singles chart will become a songs chart instead. This means that album tracks will be able to chart in their own right, even if they haven't been released as singles. It raises the intriguing prospect of the chart being clogged up with many tracks by the same artist, but recent evidence suggests this will only happen lower down. In the last few weeks, a glance at the 'downloads only' chart, where this free-for-all is already happening, reveals handfuls of oasis and Westlife tracks from their recent albums, but only near the bottom of the Top 200 downloads.

Tracks which are already creating a buzz will be able to chart from next week, regardless of when record companies decide to 'release' them, so the record companies are actually surrendering a great deal of control over the market by agreeing to this move. (As an example, Take That's brilliant 'Shine', which will be their next single, is already 'doing significant business' and is loitering around the lower reaches of the download chart long before single release.)

Songs which feature in TV programmes and adverts, if they're available on legal download sites, will be able to register their sales immediately, without waiting for a record company to release the accompanying CD with an 'as featured in' sticker on the front.

More significantly, the huge lead time between songs being released to radio and the physical release of a CD will now be gone, which could see big singles charting immediately. Considering that some songs are on the radio two months before we can legally buy them at the moment, this is a huge change, but the biggest change will be next Christmas, when we will no longer have the ridiculous situation that we've had last year and this year, where Mariah Carey has had the biggest-selling Christmas song with an old track for two consecutive years, but it doesn't appear in the singles chart because it's not available in the shops. The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl, meanwhile, are also selling strongly without being released on CD this year, but they're allowed to chart again because the song was released on CD within the last 12 months. ('Fairytale of New York' was given special dispensation to remain in the chart last week when that twelve months was up, allowing it to be the Christmas no.6, when it should really have disappeared from the chart altogether.)

There are currently over 30 Christmas songs or old Christmas hits (such as Bohemian Rhapsody) in the Top 200 downloads chart!

There are some other changes from tomorrow, involving lengthening the time limit for chart-eligible CD singles to 25 minutes and allowing up to four tracks instead of three. However, if you examine CDs in the shops as much as I do, you'll be as confused as I am, as there are several recent releases which have had as many as five tracks plus a video on them, but seem to have been allowed into the singles chart regardless.

One of the worst things about all this is that, just as the chart becomes even more unpredictable and exciting, there are still no rumours of Radio 1 ending the disastrous JK and Joel experiment, so the Top 40 show will remain presented by idiots who know little or nothing about the music they're playing and are more interested in filling airtime with their inane chatter. They can't even manage to pronounce 'Siempre' properly, on the evidence of last week's album chart rundown, which I had the misfortune to hear, in a moment of Christmas Eve weakness. (I don't listen to the Radio 1 chart show any more, unless I find myself in the car. I just tune in at the end for the countdown.)

Radio 1, please give us back our chart show, with some decent presenters, because the chart is about to become interesting again and it would be nice to have it presented on a show that was listenable. Pretty please?

Happy New Year!


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