Before 1969 there was no official singles chart. Before February 1969 - when the British Market Research Bureau (BMRB) chart was established - there was no official chart or universally accepted supply. The corporate regards a select period of the brand new Musical Express chart (solely from 1952 to 1960) and the Record Retailer chart from 1960 to 1969 as predecessors for the interval as much as 11 February 1969, where multiples of competing charts (none official) coexisted side by aspect.

The primary number one on the UK singles chart was "Here in My Heart" by Al Martino for the week ending 14 November 1952. As of the week ending 18 December 2025, the UK singles chart has had 1,445 totally different number one hits. The UK singles chart began to be compiled in 1952. In keeping with the Official Charts Company's statistics, Slots free as of 1 July 2012, free online slots 1,200 singles had topped the Official Singles Chart. The Official Chart, broadcast on BBC Radio 1 and free slots previously MTV (Official UK Top 40), is the UK music trade's recognised official measure of singles and albums reputation as a result of it's probably the most comprehensive research panel of its kind, at present surveying over 15,000 retailers and digital providers each day, Free slots capturing 99.9% of all singles consumed in Britain throughout the week, and free slots over 98% of albums.

Record Mirror started running a Top 5 album chart in July 1956; from November 1958 onward Melody Maker printed the highest 10 albums. 7 inch EP and all singles needing to be beneath 20 minutes in length, as releases longer than 20 minutes could be classed as an album (with most longer EPs falling into the budget albums class). EPs taken out the listings between March 1960 - December 1967 (the information for the now 'Official' 1960s EP chart could be discovered within the Virgin Book of British Hit Singles).

The exact number of chart-toppers is debatable as a result of profusion of competing charts from the 1950s to the 1980s, but the usual record used is that endorsed by the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles and subsequently adopted by the Official Charts Company. Some media shops solely record the highest forty (such as the BBC, Slots with their Radio 1 present following the lead of Casey Kasem's American Top forty in the 1970s) or the top seventy five (corresponding to Music Week journal, with all records in the highest seventy five described as 'hits') of this checklist.

Following this, the BPI lowered the minimal price for cassette singles to affect gross sales figures.

A World in Action documentary exposé in 1980 additionally revealed corruption throughout the trade; shops' chart-returns sellers would often be offered bribes to falsify gross sales logs. The chart was primarily based solely on sales of vinyl single information from retail outlets and introduced on Tuesday until October 1987, Casino slots when the highest 40 was revealed every Sunday (as a result of the new, automated course of).