Band Aid bundle set to join digital chart: ground-breaking OCC decision boosts single's profile.(Charity)

The Band Aid 20 bandwagon has persuaded the Official UK Chart Company to make a landmark rule change to its download Top 20 to help maximise exposure and payout to the charity.

Download sales of the chart-ineligible two-track "bundle" comprising the 2004 and original 1984 versions of Do They Know It's Christmas? (priced at 1.99 [pounds sterling]) last week outstripped the new onetrack download (priced at 1.49 [pounds sterling]). But only sales of the one-track format contributed to its chart placing. As a result, the Chart Supervisory Committee is now investigating ways of making bundies count towards the rankings, possibly, by as early as next week.

However, the decision to try to incorporate bundles, made at last Tuesday night's Chart Supervisory Committee meeting, came too late to help the first placing of the single. It entered the download chart at number five, despite not being available on iTunes.

OCC charts director Omar Maskatiya says it is likely that the charity, single would have entered higher if bundles had been chart eligible, but at the time the company did not have enough accurate data to include all bundles from other releases and construct a fair countdown.

After only six days on sale, around 14,000 [pounds sterling] had already flowed from the digital downloads, handled by 7Digital and OD2. Including the video download, digital income could be worth more than 50,000 [pounds sterling] to the charity by the end of the festive season.

With the physical format released today (Monday) at a suggested retail price of 3.99 [pounds sterling], if the full 1.4m initial shipment of the single is snapped up in the next few weeks, the retail ...