Thanks to ohnoitisnathan for his recent post with some old ARIA & Countdown charts. This inspired me to suggest a possible collaboration (for all those interested) in which we could share and perhaps create some kind of "database" of our old music charts ?
I personally have a lot of old 3XY charts from the '70s and a sprinkling of ARIA & Countdown charts from the '80s.
There were also charts in Juke & RAM of course and no doubt countless others. It could be fun and very interesting.
Would anyone be interested in this...and if so, any ideas of the most suitable site we could use to construct a basic archive ? Something that would enable us to create directories for different years and different kinds of charts within each year ? Very basic, simple & user-friendly.
If all those who are interested are given the login details, we could all just upload when we have time ? Hopefully not too time consuming or complicated...just some fun and an interesting resource
Update: Have just been having a look around Google Docs and it looks like it could be useful for something like this. You can create folders and sub-folders there...still checking it out.
Sounds like a good idea. I have a lot of late 80's local Smash Hits magazines that have charts in them and plenty of 90's ones as well (not sure how later or early you want).
Always like looking at charts from certain eras - very interesting.
Hi, I have a ton of original ARIA top 50 charts from July 1987 onwards, and could scan some in. I would love to get all the countdown charts pre July 1987, original scans, that would be awesome to check out. Hopefully if we can pool all our resources, this would be splended. To get some idea, can we sort of have some consistancy if we are going to do scans, like to scan at a minimal dots per inch? I've seen some chart scans on the internet, and dot res is so low one would have a hard time trying to read the song titles.
Have always been interested in charts so I would be happy to support this project if someone was to run with it.
Of the Countdown/Aria charts I have nearly 100 of them (plus numerous doubles) dated between July 17 1983 to January 12 1986.
I have a complete set of 3XY charts from Dec 1978 to Dec 1988. The few originals that I am missing I have the reprints from The Age where they were also published each week in the Green Guide up to 1984 and then in The Sun from 1984 onwards. I even have a few obscure ones like in 1976 when it doubled as an Iron-On.
With the EON FM charts I also have a fair run of them plus I used to cut them out of The Age Green Guide as well each week (after they replaced the 3XY charts in 1984)
I can help out with Ram and Juke to a fair extent. I have most of the RAM issues between 1975 and 1987 except for a period from late 1982 to mid 1984 where I only have 18 issues between No.s 195 and 247. For Juke I would have about three-quarters of the issues between 1979 and 1992 (from issue 193 onwards.
RAM Issue No. 1 + 1st RAM chart
I also have a few lesser Australian music papers such as Roadrunner, Vox and EonExtra from the late 70's to early 80's which have charts in them.
Then there are also obscure independent released charts such as this one from The Mighty Music Machine shops.
Would be happy to help out if required but as it is time consuming don't know how much.
Many thanks to all of you for your replies and enthusiasm...all contributions would be very welcomed, valued and appreciated.
Have a look at the link below...this is what I've managed to do this afternoon. Click on 1986 for an example of the potential. I'm interested in thoughts and feedback and yes, I agree, we can only do as much as we can do with time restraints, same applies to me 100%
https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0B0Htd0DEUcUsbktBYzRvRmZYY00/edit
A data base of Chart history would be FLAWLESS!
YES YES YES!!!
Your latest scans Guru are HEAVENLY!!!
A great idea! Would love to contribute,but lost all my old charts years ago I collected all the local(bris) stereo/radio 10 charts from the early-mid 80's.
I've got Excel spreadsheets of the typed ARIA top 50 singles (April 1983-December 1989) and top 100 singles (January 1990 onwards). I have sporadic printed ARIA charts from 1983 onwards, and a complete set of printed ARIA charts from August 1992-Oct 1998. I might try scanning a few more when I can, but it's on a list of already umpteen things to do
I've also got a set of photocopied ARIA top 100 singles & albums charts I photocopied from the ARIA reports kept by the State Library of Victoria, covering from about Jan 1994 to some time in 1999.
My only suggestion, Luke would be to have a consistent way of labeling the files, so e.g. you can easily find a particular week. Using the year-month-day format might be easiest for sorting the charts chronologically (e.g. 1986-12-21).
PS - there have been some great unofficial UK chart archives I've found online over the years; however, 2 of the 3 major sources I use for UK charts have received directives from the "Official Chart Company" (aka the Fun Police) to remove their weekly charts. One site, which covered the full top 100 for most of the 80s (the UK otherwise only publishes an 'official' top 75) has resorted to listing only chart peaks and the number of weeks in the chart. The other site still has the week by week chart runs, but only for the top 75.
Nathan is this the site your talking about?
http://www.chartstats.com/
An excellent site..
There's another one called everyhit.com that doesn't seem to work anymore I actually found the chartstats site when everyhit went on the fritz & it's a much better site with picture sleeves etc and not just chart peaks.
^ Yep, chartstats used to have the week-by-week full charts. They now have just chart peaks and weeks on the chart, which is better than nothing, but it was so much better before.
I remember everyhit, haven't looked it up for a few years.
The other UK chart sites I use are:
Polyhex.com - singles chart archive searchable by artist/song title, and includes peak position and top 75 chart run:
http://www.polyhex.com/music/chartruns/chartruns.php
Chart Log UK - contains single/albums chart peaks and weeks in chart. Top 100 for 1994, Top 200 or 250 thereafter:
http://www.zobbel.de/cluk/CLUK_00.HTM
Some other chart sites I use are:
ARIA top 50 singles/albums archive dating back to June 1988 (NB: doesn't contain chart info before this, so e.g. John Farnham's 'Whispering Jack' album peaked at #9 according to this archive )
http://australian-charts.com/weekchart.asp?cat=s
It also contains New Zealand, France, Austria, Switzerland, Finland, Sweden & Norway info, although not all of those charts cover all years.
There's also the UKMIX chart forum, which has some quite useful threads if you're a chart freak, like this one:
http://www.ukmix.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=13100
O-M-G Guru! The EON FM Chart from 1982 is just SPECTACULAR!!!!!!!
I love the Pseudo Echo and Kim Wilde ones, I have them somewhere in this room!
Luke,
I can't see any charts in that link. The folders are empty. It says 20 items available. Which years have you put 20 into out of curiosity?
This is going to take you a fricking lonnnng time to do, I don't envy you!
Liked the 20/5/84 Aria Chart. I looked on the archives page to see which Countdown episode/Top 10 it matched with. Def. not the 20/5 or 27/5, thought maybe 13/5, but I can't see that listed???
I looked around, and tried uploading, but couldn't find an upload button. I thought anyone could upload to google docs. So is this like an open access area, or do we need a password to throw stuff up?
Interesting to see Split Enz at #1 singles/albums on the EON chart. IIRC SMIALB made it to #2 on the Countdown charts.
No worries, I'll get my folders out and scan some more when I find some time. :)
This should evolve into a website so that anyone can find these items and will allow for an even wider range of input which would then ensue from such a move.
At the moment it is just a folder in a thread on a forum which after a period of time will get lost. There may be quite a few people interested in this sort of information but they would never find it with a standard search.
What are the long term plans for this project?
Hi all - a great concept which can easily be expanded to include a comprehensive database of weekly charts over a long period of time.
Although I have some assortment of stuff compared to some of you guys I probably do not have much - my main collecting was always the 3XY charts right until the end. 3XY started publishing a chart way back in 1971 - I have every chart from then until the end. The vast majority of charts prior to 1976 are photocopied direct from the state library archives - I did this way back in the 80s - so unfortunately these ones are only black & white. By around 1979 or 1980 I used to visit Brashs music stores every week and pick up 5-6 copies of the 3XY charts. In the early days of the 1970s there was a great assortment of very colourful charts available to pick up for free in your local music stores - stations like 3UZ etc in addition to 3XY. Of course the 3XY ones had a music artist printed on the other side for a time so some of them are now also probably collectable. The Rocktober ones were also very attractive as displayed by GuruBob in here.
Another great collectors item are those end-of-year 3XY Top 100 charts during the 1970s. They came as a large colourful full-sized poster - very hard to find I would imagine these days. These finished in 1978 - from then on a yearly Top 100 was published at the same size as a normal Top 40.
Did the 3XY charts have a major impact on the National Charts?
Thanks. The National Charts are only of interest to me. If the 3XY charts are/were very similar to the National Charts, then they could be of interest.
Sorry Michael - for those of you living interstate of course the 3XY charts would not have much meaning. There were many similarities to the national charts of course, but (especially) during the 1970s each capital city was very remote to the others so charts varied a hell of a lot. If you lived in Melbourne, 3XY was the ONLY relevant chart until the FM stations etc came along. There was not much concept of a "national chart" in the early days.
I'd be interested in assisting with this (when I get time)... I see there's the Dec 11, 1988 ARIA singles & albums chart up - was that from my scan? (I don't mind). If so, feel free to add the other scans I've done (if they're not already on it).
My scanner produces .bitmap files, so I have to upload them to a site such as flickr to convert to .jpg (just renaming the file doesn't seem to work for my scans).
I've added a contact email (you'll have to get rid of the NOSPAM bit though) if you trust me with the password
I had a bunch of 3XY (I think, from memory) charts photocopied from the late 70s/early 80's. Someone my mother worked with in a former job had a stack of them, and she kindly photocopied them for me one day. However, I'm 99% sure I've since thrown them out, after realising they weren't the 'real' (Kent Report/ARIA) chart.
I also remember picking up a Triple M printed top 40/50 chart in late 1989, though that too is since long gone.
The first music charts compiled were by 2UE around 1958, from this moment on, other radio stations started compiling charts like 2SM, 2UW, 2WL and so on. From about 1964 1965 ish David Kent was contracted by the Go-Set magazine to publish a national top 50, which was inside each weeks edition of the magazine. This continued up to and including August 1974 when Go-Set ceased its publication run. From this point Kent offered his charts as a service. At the same time the charts were expanded from the Top 50 singles to Top 100. From September 1974, the Kent Report was published weekly up to about 1999 or 2000 when it too ceased its run. Around June 1988 ARIA started doing it's own in-house research, which led to the ARIA and Kent charts being seperate entities by the middle of 1988. By today, ARIA is still going, and Kent is now just putting out various chart books. I think I'm pretty spot on with this, but won't be offended should I be corrected.
Sounds good to me.
It doesn't really matter which charts you followed, they were all a bit dodgy in relation to positions.
The Countdown charts were long questioned for their accuracy before they teamed with ARIA. It was surprising how often 2 songs tied for a position which allowed an 11th single to make their Top 10. It was nearly always an Australian act that scraped into 10th position or benefitted with a chart position in those instances, which was something Molly always pushed.
Often they would also be linked to a station's playlist for their weekly chart program.
The 3XY and EON FM charts were the 2 main rivals in Melbourne in the mid 80's yet they were always different to each other - here is an example in November 1985 (Fox FM used to play the official Australian Top 40 on Saturday nights at this time but they didn't issue charts):-
Then you also had the Record Company rigging issues - here's an article from Juke magazine Sept 20 1980 (I really need to scan things straighter)
And a follow up from the Nov 15 1980 issue of Juke
March 7, 1981 ad is utterly and absolutely UNBELIEVABLE!
It's STUNNING