April 09, 2010

By By Simon Falush, Reuters

BBC Radio 3, a bastion of high culture on Britain's broadcasting landscape, will from next week run a classical music chart for the first time.

The chart will be broadcast on Mondays on the afternoon drivetime program In Tune. It will play a track from the No. 1 disc in the chart.

The Official Specialist Classical Chart was developed by the Official Charts company and measures sales and downloads of newly released classical music albums in Britain. Compilations and soundtracks are excluded.

The Official Charts Company which has compiled the chart since February 2009 said that the sales of specialist classical music across all formats increased by 80% across the first 12 weeks of 2010 compared to the same period in 2009.

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