Turnover in the Top 40

The new entries and long-stayers in the UK's weekly Top 40 Singles chart

The green area shows the number of new entries in the chart. The blue area shows songs that have spent at least 10 weeks in the chart. The blue dots are the ten songs that have spent the greatest number of weeks in the Top 40. Hover over the dots to reveal the songs.

Notes: The dataset was collected from information provided on the Official UK Charts Company website. 'New entries' are singles that have not entered the Top 40 Singles chart in the preceding ten years. 'Long stayers' are singles that have charted at least 10 times in the last ten years. Both series are backward looking 12-month averages, to remove seasonal effects. The dots indicate the 10 singles that have spent the greatest number of weeks (within a ten year window) in the Top 40 between 1975 and 2014 inclusive. These singles are plotted on the dates that they first entered the chart. The dotted line shows when downloads were first counted, in a restrictive way, towards the chart. They were fully incorporated in 2007. The visualisation was drawn using D3.