Official Charts

The Official UK Charts Company Limited (formerly Music Industry Chart Services Limited and Chart Information Network), trading as the Official Charts Company (OCC) or Official Charts, is a British inter-professional organisation that compiles various official record charts in the United Kingdom, Ireland and France. In the United Kingdom, its charts include ones for singles, albums and films, with the data compiled from a mixture of downloads, physical media purchases and streaming. The OCC produces its charts by gathering and combining sales data from retailers through market researchers Kantar, and claims to cover 99% of the singles market and 95% of the album market, and aims to collect data from any retailer who sells more than 100 chart items per week. The OCC is operated jointly by the British Phonographic Industry and the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) (formerly the British Association of Record Dealers (BARD)) and is incorporated as a private company limited by shares jointly owned by BPI and ERA. It was formed in 1990 as the Chart Information Network by the BBC, BARD, and the publishers of Music Week. CIN took over as compilers of the official UK charts in 1990, and the company has continued in that role, as the OCC, since 1994. Before then, the charts were produced by a succession of market research companies, beginning with the British Market Research Bureau (BMRB) in 1969 and Gallup, Inc. in 1983. Before the production of the "official" charts, various less comprehensive charts were produced, such as by magazine New Musical Express (NME) which began its chart in 1952. Some of these older charts (including NME's earliest singles charts) are now part of the official OCC canon.