Chart failure

On Friday, Mogwai's Stuart Braithwaite delightedly posted on Bluesky that his band's new album The Bad Fire had reached "#5 UK, #1 Scotland": "It's absolutely unreal seeing such support after all these years. It means the world. Thank you all so much."

Even allowing for the fact that its predecessor As The Love Continues hit the UK top spot in 2021, Braithwaite's words ring true; it's remarkable that a band as supposedly obtuse as Mogwai can find themselves chart toppers, especially for someone like myself who's been with them for nearly every step of the whole journey. His bewilderment and pride are quite understandable.

But, without wishing to trash the achievement entirely, there is a big caveat, and one that the BBC's Mark Savage hinted at in his recent interview feature with Braithwaite: As The Love Continues triumphed over Dua Lipa and Harry Styles for "one glorious week" four years ago (and The Bad Fire achieved similar success this January) because Mogwai were "aided by chart rules that place higher value on physical record sales over streams when calculating rankings" and so - as "a cult band with a fanbase that prizes vinyl - found the scales tipped in their favour".

In a recent article for the Guardian, Eamonn Forde was pointedly critical of these rules, turning his nose up at the "increasingly fusty scent of anachronism". He explained: "Streaming comprised around 85% of the total recorded music market last year, while physical sales made up 13%, and downloads the remainder. For all the hoopla about 'the vinyl revival' and the industry pointing to a CD renaissance around the corner, streaming effectively is the market - yet the album is the unit the industry persists on using to calculate success."

His point is crystal clear: "In 2025, trying to explain success in 'album' terms is archaic at best and desperately unfit for purpose at worst. It is taking the biggest part of the market and trying to explain it through the language of the smallest part."

Now, I'm no streaming evangelist; on the contrary, I'm as ardent a fan of the physical artefact as anyone (albeit CDs rather than vinyl), and retain a firm faith in the significance of the album as an artform, refusing to believe that it might be an endangered species, threatened by shortening attention spans and playlist culture.

But even I have to concede that when it comes to assessing success/sales, the status quo seems strangely and indeed unjustifiably skewed, and that Forde's conclusion is very hard to dispute: "[I]f the record business is to truly speak from the 21st century, it at least needs to establish a new and appropriate system of tabulation and stop reaching for the buckled abacus of yesterday."