The UK Classical Charts are three record charts based on classical music in the United Kingdom: the Classical Artist Albums Chart, the Classical Compilation Albums Chart and the Specialist Classical Albums Chart. The charts are commercial monitoring and marketing devices used by the UK music industry to measure its effectiveness in promoting and selling albums, nominally in the field of classical music. All three charts are compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC). The measurements are made by collating the returns of sales from a number of well-known music stores on a regular basis, and this enables a ranking to be established. Most classical artist album sales in the UK are from crossover artists. For an album to be classified as classical in the charts, it has to have 60% of the playing time dedicated to "classical or traditional music". Only albums that entirely classical or traditional music qualify for inclusion in the Specialist Classical Albums Chart.
The Official Classical Singles Chart was a record chart based on downloads and streaming of classical music in the United Kingdom. Each week's chart was compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC) and was first published on Monday afternoon on their official website. The chart ran for 140 weeks from 2012 to 2015, during which time a total of 23 singles by 22 artists reached number one. The most successful artist was the Italian pianist Ludovico Einaudi, who topped the chart with three singles for a total of 54 weeks, while the most successful record label was Decca Records, which spent 89 weeks at number one with six singles. Einaudi's track "I Giorni" from his album of the same name spent 51 weeks at number one, longer than any other single. In January 2013, following the release of Einaudi's album In a Time Lapse, singles by the pianist accounted for 13 of the Top 20 on the Official Classical Singles Chart. Martin Talbot, managing director of the OCC, described him as one of the chart's "biggest and most consistent stars".
