Music chart Billboard have announced that on November 30, they will (finally) be adding streaming data into their weekly charts. It’s the biggest Billboard overhaul since 1991, which makes it pretty damn outdated when you think about how much has changed in the music industry and sales over the past 23 years.

What does this mean?

Well for starters, the charts will be more far accurate in their reflection of what people are actually listening to. The charts tend to have some fairly quirky entries because they’re reflective of album sales not streams. That is, the people who buy albums aren’t necessarily representative of the majority of music fans out there. In the top 20 alone, there’s two Christmas albums, a handful of “best-of”‘s and numerous soundtracks – not exactly representative of what most of us are listening to, though I might be wrong.

It’s a strong move for Billboard as it will draw it back up into relevancy alongside Spotify, iTunes, Shazam etc.

Also, looking at streams – and repeated streams of a single song or album – help to judge the ongoing popularity of an album rather than the initial sale. “We were always limited to the initial impulse, when somebody purchased an album,” says Billboard director Silvio Pietroluongo. “Now we have the ability to look at that engagement and gauge the popularity of an album over time.”

While the final details have not yet been announced, a few inclusions are: ten downloads of an individual track with be equivalent to an album, while 1500 streams on Spotify as one sale.

The move has been welcomed by many record execs, but the problem will lie with artists who don’t have the reach that other artists do – namely pop stars, and obviously those who don’t release their music for streaming.

 

Anywho, you can read more about this here