This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Labels & Publishers Retail
Official Charts Company moves to ensure all indie store home delivery sales are counted
By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 31 March 2020
The UK’s Official Charts Company has announced that it is speedily opening up its home delivery reporting systems to all chart-returning independent record stores, as music retailers focus on mail-order as a result of the COVID-19 shutdown.
A number of indie record stores already offered home delivery services and reported those sales – alongside in-store transactions – to the official chart compilers. However, many more shops are now offering home deliveries after being forced to close their doors on the high street as measures to restrict and delay the spread of COVID-19 escalated earlier this month.
Those home delivery services will be crucial for many indie record stores who face an uncertain future as the enforced shutdown extends. Various online campaigns have been launched encouraging people to order new releases from their local record shop’s website in order to support those businesses, including the #loverecordstores initiative that went live last week, and a #recordstoreoftheday scheme that kicked off yesterday.
Seeking to support and acknowledge the sudden increase in home delivery services, the OCC and Entertainment Retailers Association have joined forces to ensure all indie shops can get their online sales data into the official music charts.
The OCC explains that the technical system for reporting that data – aka Colossus – “is free of charge and simply requires each retailer to have internet access and a web browser. Retailers processing significant numbers of sales can also be supplied with a scanner which makes the system even more user friendly”.
OCC boss Martin Talbot says: “We have already seen the launch this week of the brilliant #loverecordstores initiative and it is crucial that the entire industry rallies round to support the independent sector. At the Official Charts, we are proud to have one of the biggest independent retail panels of any chart systems worldwide – and this is because of the crucial role that independent retail plays in the music and the broader culture in the UK”.
“We are delighted to open up the Colossus system to help stand united with this sector at this incredibly difficult time”, he goes on. “We will also be doing everything we can to support independent retailers through the coming weeks by promoting them via OfficialCharts.com and our social media”.
Kim Bayley, ERA’s CEO, adds: “Indie record shops have faced the double blow of the postponement due to coronavirus of Record Store Day to 20 Jun and now the closure of their stores. With their obsessive focus on music and catering to their local audiences, indie record shops are part of the DNA of the music industry. That’s why we have long worked to ensure that as many of them as possible are represented on the chart panel. It is great that we have been able to fast-track this process to support indies through the coronavirus crisis”.
Indies wanting to report their home delivery sales to the charts should send an email with their store name and contacts to chartstechnical@kantar.com, requesting access to Colossus.
