The UK Singles Chart is a music chart compiled by the Official Charts Company that calculates the best-selling singles of the week in the United Kingdom.[1] During the 1990s the chart was based purely on the sales of physical singles, with airplay figures excluded from the official chart.
At the beginning of the 1990s, sales of singles and albums in the United Kingdom were compiled on behalf of the British music industry by Gallup. This continued until 1994, when the contract to compile the UK charts was won by Millward Brown, who took over on 1 February 1994. On 1 July 1998 Chart Information Network (CIN) took over the management of the chart: CIN changed their name to the Official UK Charts Company in October 2001, later shortened to the Official Charts Company in 2008.[2]
Unlike other decades, no decade-end charts for the 1990s for either singles or albums were broadcast on BBC Radio 1 at the end of 1999, and no detailed lists were published in the UK music trade magazine Music Week. Gallup's sales figures were not made available to its successors, and Millward Brown's sales data from 1994 to 1996 were later substantially revised. This made it difficult to obtain accurate sales figures for the decade. Two weeks before the end of the decade Music Week published lists of the top twenty best-selling singles and albums of the 1990s in the UK.[3] Both top twenty lists included sales figures, but the subsequent revisions of the data have made the original 1999 figures unreliable.
The 19 September 2009 issue of the UK music trade magazine Music Week included a special supplement to celebrate its 50th anniversary. It contained updated charts of the top twenty best-selling singles of each decade of the magazine's existence, based on the most recent information available from the OCC. The following chart is therefore the most up to date estimate of the top twenty best-selling singles of the 1990s.[4]
^"Top 20 Singles and Albums of the Nineties". Music Week. Miller Freeman. 18 December 1999. p. 28.
^ ab"Top 20 Singles of the Nineties". Music Week. London, England: United Business Media. 19 September 2009. ("1959–2009: Anniversary Special" supplement, p. 34.)
