James Masterton
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James Masterton (born 2 September 1973) is a music writer and
columnist A columnist is a person who writes for publication in a series, creating an article that usually offers commentary and opinions. Column (newspaper), Columns appear in newspapers, magazines and other publications, including blogs. They take the fo ...
, his work focusing on the
UK Singles Chart The UK Singles Chart (currently titled Official Singles Chart, with the upper section more commonly known as the Official UK Top 40) is compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC), on behalf of the British record industry, listing the top-s ...
having been an online fixture on various sites since the 1990s. Masterton is also a producer for talkSPORT, and has worked on air as a presenter at the Bradford
independent local radio Independent Local Radio is the collective name given to commercial radio stations in the United Kingdom. As a result of the buyouts and mergers permitted by the Broadcasting Act 1990, and deregulation resulting from the Communications Act 2003, ...
station the Pulse.


Music writing

Masterton began posting his weekly comments about the latest singles chart on
Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was ...
in 1992, while a student at
Lancaster University Lancaster University (legally The University of Lancaster) is a public university, public research university in Lancaster, Lancashire, Lancaster, Lancashire, England. The university was established in 1964 by royal charter, as one of several pla ...
, whence he graduated in 1994. In 1995 he became an important element of BT's
Dotmusic ''Dotmusic'' was a music webzine that existed as a standalone website from 1 June 1995 to December 2003. Initially intended as the web complement to the UK music industry trade magazine ''Music Week'', the site was relaunched in December 1998 as a ...
website, an online hub for the UK music scene and one of the few sites that posted the entire UK top 75 every week. When Dotmusic was purchased from BT by
Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...
on October 28, 2003, Masterton's commentary moved to Yahoo! Launch with it, remaining with the site as it transformed into Yahoo! Music UK and Ireland until the site's closure in September 2011. His chart column moved to About.com, where it remained until the summer of 2016. It finally moved to its own site Chart Watch UK where it has been a weekly fixture ever since. To coincide with the move the complete archives were put online, featuring many articles which had been unavailable since their original week of publication.


''Music Week'' Charts Analysis

On 28 February 2020, Masterton published his UK charts analysis page (Week Ending: March 5, 2020) to Chart Watch UK intending the post to be his last weekly edition as he was hired to take over the weekly Charts Analysis review pages from Alan Jones on the Music Week website (with the feature also appearing weekly in the magazine until
Future Publishing Future plc is an international multimedia company established in the United Kingdom in 1985. The company has over 220 brands that span magazines, newsletters, websites, and events in fields such as video games, technology, films, music, photogr ...
turned it into a monthly). Masterton wrote two weekly Charts Analysis pages for the website (as the magazine now features charts compiled from monthly sales and streams) until 29 October 2021, when Music Week staff took over the job. After Andre Paine and Ben Homewood wrote one each of the Charts Analysis posts on 5 November 2021, Alan Jones took over his old job, writing the 12 November overviews (with the pages titled ''Charts analysis: ABBA's Voyage opens with huge sale of 204,000'' for the albums and ''Charts analysis: Adele spends fourth week at summit ahead of album release'' for the singles). Apart from an overview of the Christmas (Week Ending: December 31, 2020 and January 7, 2021) and Easter charts (Week Ending: April 8, 2021) posted as there was no updates by Music Week due to the holidays, Masterton did not return to writing a regular column on his Chart Watch UK review pages until 6 November 2021, when he posted the November 11th overview with facts about Adele's number one single "Easy On Me", Ed Sheeran's new album and Halloween associated records in the charts.


Media appearances

Masterton has made numerous appearances on TV and radio as an authority on music and chart matters. He has appeared on BBC News 24's ''Zero 30'' programme, as a talking head on the Channel 4 show ''100 Worst Pop Records'' and on the
BBC News Channel BBC News (also known as the BBC News Channel) is a British free-to-air public broadcast television news channel for BBC News. It was launched as BBC News 24 on 9 November 1997 at 5:30 pm as part of the BBC's foray into digital domestic telev ...
segment ''E24''.


Controversies

Masterton has come into conflict in the past for his strident views on the work of particular veteran acts and in particular for his criticism of fan-inspired chart campaigns. In 2009, he was openly critical of the campaign to get
Rage Against the Machine Rage Against the Machine (often abbreviated as RATM or shortened to simply Rage) is an American rock band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1991, the group consists of vocalist Zack de la Rocha, bassist and backing vocalist Tim Commer ...
to number one for Christmas, blasting the record ("
Killing in the Name "Killing in the Name" is a protest song by American rock band Rage Against the Machine, and appears on their 1992 self-titled debut album. It was released as the lead single from the album in November 1992. It features heavy drop-D guitar riff ...
") as having been "purchased by fans for what it represents rather than as a reflection of its cultural popularity" and provoked anger amongst fans of the Pet Shop Boys for asking "why do they even bother" when their album '' Yes'' was released.


External links


Weekly music commentary and complete archiveMedium profile featuring other non-chart related writings


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Masterton, James British columnists Living people 1973 births