Charts rigged says paper

Press, 23 February 1978, Page 15

Charts rigged says paper

The London “Sunday Times” has said that it has documents and other evidence showing that two London companies have attempted to rig the pop record charts, reports NZPA.

The “Sunday Times” said that its investigation had revealed that the companies had posted records to 375 “chart-return shops” and had themselves bought them back using a national network of housewives and students. The list of chart-return shops is supposed to be secret, according to the newspaper and is used to compile the key British Market Research Bureau “top 50” chart, published in “Music Week” magazine and broadcast by the 8.8. C.

If a record sold just a few copies from those shops it would almost certainly reach the top 50. Britain’s 7000 record shops base their orders on the chart, and the 8.8. C. gives air time to records ordered by the shops, the paper said. Electrical and Musical Industries, Britain’s biggest record company promised to support efforts to stamp out rigging of the country’s pop charts, after the report by the “Sunday Times” was published. The company' acknowledged that unscrupulous managers paid people to buy records at certain shops to get them into the top 50 calculated by the research bureau.

“We are all obviously concerned that this sort of thing goes on, and we fully support the efforts of British Phonographic Industries to get to the

bottom of it,” said an EMI spokesman. The BPI hired private detectives in January to investigate whether chart rigging was occurring. Record industry sources said a list of the supposedly secret chart return shops was freely available. e/.ii accepted that it would be difficult to find a new system of calculating the chart.

“I suppose the shops could be switched on a weekly basis but this would make it very complicated,” the spokesman said.