UK Charts to include streaming data from the likes of Spotify and Deezer

The move had been rumored for months and was in fact inevitable, but finally the UK's Official Charts Company has managed to overcome all technical (and political) issues announcing the integration of streaming data in the Official Singles Chart from July 2014.

This means that Singles Chart will take into account the musical choices of millions of users across the UK who have switched to streaming as their primary form of music consumption.

This is significant in that it may cause a considerable shift in the way singles are marketed: before it was all about driving consumers to purchase the track and the only way to sustain momentum in the charts was to drive new and different fans to buy that track week after week, with no data as to how many times people that actually purchased it ended up playing it. Now tracks could have the chance to chart for longer purely because people keep streaming them week in and week out.

Streams of course will not count as much as sales: 100 streams will count as much as one purchase. The parallel essentially grounded on economics since a stream generates around or just less than a penny whilst a purchase is generally between £0.99 and £1.29.

It's interesting to note that whilst on-demand audio services like Spotify, Deezer, Napster, O2 Tracks, Xbox Music, Sony Music Unlimited and Rara are all mentioned in the announcement, YouTube is not. On one side this means that the Singles Chart will continue to be not entirely representative of what is happening in the real world since YouTube is by far the biggest source of music consumption online, but the decision makes sense since YouTube in monetary terms does not contribute anywhere near as much to the industry as on-demand music services.

Another development is that the BPI will also update its Platinum, Gold and Silver Certified Awards programme to make streams count towards certification for singles. This has already happened in the US where the reform generated some controversy as it did include YouTube views so that for example Carly Rae Jepsen ended up 9 times Platinum for "Call Me Maybe" due to the hundreds of millions racked up by its video. At this moment though it doesn't look like in the UK the reform will be retroactive: artists that ammassed tens of millions of streams in the past year should not expect an avalanche of Platinum records as a result.

Koda Marshall, founder of Infectious Records and chairman of the Official Charts Company stated: “The Official Charts are so important to contemporary British culture and the vibrant music business that we currently enjoy. The charts have helped develop and break many important long term international artists for UK plc and the way the charts are compiled has changed many times over the last 50 years as the various technologies have developed. This is just one more important step on that road."... “The decision to move away from a pure singles sales chart to a combined chart including streaming is a very significant change and clearly reflects the importance of online music consumption today. It also signals how far we have come from the days of retail record shops and 7" vinyl and helps us fully understand the number of times people actually listen to a track rather than just buying it and this has to be a good thing for the future.”

(Andrea Leonelli)