UK Albums chart to take streaming data into account from the 1st of March

The Official Charts Company has announced the biggest-ever shakeup of the UK Albums Chart: from the 1st of March data on streams made on platforms like Spotify and Deezer will be taken into account alongside sales.

The model though will be different from that adopted in the US, where streaming data is taken at face value meaning that a big single could propel an album higher in the chart even if the other tracks are not getting traction.

In the UK, according to the OCC’s website the “Official Charts will take the 12 most streamed tracks from the standard version of the album, the top two songs will be down-weighted in line with the average of the rest. The total of these streams will be divided by 1000 and added to the physical and digital sales of the album (the 1,000 ratio is used to reflect the broad difference in value between a track stream and the price paid for an album).”

In essence, if the album has a runaway hit single, that hit single will be down-weighted in order to avoid skewing the performance of the album as a whole, which could bode well for “album artists” whose fans tend to listen to the whole thing from beginning to end.

So, let’s say that your album’s 12 most-streamed tracks were played 120,000 times (after taking into account the down-weighting), this would result in 120 additional sales towards the albums chart.

For an artist receiving 1,2 million hits in a week, this could mean an extra 1,200 sales counted, which could make a difference.

To put things into perspective though, last year a huge artist like Ed Sheeran clocked 200 million streams in the UK with his album X. On a week-by-week basis this may not yet make a big impact but as streaming services grow the effects will become more noticeable.

The Official Charts Company will be receiving data from a number of services, including Spotify, Deezer, Google Play, Napster, O2 Tracks, Rara, Rdio and Xbox Music.


(Andrea Leonelli)