The Xmas 2009 Chart War - Some iTunes Chart Graphs

7:17p.m., Sat 9 Jan 2010

A while back, when I blogged about "How The iTunes Charts Work" I mentioned that I'd been monitoring iTunes Charts feeds. Well, the chunk I code to do that is now its very own site. Have a peek at www.iTunesCharts.net.

The site is fairly basic at the moment. No bells and whistles as yet, but the data I'm collecting is interesting stuff and I'll add new features to the site as my workload allows.

As a first taste of that data here's comparison of the chart performance of the two big contenders for the UK Christmas Number 1.

For those who don't know, generally speaking the shoo-in for Christmas Number One is the release from the X-Factor winner. In 2009 this was Joe McElderry's "The Climb". An internet campaign harnessed the power of Facebook and Twitter to beat the pre-fab pop of X-Factor to the number one slot by urging people to buy Rage Against The Machine's 1992 single "Killing In The Name".

As you might expect the RATM song starts climbing the charts earlier, and dies away much quicker whereas the new release has a longer natural tail of sales.

Of course, I should mention that the aim of the campaign wasn't to beat X-Factor to the number one slot on the iTunes chart, but to win on the "official chart" as compiled by The Official Chart Company. This chart is a weekly chart, counting sales, Monday morning to Sunday evening. Consider also that the RATM song has been available for purchase via iTunes for a long time, but the X-Factor single was only released on 16 December 2009.

As a side note, and as a side-effect of the chart battle, Rage Against The Machine's debut album also entered the top 100 albums, no doubt aided by a discount price of £3.95.

Here's the comparison of the single chart performance of "Killing In The Name" versus the album chart performance of "Rage Against The Machine".

The blue line represents the performance of "Killing In The Name" in the singles chart, the red line the performance of the album in the album chart.

Relevant links

• iTunes Charts Site
• The Official Charts Company
• The RATM FOr Xmas #1 Facebook Group
• Rock anthem outselling X Factor winner Joe McElderry (BBC, 15 Dec)
• RATM beating 'X Factor' by 65,000 sales in Number One race (NME, 15 Dec)
• RATM v Joe McElderry: Chart update! (Guardian , 17 Dec)
• Rage Against the Machine beat X Factor winner in charts (BBC)