Can Belle keep spot at top of the Avalanche charts?

Belle and Sebastian’s stranglehold on the top three places was broken by the Frightened Rabbit album The Midnight Organ Fight the last time Avalanche published its chartBelle and Sebastian’s stranglehold on the top three places was broken by the Frightened Rabbit album The Midnight Organ Fight the last time Avalanche published its chart
Belle and Sebastian’s stranglehold on the top three places was broken by the Frightened Rabbit album The Midnight Organ Fight the last time Avalanche published its chart
I don’t normally bother too much with an albums of the year chart – and this year was no different – though I had compiled and intended to publish a best-selling chart for the last year in Waverley Market.

The best-selling chart started life when we moved into the centre but as we have got busier and busier and sales have soared it was largely dominated by more recent sales so I decided to make it a 2024 best sellers chart.

We have from time to time published an all-time bestsellers chart for Scottish albums that is actually dominated by albums from earlier times before the bands and labels decided to compete with shops for sales and I have kept that up to date too.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

We used to announce the chart one by one on twitter and for the first time since it started Belle and Sebastian’s stranglehold on the top three places was broken by the Frightened Rabbit album, The Midnight Organ Fight, the last time we published the chart.

However with the demise of twitter and the fact that Bluesky is yet to fully take its place we were left caught between two stools as to where to publish though we could of course have gone with both.

I had thought of simply not bothering at all but I’m regularly being asked in the shop for either my favourite albums of last year or our bestsellers, so I intend to make an effort at the end of the month before it really gets too late.

Most shops use the end of year chart as a marketing and sales tool and even though we had a new website I’m afraid it was not enough to stir us into action, though we do actually have all the titles listed which is the biggest part of the job and of course they have been selling anyway.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

In fact that was the other part of the problem with the shop already incredibly busy adding all the work that large online sales cause was simply not an option.

The new website was launched to coincide with the Taylor Swift x Butcher Billy exhibition in the centre which has been a huge success generating hundreds of online orders which we did thankfully manage to keep on top of, and of course with the exhibition now extended to Easter and some new merchandise about to launch that is something we have to dedicate serious time to rather then simply packing things and posting in any quieter moments.

The shop’s success has been based on listening to our customers and the most common comment we get from visitors buying often a wide range of items is whether they will be able to order more online once they go back home, so we really need to cater for that more than we have previously.

I expect to dedicate next week’s column to my favourite albums of 2024 which to anybody who knows me will be fairly predictable, though my absolute favourite came out right at the end of the year and got lost in the Christmas rush and if I’m honest as yet we haven’t sold any at all!

Related topics:
News you can trust since 1873
Follow us
©National World Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved.Cookie SettingsTerms and ConditionsPrivacy notice