Official Charts Company

The Official UK Charts Company Limited (formerly Music Industry Chart Services Limited), trading as the Official Charts Company (OCC) or the Official Charts (formerly the Chart Information Network), is a British inter-professional organisation that compiles various official record charts in the United Kingdom, Ireland and France.

In the United Kingdom, its charts include ones for singles, albums and films, with the data compiled from a mixture of downloads, purchases (of physical media) and streaming. The OCC produces its charts by gathering and combining sales data from retailers through market researchers Kantar, and claims to cover 99% of the singles market and 95% of the album market, and aims to collect data from any retailer who sells more than 100 chart items per week.

The OCC is operated jointly by the British Phonographic Industry and the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) (formerly the British Association of Record Dealers (BARD)) and is incorporated as a private company limited by shares jointly owned by BPI and ERA. It was formed in 1990 as the Chart Information Network by the BBC, BARD, and the publishers of Music Week. CIN took over as compilers of the official UK charts in 1990, and the company has continued in that role, as the OCC, since 1994. Before then, the charts were produced by a succession of market research companies, beginning with the British Market Research Bureau (BMRB) in 1969 and Gallup in 1983. Before the production of the "official" charts, various less comprehensive charts were produced, most notably by newspaper/magazine New Musical Express (NME) which began its chart in 1952. Some of these older charts (including NME's earliest singles charts) are now part of the official OCC canon.

In 2017, the OCC made a five-year deal with the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) to compile the Irish Singles Chart, Irish Albums Chart and other Irish charts on behalf of IRMA.

In December 2020, the OCC announced it was taking over the contract from German company GfK, in compiling the French music charts for Syndicat National de l'Édition Phonographique (SNEP)/National Union of Phonographic Producers (SCPP) with the OCC taking over on 1 January 2021.

All of the OCC's charts are published weekly on Friday nights, and cover sales for the preceding week, Friday to Thursday. From 3 August 1969 until 5 July 2015, the chart week ran from Sunday to Saturday. In the United Kingdom, genre-specific charts include Official Dance Singles Chart Top 40, Official Hip Hop and R&B Singles Chart Top 40, Official Rock & Metal Singles Chart Top 40, Official Progressive Albums Chart Top 30 and the Asian Music Chart Top 40. It also produces charts such as the Official Independent Singles Chart Top 50, which tracks the progress of records (singles and albums) released on independent record labels or distributed by independent companies (not WMG/Sony/UMG) regardless of the genre/music released.

The Official Scottish Albums Chart Top 100 appears in listings on the Official Charts Company's site alongside its charts for the Republic of Ireland and Billboard's Top 20 singles and albums (with a link to the full Hot 100/albums 200 via billboard.com).

The Scottish chart is a listing reflecting how sales towards the UK Albums Chart are faring in Scotland. Until December 2020, the OCC published a Scottish singles chart on its website as well, though this chart may only be available via the UKChartsPlus newsletter. This subscription newsletter also includes the Official UK Top 100 Welsh Singles and Albums Charts, which serves the same purpose in Wales as the ones in Scotland, and the full UK Top 200 Albums chart.