Back in the day music consumption came from purchasing an album in the store, going over to your friend’s house and listening to it, or hearing it on radio. Nowadays we have more options – we can watch a music video on the likes of YouTube or Facebook, we can purchase songs individually or albums via the internet as digital downloads, and we can also stream music via services such as Spotify.
Now with all these new methods of consuming music, shouldn’t it be time that music tracking services such as Billboard and Nielsen be updated to reflect that? Well if you’re wondering how the music scene does these days with the new methods of consumption thrown into the mix, you will be happy to learn that both Billboard and Nielsen have recently announced that they will start tracking streaming music and video services.
According to Silvio Pietroluongo the VP of charts and data at Billboard, “Adding streaming information makes the chart a better representation of music consumption activity. Album sales would mostly capture the initial impulse only, without indicating the depth of consumption thereafter.”
Billboard will be relying on Nielsen for the data and they have set it so that every 10 digital track sales from an album would essentially account for an entire album’s sale. Streaming would be measured based on 1,500 streams from an album to account for an entire album and will be based on services such as Spotify, Beats Music, Google Play, and Xbox Music. Based on this, we have to wonder what the charts in the future could look like. These changes are expected to come into effect 3rd December.
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