A HISTORICAL RECORD OF THE UK SINGLES CHARTS IN THE 20TH CENTURY

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Q
What is The Chart Time Machine?
A
The Chart Time Machine is a resource for UK music enthusiasts, providing a searchable database of UK singles in the 20th century.

Read more about The Chart Time Machine in the About section
Q
Which years are covered?
A
November 1952 to December 1999.
Q
Do you cover music in the 21st century?
A
No. The Chart Time Machine only covers the UK singles chart in the 20th century. If you are looking for more recent chart information, we'd recommend going to The Official UK Charts Company website.
Q
Can I see the complete chart (e.g. top 40) for a particular date?
A
No. We are not able to show week-by-week charts as that information is subject to copyright and cannot be republished by third parties. Go to The Official UK Charts Company for full weekly chart listings.
Q
How long did it take to compile the chart data?
A
Compiling all the chart data - artists, song titles, record labels, chart positions, genres, etc. - took nearly a year.
Q
I saw a song from 1999 that I know charted higher than is shown here. Why is that?
A
Our database contains chart data up to the end of December 1999. This means that if a song charted higher at a later date, e.g. in January 2000, that won't be shown on this website. You will instead see a song's highest position that was correct up to the end of December 1999.
Q
How do I search for a specific artist or song?
A
Go to our Keyword Search page and enter the full or partial artist name and/or song title. If you aren't sure of the exact artist name or song title, try using just part of a keyword. You can also filter your search further by record label, date range (the song must have charted some time between the two selected dates), and chart position.
Q
How many titles do you have chart information for?
A
We have the chart history for 31,742 titles, including reentries and reissues.
Q
Can I listen to any of the songs?
A
Yes. There are currently 16,875 songs that have videos you can listen to. We have videos for 1,087 songs from the 1950s, 2,232 songs from the 1960s, 2,653 songs from the 1970s, 4,830 songs from the 1980s, and 6,236 songs from the 1990s. To play a song, simply click the ♫ icon next to the song name when viewing any of the charts (or underneath the song title when viewing information for that song only). We add more videos regularly.
Q
Where do the song genres and styles come from?
A
The genres and styles are all pulled from the Discogs API. We understand that some of the Discogs data is inaccurate, with incorrect genres and styles being assigned in some cases, and are working to rectify that manually on a case by case basis.
Q
Where do the videos come from?
A
All of the videos associated with song titles come from YouTube. Please note that The Chart Time Machine claims no responsibility for the content of these videos. They are hosted by a third party and are uploaded/controlled by YouTube account holders. We have no control over a video being edited, removed or the content of those videos in general. It is also possible that some videos may contain explicit lyrics.
Q
Do you have sales information for any of the songs?
A
No. We do not publish this information because complete sales data is patchy at best and outright not available for the majority of songs in our database.
Q
Is your database available to download?
A
No. Although we do not claim any copyright ownership over any of the chart information, our database is proprietary and not available to download. However, you are more than welcome to use any of the chart data on this website provided it is for personal or non-commercial purposes.

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