Streaming officially counts towards the UK music charts from July
The Official Chart Company has announced the inclusion of listens from streaming services into the make-up of the official UK Top 40 – starting next month.
As we reported back in February, the move has been coming for some time, but we finally have details of how it will work.
The news follows an agreement between most of the big streaming services: Spotify, Deezer, Napster, O2 Tracks, Xbox Music, Sony’s Music Unlimited and rara (us neither), and will see streaming tracks weighted as worth 1/100th of that of a purchase of a single.
Similarly, streaming will be capped at up to 10 streams in a day counting towards the chart – lest you just leave Nickelback on a loop, and nobody wants that.
Perhaps most interestingly, in tandem with these changes to the official chart the company will also be launching the “Official Breakers Chart”, which measures the fastest growing tracks rather than just absolute numbers.
What’s going to be really interesting to see is how it will affect what charts. Will it better reflect the nation’s musical tastes? Or will it lead to the disappointing end of the novelty single as whilst loads of people may buy joke singles… will anyone actually listen to them?
