Billboard charts to include data on streaming for music rankings

New York

THE Billboard chart, the benchmark for US music sales, will, from 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 on Wednesday as the biggest overhaul in its methodology since 1991, an era when compact discs (CDs) were replacing cassettes. The change indicates that the music industry expects a permanent role for streaming services despite the objections of a number of musicians - most famously chart-topper Taylor Swift, who pulled her music from Spotify two weeks ago and complained of unfair compensation to artists.

The Billboard 200, starting with its Dec 3 chart which covers the preceding 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.

Darren Stupak, an executive vice-president at Sony, one of three big music label conglomerates, said in a statement: "The new methodology for the Billboard 200 is a welcome and necessary evolution of Nielsen and Billboard's album chart data. The ways in which fans consume music and the ways in which music is monetized have grown beyond the traditional metrics of album sales."

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

Sweden-based Spotify said it has 50 million subscribers worldwide, including 12.5 million who pay for the premium service without advertisements.

Britain's Official Charts Company in July began to add streaming to its Top 40 singles chart, with 100 streams equivalent to one single. The move has brought some new faces to Britain's Top 40. In September, American songwriter Meghan Trainor's song All About That Bass entered the chart based solely on streaming, as the track had not yet been released in Britain for physical or digital sale.

But it remains to be seen how much the changes will determine who tops the charts, especially for albums. The British tracking company said that streaming initially contributed 20 per cent to the total sales on the single chart.

The Billboard 200 overhaul will presumably encourage artists eager to climb the charts to allow streaming of their works. But Taylor Swift's rejection of Spotify is unlikely to stop her dominance, with her album 1989 already selling a crushing two million copies in the US over three weeks. AFP