Billboard changing its main album chart, will count streaming services

[Redstreak 6,653]

Now Billboard and Nielsen SoundScan, the agency that supplies its data, will start adding streams and downloads of tracks to the formula behind the Billboard 200, which, since 1956 has functioned as the music world’s weekly scorecard. It is the biggest change since 1991, when the magazine began using hard sales data from SoundScan, a revolutionary change in a music industry that had long based its charts on highly fudgeable surveys of record stores.

 

The new chart, covering sales and listening from Monday to Nov. 30, will be revealed on Billboard’s website on Dec. 4 and published in print in its Dec. 13 issue. Silvio Pietroluongo, Billboard’s director of charts, said that by looking at streams as well as sales, the new chart will more accurately reflect how people listen to music these days.

 

One expected result is that albums by big pop stars  which tend to open high on the chart and then plunge after just a few weeks  should linger longer in the upper rungs. Ariana Grande’s “My Everything,†for example, which opened at No. 1 in September, was No. 36 on last week’s chart, with 10,000 sales. Under the new formula, it would have been No. 9.

 

SoundScan and Billboard will count 1,500 song streams from services like Spotify, Beats Music, Rdio, Rhapsody and Google Play as equivalent to an album sale. For the first time, they will also count “track equivalent albums† a common industry yardstick of 10 downloads of individual tracks  as part of the formula for album rankings on the Billboard 200.

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/20/business/media/billboard-changing-the-charts-will-count-streaming-services-.html?src=twr&_r=1

[Tokyo Rose 1,475]

Welp

[Red 93,715]

Good for Ariana I guess

[KaanBTW 5,237]

Looks like Billboard supports Spotify inspite of Taylor. 

[Gypsy Life 118,907]

Watch Cheek to Cheek fall off the top 200 next week.

[Echo 326]

My queen Nicki is about to very well. Bring on The Pinkprint. 

[Haroon 49,685]

Ooooh interesting I guess this will cushion the freefall of most front-loaded albums I wonder how much this will affect artists that don't allow access to their music via streaming sites like Spotify

[Disregard 50]

So basically it is meaningless, good to know.

[Morphine Prince 101,083]

This is good though right? 

 

Looks like Taylor's team will have to put her catalog back up on Spotify if they want to stay #1 longer. 

[inuborg 4,135]

It is the biggest change since 1991,

 

1-9-9-1 my time has come 

[vespertine 3]

:fthis:

[Dunk96 2,526]

So basically it is meaningless, good to know.

[Hola Soraya 4,350]

 

[Harry 26,836]

Not entirely sure how I feel about this. I also don't really understand how the streaming part works.

 

"SoundScan and Billboard will count 1,500 song streams from services like Spotify, Beats Music, Rdio, Rhapsody and Google Play as equivalent to an album sale." Does this mean 1500 streams of ANY song from the album counts as one song? So even if an album has a popular single but doesn't sell well - i.e. Ariana as mentioned in the article - it will remain high on the chart? Does that really reflect the popularity of the album though?

 

Hmm...

[Mariano 958]

This is good though right? 

 

Looks like Taylor's team will have to put her catalog back up on Spotify if they want to stay #1 longer. 

they won't and they could be less bothered by a meaningless chart.