U.K. RADIO AND CHART TRENDS 2017

We’ve crunched the Radiomonitor charts to see which tracks and labels performed best on Blighty’s airwaves in 2017, and how airplay influenced the year’s best-sellers, and vice versa. Thanks to Ed Sheeran, WMG imprint Atlantic takes the lion’s share of the airplay pie with 22.38% of the Top 100 tracks by impacts.

Sony’s Columbia is second in the label share stakes with 11.76%, followed by RCA with 11.45%. UMG’s Virgin EMI is fourth with 9.86%, followed by Sony’s Syco with 9.31% and UMG imprint Polydor with 7.39%.

When it comes to overall company share, Jason Iley's Sony is the clear frontrunner with a 37.7%, followed by David Joseph's UMG with 31.1% and Max Lousada's Warner Music with 29.5%.
Of the Top 10 most played tracks on U.K. radio in 2017, five appear in the Top 10 list of best-sellers. Peak airplay and peak chart position for those happened within close proximity; four tracks peaked at radio one week before doing so on the Official Singles Chart while three peaked afterward.

Aside from the two comeback singles from Ed Sheeran that went straight to the top of both radio and sales charts, and Rag’n’Bone Man’s slow-burner “Human,” which took five months to reach its charts peak post-release, it took the remaining seven tracks in the Radiomonitor Top 10 an average of five weeks after being released to reach their highest Official Chart position.

When it comes to Spotify playlist inclusion, and how that tallies with chart positioning, tracks hit peak playlist inclusion after hitting their Official Charts peak, according to rudimental data we can see from Chartmetric.

Sheeran's "Shape of You," for example, was in the most playlists in June—six months after being released and charting at #1. Clean Bandit's "Symphony" was in its highest number of Spotify playlists in June after hitting #1 at the end of April.

For Shawn Mendes' "There's Nothing Holdin' Me Back," July was its peak playlist time after peaking at #4 on the Official Charts in the middle of May. Rita Ora's "Your Song" had the most playlist support in September, after hitting #7 in early July, which was when Jonas Blue's "Mama" hit #4, before reaching its playlist peak in August.