The charts data is compiled by Kantar. Kantar is the market research company currently contracted by Official Charts Company to collect sales data. The chart compilation system employs the largest market research sample currently in use in the UK and is one of the most sophisticated chart systems in the world. Kantar maintains a large database, the Product Master File, which details all known physical and digital audio and video releases. They have a list of approved physical retailers, online retailers, download and streaming platforms. Each month, the data from these retailers is collated and sent to the Official Charts Company who process it and compile the charts.

Sales are calculated through working with Chart Retailers. Information about these can be found here: https://www.officialcharts.com/getting-into-the-charts/the-chart-retailers/

Chart Retailers report their data on sales, downloads and streams to the Official Charts Company who use this data to compile a Defined Universe Sales (DUS) figure. The data is collected over a fixed period which changes throughout the year, usually incorporating the 4 or 5 weeks prior to release. You should look at the Chart Calendar to determine the best date to release music in order to give you the maximum period of time to sell albums for that months chart. For example, in order to feature in the April 2020 chart, published on Tuesday 7th April 2020, the period when data was collected for this chart was from Friday 21st February 2020 to Thursday 26th March inclusive.

This is done through price, track numbers and album length. An album is 5 or more tracks OR more than 25 minutes in length, and which must meet the fixed minimum pricing for physical and digital sales. Full details can be found in the downloadable pdf on this web page: https://www.officialcharts.com/getting-into-the-charts/meeting-the-chart-rules/

The Official Folk Albums Chart is published at 8pm on the first Tuesday of each month. The charts are published on the Official Charts Company website, the English Folk Expo website and via an email to English Folk Expo’s mailing list.

The folk chart is a monthly album chart. Whilst the Official Charts Company run a range of charts including singles, weekly and other genres, the folk one is for albums and is produced monthly only. However once your music is registered to be reported to the Official Charts Company, it is possible to appear in any charts for which it is eligible, including the main weekly Official Singles Chart.

Yes, the Official Charts Company have a team who review all new releases and decide on genre. To be eligible for this chart, you must be from the UK or Ireland and perform music which could fit into the broad category of ‘folk’. You can get in touch with them to make a request to be included in the folk charts directly via this email – chartrules@officialcharts.com

Yes, but only official pre-order sales through retailers who are set up for chart fulfilment (ie able to report the data to the Charts). Note: Kickstarter funds do not count as presales.

Yes, streams via recognised streaming platforms do count towards the chart data. There is more information about how album streams are translating into chart data on our Sound Roots Connect platform

The Official Charts Company have a service called Lightning Live. This is a paid for service where you register your tour dates in advance through them and then report merch sales as you go along. You cannot do this retrospectively. Pricing for Lightning Live varies, starting from £60. Please contact chartrules@officialcharts.com for more information.

Only festivals who have CD stalls outsourced to recognised fulfilment services (such as Proper) automatically report on chart data. For independent festival CD stalls, there is an option for festivals to register their own CD sales through the Lightning Live route (see above), however they may need to set up several accounts as each Lightning Live account can only take 5 products. Pricing for Lightning Live varies, starting from £60. Please contact chartrules@officialcharts.com for more information.

Let us know about your upcoming folk release by filling in the form, HERE. Relevant entries will be sent to The Official Charts Company in a monthly report to flag potential entries for the Official Folk Albums Chart.

The charts published each month refer to sales, download and stream data from (approximately) the previous month. Therefore a chart published in April will be called the ‘March Chart’ as it refers to the period the data was collected. See the chart calendar below for the exact period referred to in each chart.

Make sure you have the unique identifiers for all your physical and digital copies of your music (more info below). Give it some time – it might take 2-3 weeks to get an album registered with the charts, then you will likely want a 6-8 week pre-sales period. This means that from the point of finishing your album, you might want to leave about 10-15 weeks before actual release date as a minimum depending on your album promotion plans.

Bandcamp officially only records digital activity with the Official Charts Company. Therefore if you are selling physical CDs via Bandcamp, these sales are only counted once the purchaser has also downloaded or streamed the music from Bandcamp as well. Please ask any physical CD purchasers on Bandcamp to make sure that they also download a digital copy which is provided alongside their purchase.