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The complete set of charts contains 503,178 items (most combining many weekly entries) that came from 233 charts each gathered by a different group of people. There are bound to be places where names have been misspelt, artists have been wrongly combined or entries missed out. If you think you have seen such a case contact us. Two songs seem to have the same positionWhen a single is listed as a double 'A' side then, for the purposes of this analysis, the two songs are both independently treated as achieving that position. In this case two different songs can both have entries, for example, stating that they are "Germany 6 of 1978". The same song has different namesTypically the 233 source charts don't ever use exactly the same name for a song title, album name or artist name. The consolidation process attempts to bring these entries together, but it is hard to find all the changes needed, as a result some titles that to a person are clearly the same (like "Dream Number Nine" and "Dream No. 9") will be listed as distinct songs. Normally this is a mistake and should be fixed in a future version (if you see an example please tell us about it). The artist name is wrongIn order to bring together as many entries as possible the names of the artists have been made more consistent between the 233 source charts. Clearly "Elvis Costello", "Elvis Costello & the Attractions" and "The Attractions" are three different combinations of musicians, however calling them all "Elvis Costello" makes it easier to see connections so that's what we do. Two song entries wrongly listed with the same artist could be explained by this merging (or it could just be a mistake). If two entries are listed as having different artists which actually should match then tell us about it and we will fix the mistake. One recent comment said that it was not worth creating this type of site unless every single mistake was removed. If we had taken that view this site could never have been created. As Albert Einstein said "Anyone who has never made a mistake has never made anything". |
Previous Comments (newest first)
26 May 2009
Thanks for clarifying that, although I'm not quite convinced when I look at the already existing Bing Crosby collaborations for example. Anyway it's okay for me with the newly added comments on the Ella Fitzgerald page.
19 May 2009
A-Tisket A-Tasket Again
Thanks for fixing the "A-Tisket A-Tasket" entry. I'd say however that the correct artist specification for this record would be "Chick Webb & Ella Fitzgerald" (with a link to Ella, the same way as you did with some other collaborations, e), not just Ella Fitzgerald.
Regards Cornelius
You make a valid point, there certainly is a good case for listing it under "Chick Webb & Ella Fitzgerald". However, many sources list the song under just "Ella Fitzgerald" (possibly because she co-wrote it), there is no separate page for Chick Webb on the site and the "Chick Webb Orchestra" was renamed in 1939 as "Ella Fitzgerald and her Famous Orchestra" (after Chick Webb died) so we decided to assign this song to "Ella Fitzgerald".
The goal of this site is to consolidate the range of input charts, this often means that we have to "standardise" names. For example some artists have different names in different countries (like "Yazoo" or "The Detroit Spinners"), some artists change names from one year to the next (like "Prince"), or for a particular song (for "(Meet) the Flintstones" "The B52s" became "The BC52s"). Mapping the actual names on the record labels or charts to a "most common form" makes it easier for users to find connections between charts, if they then use that information to track to the original chart data they will find the original information and can decide if our consolidations are valid for them.
A note has been added to Ella Fitzgerald's page to explain the situation, this also means that anyone looking up Chick Webb in the index will be directed to the right place as well.
Thanks for the input
19 May 2009
A-Tisket A-Tasket Again
Thanks for fixing the "A-Tisket A-Tasket" entry. I'd say however that the correct artist specification for this record would be "Chick Webb & Ella Fitzgerald" (with a link to Ella, the same way as you did with some other collaborations, e), not just Ella Fitzgerald.
Regards Cornelius
You make a valid point, there certainly is a good case for listing it under "Chick Webb & Ella Fitzgerald". However, many sources list the song under just "Ella Fitzgerald" (possibly because she co-wrote it), there is no separate page for Chick Webb on the site and the "Chick Webb Orchestra" was renamed in 1939 as "Ella Fitzgerald and her Famous Orchestra" (after Chick Webb died) so we decided to assign this song to "Ella Fitzgerald".
The goal of this site is to consolidate the range of input charts, this often means that we have to "standardise" names. For example some artists have different names in different countries (like "Yazoo" or "The Detroit Spinners"), some artists change names from one year to the next (like "Prince"), or for a particular song (for "(Meet) the Flintstones" "The B52s" became "The BC52s"). Mapping the actual names on the record labels or printed charts to a "most common form" makes it easier for users to find connections between charts, if they then use that information to track to the original chart data they will find the original information and can decide if our consolidations are valid for their purposes.
A note has been added to Ella Fitzgerald's page to explain the situation, this also means that anyone looking up Chick Webb in the index will be directed to the right place as well.
Thanks for the input