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Official Charts Company launches indie record store chart

By | Published on Wednesday 18 April 2012

Official Charts Company

To coincide with this year’s Record Store Day on 21 Apr, The Official Charts Company has announced a new year-round chart collating the biggest selling music through independent record shops in the UK each week. The first chart will be unveiled by Steve Lamacq on his 6music show this Friday, and will thereafter appear at 7pm every Sunday.

According to the OCC, independent record shops accounted for 4.4% of physical album sales in the UK last year – around 2.5 million albums. However, they handled 95.8% of vinyl album sales, which saw a 43% rise year on year.

OCC MD Martin Talbot told CMU: “Independent record shops are more important than ever in helping introduce music fans to new, interesting music, so we are delighted to be working with the Record Store Day team to launch this chart. A record store is for life, not just for Record Store Day, so we very much hope that the Official Record Store Chart will serve to harness the focus created by Record Store Day and help maintain it week in, week out, through the year”.

Record Store Day organiser and manager of London’s Rough Trade East Spencer Hickman added: “Record Store Day is a worldwide celebration of record shops and their unique position that they have in their local community. The idea of the Official Record Store Chart is to take Record Store Day and keep it in people’s minds throughout the whole year. It will give a true representation of physical sales across all the indie stores up and down the country”.

Ahead of the first official chart, the Official Charts Company has released a list of the biggest selling albums through indie stores so far this year:

1 Lana del Rey – Born To Die
2 Leonard Cohen – Old Ideas
3 Adele – 21
4 Bruce Springsteen – Wrecking Ball
5 The Black Keys – El Camino
6 Enter Shikari – A Flash Flood Of Colour
7 First Aid Kit – The Lion’s Roar
8 Mark Lanegan Band – Blues Funeral
9 Emeli Sande – Our Version Of Events
10 The Maccabees – Given To The Wild



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