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UK charts firm to start compiling France’s music charts
By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 18 December 2020
From next month the UK’s Official Charts Company will start counting up French streams and sales too. Though not for the UK charts. That would be mad! Imagine a chart that combined British and French music consumption. Not in Brexit Britain thank you very much!
You French music fans can fuck off. We don’t care about your foreign music. And keep your fucking hands off our fucking fish. Sorry about that everybody. It’s just that swearing at the French is now a legal requirement here in the UK. Which will make the new alliance between the OCC and French record label trade group SNEP interesting.
So yes, from next month the OCC, with its technical partner Kantar, will start compiling the French music charts. It takes over from German stats company GFK, which has compiled France’s charts since 1994. OCC won the bidding after SNEP put the chart counting gig up for tender a year ago.
Confirming the move, SNEP MD Alexandre Lasch says: “The Official Charts Company, a joint venture of labels and retailers, has been operating official music and video rankings in the UK since 1994 and in Ireland since 2017, also providing the industry with comprehensive weekly summaries and reports. Building on this heritage, we are certain that Official Charts will be able to bring the same level of know-how to labels in France, as well as to our partners in specialised distribution, mass distribution and streaming platforms, without whom this work would not be possible”.
Meanwhile OCC boss Martin Talbot adds: “The Official Charts Company is delighted to have concluded the agreement to compile the official charts and market data for France from January 2021. Like the UK, France is among the most influential and important music markets in the world and deserves the very best charts and data. We look forward to working with the teams at SNEP, France’s labels, retailers and other partners to provide the French recorded music market with gold standard tools to drive their businesses”.
Just to clarify, we Brits are THRILLED at this cross-channel alliance and are super excited about UK counting people counting up all the sales and streams of all the music bought and streamed by all you lovely French music fans in the fantastic French music market. But the fish thing, we’re fucking serious about that. Or at least, that’s what our tabloid newspapers keep telling us.
