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Billboard revamps genre album charts
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 27 January 2017
Billboard has announced that it is revamping its genre-focussed album charts to include streaming and tracks sales data, following on from changes made to the Billboard 200 album chart in 2014.
From next Tuesday, the various US genre charts will record ten track sales and 1500 streams as each being equivalent to one album sale. One album sale will still equal one album sale, in case you wondered. Billboard says that this consumption model better reflects what people are listening to.
“We’ve been THRILLED with the reception to the Billboard 200 album consumption methodology and how it reflects album popularity in today’s world, where music is accessible on so many platforms”, says VP Charts And Data Development at Billboard, Silvio Pietroluongo. “The conversion of genre album charts to consumption reinforces how this approach has become the accepted measure of album success”.
Not everyone thinks this way of compiling charts is brilliant, of course. And to placate those people, Billboard will continue to publish charts based on album sales data only. I’m not sure that will actually placate them, but whatever.
On-demand services that will provide data for counting are: Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, Amazon Music, SoundCloud, Slacker, Napster, Google Play and Groove Music. As with the Billboard 200 chart, YouTube data will not be counted, although it is included in the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.
