Why the Overall Chart History Needs Reworked

[jackbrown8786]

The way it's set up, "Last Year End" is listed and then "6 Months Ago" is listed. Sometimes, "6 Months Ago" is equal to "Last Year End," it's literally the same thing sometimes. Sometimes, "6 Months Ago" is a later point in time compared with "Last Year End" and sometimes it's an earlier point in time.

Similarly, "Last Week," and "2 Weeks Ago" and "Last Month" ARE sometimes "Last Quarter."

Problem: you're using 2 means of measurement at the same time.

Solution: Create a "Short Term Overall Chart History" which shows the following:

Now. Last week. 2 Weeks Ago. 1 Month Ago. 2 Months Ago. 3 Months Ago. 4 Months Ago. 6 Months Ago. 8 Months Ago. 1 Year Ago.

This will keep it 10 columns long and fix the problem. It will be easier to determine how newer albums are doing.

Then create a separate, "Long Term Overall Chart History" with the following data:

Now. 1 Year Ago. 2 Years Ago. 3 Years Ago. 4 Years Ago. 5 Years Ago. 6 Years Ago. 8 Years Ago. 10 Years Ago. 12 Years Ago.

This will keep the 10 column format as well and could be easily used to determine how the reception to older albums has changed.

The current state of the Overall Chart History is ugly and barely usable. Right now, "Last Year End" is listed BEFORE "6 Months Ago" which shouldn't be much of a problem since it's May, but you're apparently using fiscal year cycles so "Last Year End" is actually further back in time than "6 Months Ago." So you're looking at an album's progress on that chart and it goes like this: CLIMB, CLIMB, CLIMB, CLIMB, FALL, CLIMB, CLIMB, CLIMB, CLIMB when it reality the album never fell, it's just that you're using data for these columns which aren't listed in chronological order. It's a mess.

Look at "To Pimp a Butterfly" in the overall History chart. It never fell, it always climbed, but it appears to have fallen 5 ranks from 112 to 117 between "6 Months Ago" and "Last Year End" before gaining 7 ranks from 117 to 110 between "Last Year End" and "Last Quarter." In reality though, it climbed from 117, to 112, to 110 and you'd be able to see this if the columns were listed in chronological order. EVERY album seems to be doing this except for the ones that actually did fall and then climb again, in which case for those albums it appears that they kept climbing.

Problem is, you can't just switch the order of the columns because in a few months, the order that they're currently in will be the correct chronological order. The different measurements have to be done away with. You can't be looking at "Year End"s in between "X Months Ago." At the very least just get rid of the "Year End" column and add "6 years ago."

[albummaster]