A few months back with record sales on the decline and streaming on the rise Billboard made the decision that streaming must now count towards those sales. But one of the weird things about this is that any album priced under $3.49 or below is not counted towards sales. This new streaming will even be more confusing.
Effective December 3rd, streaming will count in Billboard’s Top 200 album ranking, a former bellwether of sales accomplishment. “The Billboard 200 albums chart will premiere its biggest upgrade in more than 23 years, transforming from a pure sales-based ranking to one measuring multi-metric consumption,” Billboard announced back in November We are super late on this one J.
The move follows an overhaul of the singles charts last year, which now integrates streaming alongside song download sales. According Billboard, plays from a range of streaming services will count, including Spotify, Beats, Google Play, and Xbox Music.
According to Billboard “The updated Billboard 200 will utilize accepted industry benchmarks for digital and streaming data, equating 10 digital track sales from an album to one equivalent album sale, and 1,500 song streams from an album to one equivalent album sale.”
One thing that really amaze me is that artist are really getting the shaft job from music streaming companies if 1500 streams only count as one album sale and if you are already and artist that make nothing on a album wow. Think about that.