The UK official albums chart will soon include streaming data
The way we all consume music has changed remarkably since charts began ranking the popularity of tracks and artists decades ago. In July last year, the UK's Official Charts Company thought it was about time online streaming figures contributed to the crafting of the singles chart. And today, it's announced the official albums chart will begin incorporating streaming intel, too. Starting with the chart to be released on March 1st, plays from Spotify, Deezer, Napster, Google Play, Xbox Music, Rdio, Rara and O2 Tracks will count towards album rankings. It's more problematic than it might seem at first, however, as the Official Charts Company is keen not to let a few killer singles propel an album undeservedly to the top spot.
As such, chart bods have come up with a relatively complicated formula to try and keep things fair. For starters, only plays of an album's top 12 most-streamed tracks will be counted (not all records have the same number of tracks, after all). Furthermore, the number of plays of the two most popular tracks won't really be counted at all. Instead, they'll be adjusted to represent the average number of plays the top 12 tracks have received in total. Whatever that all comes to is then be divided by 1000 "to reflect the broad difference in value between a track stream and the price paid for an album." The result will be added to standard sales and digital download figures, and voilà: the official albums chart.
It's not thought that including streaming data in the chart calculation will shake things up to any great degree. "Initial indications are that the impact on actual chart positions will be modest to begin with," comments top dog at the Official Charts Company Martin Talbot, "but we expect this to grow as streaming becomes increasingly popular."
