As a continuation of this post - a second part of the Italy's RAI chart collection. In July 1985 Hit Parade has been renamed Top Parade and stayed that way until October 1990, when the size of the chart scaled down from Top 20 to Top 10 for both singles and albums (probably because of the general slowing down of the sales, especially on singles market). Below is the link to almost all Top Parade charts (except for those that weren't published in the magazine).
The renaming went with the revision of the charts' presentation - concurrent lists from UK's Music Week and USA's Billboard were added for both singles and albums. The look was quite messy until November 1987, when it became more defined, but the inclusion of the foreign info meant that the chart info spread out on two pages - one for albums and one for singles. Oh, and all scans are in black & white, instead of original full colour, which makes the initial years rather tiresome to look through. Still, a great bit of chart history!
I have a thread on UKMix dedicated to foreign entries on the RAI singles chart during Top 20 years. Soon I'll start updating it with Top Parade info, please have a look☺
Another great collection!! One of my goals is to do the same with the Hitmakers, HITS and Album Network album charts, but it depends on the availability of these magazines. I'll download all the ones I can find on the internet, especially on the wonderful World Radio History website. I plan to store them in their original format and remaster them for a few weeks for the collections (correcting grammatical errors like MegadeAth instead of Megadeth, for example. Very common errors in charts from smaller companies) or realigning some weeks where the albums are bad align, etc.
ReplyDeleteStill on the subject of the Italian charts, unfortunately it seems that they were all pretty weak for the type of music I like the most (Hard Rock/Metal has always been a genre that is difficult to see the correct position using the inverted points methodology). It sold quickly and strongly, but only for a few weeks. In the second half of the decade the situation got even worse, because in addition to the speed of sales having increased with better distribution of albums, it was also splited among the many specialized stores that spread around the world after 84/85. If the charts didn't research them, many albums wouldn't appear. Or they would have positions that were actually lower than they really were. Unfortunately, most of the charts only really became good for the sales standard of Hard Rock/Metal patterns of sales , when the genre had already declined a lot. At least the revival of the 2000s was well captured by the point-of-sale charts spread around the world. I think the same should happen with some New Wave acts, with an already stable audience, but in a less pronounce way than in Metal, because in general singles/Radio helped a lot the majority of Post Punk and New Wave bands and with that they had a more linear and strong sales rhythm than bands where sales were restricted only to a group of fanatical faithful, so the inverted points system that most of the 80's charts used didn't get in the way so much. Anyway, thanks a lot for this great collection too!