Found what I wrote...turns out it was more than a year and a half ago...but it illustrates how little you could sell at retail and still get reasonably far up the Hot 100:
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In several threads, we've been discussing Billboard Hot 100 chart numbers from the 1960s, 70s and 80s and various points have been scattered across threads. I thought it might be helpful to have everything in one place.
Thanks to Casey Kasem and American Top 40, a lot of Americans grew up thinking Billboard was the ultimate authority on record sales in this country. Billboard certainly seized on the spotlight afforded by AT40 to begin marketing itself that way. But until Soundscan in the 90s, it simply wasn't true.
Prior to that, Billboard was an industry magazine that focused on the inside baseball of music and entertainment. Its record charts tracked the wholesale end of the business....copies of albums and singles shipped from the record labels to distributors and record stores. There was no attempt to determine how many of those copies actually made it into the hands of paying customers.
The system was easily corruptible. Record labels could over-ship records, essentially putting free stock into the hands of the distributors, in order to goose early chart numbers...the idea being that record store owners (the real target audience for the charts) would see the record debut big, and place legitimate orders. The label would make it up on the back end if the tactic worked.
The ultimate expression of that approach came in the 70s, when albums began to "ship Platinum". The record label would press a million copies and ship them in week one. Billboard would report the album as debuting Platinum (with a correspondingly high chart number). Record store owners would order up big. Trouble was, often those records wouldn't sell to real customers. In nine months, the majority would be quietly shipped back to the label, melted down and the vinyl recycled. The "Sgt. Pepper" movie soundtrack of 1978 is probably the most notorious example. So few of those sold at retail that the joke in the industry was that it "shipped Platinum and returned double Platinum". Very likely only 100,000 or so copies sold. But if you look at Billboard back issues or the Joel Whitburn books based on the Billboard charts, you see a #1 album that sold more than a million copies (in its news pages, Billboard dutifully reported on returns, but only on an industry-wide basis, every few months...never mentioning labels, artists or specific records by name).
But let's factor out shenanigans and look at how the chart worked when everybody was playing it straight.
A record's first week on the Hot 100 wasn't an indicator of how many people bought the record, but a snapshot of how many wholesale copies had been shipped to distributors. So debut numbers were virtually useless. The next couple of weeks worth of chart action were stores ordering first-time stock.
If a record peaked at #50 or below, that wasn't a "Hot 100 hit", it was a record that most record stores didn't think was worth stocking (or re-stocking beyond their initial 5 or 10 copy order). #40 wasn't much better, nor #30. Those basically indicate that more (but by no means all) stores placed an order, but doesn't suggest that demand was high enough for them to ever have to re-stock.
Above that, it's important to look at where a record peaks with this in mind: Let's say a record moved 25-20 last week (again, we're traveling back in time to the 60s-80s...pre-Soundscan). That suggests that stores were optimistic about the record and bought copies. But what if it slides to 24 this week? That means the optimism on the part of the record stores came after the record had already peaked with the record buyers. They were ordering stock when it was at 25 expecting it to go Top 15 or higher. But it went the other way. That "Top 20 hit" was actually a #25 wholesale record that became overstocked compared to buyer demand that week.
So, was the Hot 100 in any way reflecting the true popularity of records?
Well, any record that made the Top 10 by climbing over a period of several weeks probably was legit. Those chart jumps and bullets ("Stars", as Billboard called them) were indicative of more orders for a record being made this week than the week before. Sometimes that could be accomplished simply by more stores placing first-time orders...but the longer the timespan, the more likely it was that the stores were replacing stock that they had sold to paying customers.
Even records that debuted big fast (a new Beatles, for example) were probably legit if they stayed high on the charts for a certain period of time. But a rapid fall-off from a high chart number suggests that big peak was record stores anticipating demand that wasn't really there.
Which is why you've seen me say that anything peaking under #15 really isn't a hit....and a lot of things that peaked between #11 and #15 weren't, either (Royal Scots Dragoon Guards "Amazing Grace", anyone?). Because of what the Hot 100 measured (store owner optimism), a record that cracks #20 is a record the store owners believed could go Top 10. Those that didn't under-performed expectations. They weren't "gotta haves".
There's one exception to that rule: There are some records that were strong performers in certain markets, but it just didn't translate nationally. Tower of Power's "You're Still A Young Man" was a huge record in Los Angeles and San Francisco....Top 5, in fact. But it peaked at #29 in Billboard. Not enough stores stocking or selling it elsewhere (TOP was a California band).
Most radio stations did their own local charts, so Billboard's numbers weren't a factor in airplay back in the day. For millions of Americans, a chunk of Casey Kasem's countdown each Sunday included songs they only heard when listening to AT40, because their local stations weren't playing those records.
Which means the people in those cities who didn't listen to AT40 every week...didn't hear them at all.
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