Downloads can buy you love

HOORAY for Koopa the band who are now a footnote in the musical history books by dint of the fact that they are the first unsigned band to have a Top 40 hit.

The change to the chart rules at the beginning of this month means that acts can chart on download sales alone, whereas previously they needed to release singles on CD or another physical format to become eligible.

To press up enough physical copies of a single to be even in with a slim chance of breaching the Top 40 meant you had to be signed to a label with the clout to do that for you, so effectively that meant that the charts were off-limits to unsigned bands.

One listen to the Koopa single is enough to convince you that this was a good thing. The band's derivative pop-punk ain't much cop and they must be a good 14-and-a-half minutes and counting into their allotted time on the Warholian clock.

Most people seem to think that it's modern, progressive and altogether whizzo for the new-fangled downloads to be eligible for the charts. It's not. What it means in the first instance is that there will be endless repetition.

The three big winners in the new rules so far are Snow Patrol, Gnarls Barkley and, would you believe, the Jackson 5. Despite the fact that both Snow Patrol and Gnarls Barkley released their respective Chasing Cars and Crazy singles months ago, they're back in the charts again this month as people play catch-up. The Jackson 5 reappear because apparently one of their members is involved in some hideous reality TV show and people are so dim to think this fact alone is reason enough to start buying the group's records all over again.

The situation will become even more farcical when, as expected, The Beatles will soon settle their long-running legal dispute with Apple computers (owners of iTunes). Because of the legal difficulties, The Beatles have prevented the sale of their songs on iTunes, but when all that is sorted, their whole back catalogue goes online and it is widely expected that a good bulk of their songs will chart all over again.

What would happen if Top Of The Pops still existed? It would be full of bands who have nothing really to do with breaking the charts but are merely getting a second spin around thanks to technology.

The argument from those behind the change to the chart eligibility rules is that now the charts are truly representative of what people are buying and they aren't in thrall to what the record companies are pushing on us as "new and exciting" music. But it also means that old songs used again in TV dramas or advertisements or whatever will also be crowbarred back into the charts.

There will come a time when this year's charts may well be indistinguishable from the charts of 10, 20 or 30 years ago.

Downloads sales are very important, but it might be an idea for a download chart to run parallel with an old-style chart - with the latter reflecting only new material.

And besides, if the charts wanted to be truly representative of what people are actually listening to, the fact that people listen to an awful lot of music via their computers without actually purchasing either a physical copy or a download file of it would need to be taken into account. This is nothing to do with illegal downloads but everything to do with the tons of music that is available on social networking sites.

With that in mind, the charts can't be truly representative until sites such as MybloodySpace offer a "buy now" facility. And that's hardly likely to happen.

Stop this download chart nonsense now.