The
UK Singles Chart is the official
record chart in the United Kingdom. Prior to 1969 there was no official singles chart; however,
The Official Charts Company and Guinness'
British Hit Singles & Albums regard the canonical sources as
New Musical Express (NME) before 10 March 1960 and
Record Retailer from then until 15 February 1969 when
Retailer and the
BBC jointly commissioned the
British Market Research Bureau (BMRB) to compile the charts. The choice to use
Record Retailer as the canonical source for the 1960s has been contentious because
NME (which continued compiling charts beyond March 1960) had the biggest circulation of periodicals in the decade and was more widely followed. As well as the chart compilers mentioned previously,
Melody Maker,
Disc and
Record Mirror all compiled their own charts during the decade. Due to the lack of any official chart the
BBC aggregated results from all these charts to announce its own
Pick of the Pops chart. One source explains that the reason for using the
Record Retailer chart for the 1960s was that it was "the only chart to have as many as 50 positions for almost the entire decade". The sample size of
Record Retailer in the early 1960s was around 30 stores whereas
NME and
Melody Maker were sampling over 100 stores. In 1969, the first BMRB chart was compiled using postal returns of sales logs from 250 record shops.