Premier US album chart revamped to include streaming

GAINING INFLUENCE: The famous Billboard 200 charts will in future include streaming in its measurements, including services such as Spotify.

NEW YORK: The Billboard chart, the benchmark for US music sales, will next week start to include streaming in its measurements to reflect the rapid growth of services such as Spotify. 

Billboard magazine, which produces the weekly charts with tracking company Nielsen SoundScan, described the move Wednesday as the biggest overhaul in its methodology since 1991, an era when CDs were replacing cassettes. 

The change indicates that the music industry is expecting a permanent role for streaming services despite the objections of a number of musicians — most famously current chart-topper Taylor Swift, who pulled her music from Spotify and complained of unfair compensation to artists. 

The Billboard 200, starting with its Dec 3 chart which covers the previous week, will record one album sale for every 1,500 times that songs from a single album are streamed through Spotify or its competitors such as Beats Music, Google Play and Xbox music. 

“The new methodology for the Billboard 200 is a welcome and necessary evolution of Nielsen and Billboard’s album chart data,” Darren Stupak, an executive vice-president at Sony, one of three big music label conglomerates, said in a statement quoted by Billboard. 

“The ways in which fans consume music, and the ways in which music is monetized, have grown beyond the traditional metrics of album sales,” he said. 

The chart began to look at digital sales of both albums and singles in July 2003 as Apple’s iTunes became a major force. 

The chart creators said the latest overhaul would also slightly change the focus of the Billboard 200 by measuring how often people listen to the music — not just whether they bought it. 

“While an extremely valuable measurement, album sales would mostly capture the initial impulse only, without indicating the depth of consumption thereafter,” said Silvio Pietroluongo, vice president of charts and data development at Billboard. 

Sweden-based Spotify says it has 50 million subscribers worldwide, including 12.5 million who pay for the premium service which has no advertisements. — AFP