[1] It was published for the first time on 22 July 1956 and is compiled every week by the Official Charts Company (OCC) on Fridays (previously Sundays).
A weekly 'Album Chart' show was licensed out to BBC Radio 2 and presented by Simon Mayo, until it ended on 2 April 2007.
Though album sales tend to produce more revenue and, over time, act as a greater measure of an artist's success, this chart receives less media attention than the UK Singles Chart, because overall sales of an album are more important than its peak position.
[1] Under the revised methodology, the Official Charts Company takes the 12 most streamed tracks from one album, with the top-two songs being down-weighted in line with the average of the rest.
This calculation was designed to ensure that the chart rundown continues to reflect the popularity of the albums themselves, rather than just the performance of one or two smash hit singles.
The majority of these acts would be indie and rock bands like the Wombats, Sea Power and Maxïmo Park, who would market their album to the type of people who would want to own the release via a physical format rather than streaming it.
Regarding the tally of number ones for some artists, the Official Charts Company has classed re-issues of The Beatles' Abbey Road, and The Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street and Goats Head Soup, as brand new hits/number ones due to the amount of bonus material available, formats released and the fact that the issuing record label had changed.
Queen's Greatest Hits has sold over 7 million copies (including downloads and equivalent streams) as of July 2022.
The record was released on 21 August 1997 and sold around 813,000 in its first seven days, which surpasses the current claimant to the title, though this topic is still highly contested.
The longest consecutive number one by a group was the Beatles' Please Please Me, which held the top spot for a straight 30 weeks.
Elton John's Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player in 1973, marks the first album by a male artist and solo act to do so.
The first female solo artist to have the UK's year-end best seller was Barbra Streisand in 1982, with Love Songs.
James Blunt's Back to Bedlam, in the 2000s, marks the first album by a male artist and solo act to do it.
Dua Lipa's Future Nostalgia holds the record for having the lowest one-week sales while at the top of the chart in the modern era,[clarification needed] when it was number one the week beginning 15 May 2020 with sales of only 7,317, while in 2021 You Me At Six (Suckapunch)[56] and Ben Howard (Collections from the Whiteout)[57] became the first artists to have a number one album exit the Top 100 with only one week on the chart (though when The Guinness Book of British Hit Albums did their list of number one albums with the fewest weeks on the chart, it was based on the Top 75 countdown and featured acts such as Little Angels with their 1993 album Jam).
[58] In 2023, The Lottery Winners made the record for the steepest drop from number one when their album Anxiety Replacement Therapy fell out of the Top 200 altogether with second week sales of 880 copies.
[60][61] On 26 August 2022, Aitch became the first artist to chart with an album released in a NFT format when Close to Home debuted at number 2[62][63] (with Steps beating the rapper to number one and becoming the first mixed-gender British act to get chart topping albums in four consecutive decades).
[64] A week later, Will of the People[65] by Muse became the first NFT-listed album to top the charts, with the limited edition NFT listed as part of the 3,889 downloaded copies it sold out of 51,510 sales.
[66][67] Also on 16 September 2022, Columbia became the first record label to take the Top 3 chart positions with three different acts with releases by Robbie Williams, Ozzy Osbourne and Harry Styles occupying number 1, 2 and 3 (with parent company Sony Music also having the number 4 with a re-issue of Manic Street Preachers' Know Your Enemy).
[68] The fastest-selling debut albums (first-week sales): Sam Smith holds the record for most weeks spent in the Top 10 by a debut album with In the Lonely Hour, with 76, surpassing a record previously held by Emeli Sandé.
In August 1971, the British Market Research Bureau (BMRB)[72] allowed low-priced budget albums to chart as well as standard compilations.
[74] As the Ronco-released tie-in to the 1973 film That'll Be the Day was listed as a various artist album and not as a soundtrack, it disappeared from the chart after its seventh week at number one[75][76][77][78][79][80][81] alongside EMI's former number one Pure Gold[82] and Phillip's 20 Original Chart Hits.
As of 2022,[88] the OCC publishes the Official Compilations Chart Top 100 on their website,[89] which as well as listing the chart places of all the various Now That's What I Call Music!, Hits Albums and Ministry of Sound Annuals that have been released, now include Motion Picture Cast Recordings such as The Greatest Showman or A Star Is Born and Original Broadway/West End cast albums such as Hamilton, all three of which were included in the main artist albums chart before 2020.