Billboard Plans To Count Streaming Services Toward Top Album Charts

Billboard continues to make progressive strides into the digital market. In late May, they announced their partnership with Twitter to form a tracking system called the Billboard Twitter Real-Time Charts that will rate America's most popular songs as quickly as possible, based on what's being shared on the social networking site. Billboard decided to take it one step further by announcing last night (Nov. 19) that they will now count digital streams toward the "Billboard 200" album charts. Going into effect on Dec. 3, album sales will now benefit from streaming sites like Beats Music, Spotify, Google Play, Xbox Music, and more.

The "Billboard 200" charts will now recognize 10 digital track sales from an album as one album sold, while 1,500 song streams from an album will equal one album sold. It's evident more people listen to music digitally nowadays, so the impact from this streaming partnership is expected to be huge. With albums from J. Cole, Rick Ross, Shady Records, Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj and more to cap off the year, it will be interesting to see who really makes their way to the top of the charts.

"Adding streaming information makes the chart a better representation of music consumption activity," said Silvio Pietroluongo, VP of charts and data development at Billboard. "While an extremely valuable measurement, album sales would mostly capture the initial impulse only, without indicating the depth of consumption thereafter. Someone could listen to the album just once, or listen to one track or a number of tracks 100 times. We are now able to incorporate those plays as part of an album consumption ranking throughout one's possession of an album, extending beyond the initial purchase or listen."

[Billboard]

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