Talk:List of best-selling singles of the 1900s in the United Kingdom

Not really an accurate listing

Never posted to wikipedia before so not sure if this is doing the right thing....

However, this list does not seem entirely accurate or up to date - in fact I'm not sure what it's trying to achieve.

A list of the best-selling singles of the 20th Century in my view should either be:

A list of which singles sold the most up to and including the final sales week of 1999. OR A list of best selling singles RELEASED during the 20th century with sales as up to date as possible.

This list seems to be neither of these. It takes sales figures up to and including 2002 (whatever date was the cut-off point for the Ultimate Chart book and tv programme referenced) for singles originally released before 2000.

An example of this inconsistency is that "Imagine" by John Lennon was re-released in December 1999 to coincide with the Millenium and therefore continued to sell well into the new year. The sales total given in this list includes those sales from 2000. Similarly totals for singles such as Baby One More Time by Britney Spears and Blue by Eiffel 65 in this list include residual sales after 2000.

To be an accurate list of sales within the 20th Century such 21st Century sales would need to be excluded. To be an accurate list of best selling 20th Century releases then the list should be updated to include download and other sales of singles listed to date (which could for example be referenced from the OCC's Million Sellers book, published November 2012). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Davyboyb (talk • contribs) 13:26, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, fair points... The hope was that this list would of which singles sold the most up to and including the final sales week of 1999. To be honest, I just took the list from The Ultimate Chart and removed the six singles that had been released during the 21st century. It seemed reasonable to me that the 20th century singles probably wouldn't have sold a massive amount during C21 for them to have altered their positions in this chart. For example, Eiffel 65 need to have sold more than 17,000 singles during the first few weeks of 2000 in order for their place on this list to be higher than it should be. Similarly, Britney needs to have sold more than 20,000, and Lennon more than 36,000. Now that I think about it though, I guess that's entirely possible... A Thousand Doors (talk | contribs) 21:46, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

I think with Britney you're safe as her chart run for that single finished in August 1999 so no significant sales after year-end after all. However Eiffel 65 chart run continued into 2000 with positions of 29-34-41-51-68-72 before it left the chart. It would also have sold in small quantities (i.e. not enough to be in top 75 but still selling) after this date. A forum I'm a member of (Haven UK Charts Forum) lists Eiffel 65 as the 2nd Best Seller of 1999 with sales of 956k. This would imply sales of around 67k in early 2000 which sounds pretty plausible. In the same list, Britney's sales are 1,445k which implies very low residual sales for her single up to 2000, and as you say not enough to alter her position.

Similarly I have it on good authority from the same forum that the 1999 re-release of Imagine sold 339,000 in total, of which 279,700 took place at the end of 1999 itself (enough for it to be 65th best seller of the year) implying sales of just under 60,000 in the new year.

Therefore, I think it is very likely that Imagine should actually be 2 places lower in the list at number 24, lifting both Britney and Human League up by one place each. I also think it is likely that Eiffel 65 did indeed only sell 956k in 1999, which would put it at number 92 on the list and lift everything from Slade down to Take That up by a place. Unfortunately I'm unable to provide verifiable source for this information, which I know would be needed to make changes according to Wikipedia policy.

Given that the data you've used certainly pre-dates any downloads, perhaps this discrepancy can be cleared up by a statement to the effect that the list includes all data for physical singles released up to 31/12/1999, but where these had residual sales into the early 21st century, such sales have been included. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Davyboyb (talk • contribs) 12:28, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

20th century

If you check WP:CENTURY you will find that the 20th century ended on 31 December 2000, so this page needs renaming (along with its 21st century counterpart) to something like List of best-selling singles of the 1900s (century) in the United Kingdom or if you prefer List of best-selling singles between 1900 and 1999 in the United Kingdom Btljs (talk) 07:42, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

where is dont go breaking my heart by elton john and kiki dee it has sold over a million now05:11, 30 May 2017 (UTC)05:11, 30 May 2017 (UTC)~~ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.75.188.186 (talk)

It has now, but these are the singles that sold the most during the previous century (i.e. 1900 to 1999). DGBMH didn't sell its millionth copy until 2013. A Thousand Doors (talk | contribs) 10:00, 31 May 2017 (UTC)