MADONNA has been denied the chance to see five of her LPs in the U.K. album chart at the same time, after the country's Official Chart Company (OCC) deemed details surrounding their sales unfair.
The Material Girl star was set to score a chart quintuple last week (ends10May08) after British supermarket giant Tesco offered consumers a free copy of one of four previous Madonna albums when they purchased her latest release Hard Candy.
The offer allowed fans to buy the LP for $18 (GBP9), and claim a copy of either The Immaculate Collection, Ray Of Light, Music or Confessions On A Dancefloor for free.
And the promotion gave the star's earlier albums a significant boost in the British mid-week charts; The Immaculate Collection shot to number 28, Confessions On A Dancefloor sat at 48, Music at 95, and Ray Of Light at 110.
But the U.K. chart's governing body, the OCC, have excluded the albums from being counted in last week's rundown, insisting the offer didn't comply with its stance on chart rules.
The move meant only Hard Candy's sales were counted, which gave the singer her 10th number one album in the U.K. and U.S. charts earlier this month (May08).
OCC managing director Martin Talbot explains the decision: "It is quite a core chart rule that we only count sales, and the marketing of this particular initiative is clear - if you buy Hard Candy through Tesco you can have one of these albums free of charge."
He adds, "We will be monitoring these kinds of offers to assess whether current rules cover what is becoming an increasingly common occurrence. We need to ensure it doesn't undermine the authority of the charts, which are there to measure sales."
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