The Official Charts Company has announced
that the UK Top 40 singles chart will include audio streams from next month.
It is the first time in the chart's history
that music played on services such as Spotify and Deezer will count in the UK,
alongside single sales. Streams from Napster, O2 Tracks, rara,
Sony's Music Unlimited and Xbox Music will also be incorporated into the
reconfigured chart from Sunday, July 6.
Plans to include streaming in the Top 40
were revealed by BBC Radio 1's head of music George Ergatoudis earlier this
year.
The move comes in light of music
streaming's continued growth in the UK, doubling from around 100 million
streams a week in 2013 to 200 million at the beginning of 2014. An average of
260 million songs are currently streamed per week.
Official Charts Company boss Martin Talbot
told BBC News that the changes are "about future-proofing the
charts". "So far this year we've seen nine
tracks which have been streamed more than one million times in a week,"
Talbot explained. "Last year there were only two tracks that had reached
that kind of level."
Bastille's 'Pompeii' is the most-streamed
track of all time in the UK so far with 26.6 million steams to date but only
made number two in the singles chart based on sales alone.
It had to happen, I guess. But in a time when it has never been easier to BUY the songs you like (if you care for digital, that is), shouldn't a song like "Pompeii" actually make it to the top spot? If I were to go into a store, listen on headphones to a couple of CD singles and then decide I do not want to buy them, should these listens count towards the charts???
I feel that including streams in singles charts is wrong - the popularity should be measured in actual sales, where people like a song enough to actually buy it. But in a time where people in general don't care much about actual products or quality, I guess this makes sense. Of course this makes the charts even easier to manipulate, but I guess it doesn´t matter anymore. When Billboard started basing the charts almost exclusively on radio play 15 years ago, the US charts were dead. I guess the same will apply to the UK charts in a couple of weeks...
1 comment:
Utterly pathetic. "Future-proofing" my arse. How much money changes hands is the point, surely? Mind you these days most artists make their money from touring and merchandise, so I suppose it little matters if the music actually sells in units as opposed to providing a "taster" for the (expensive) live experience...
Here's a wise thought to describe George Ergatoudis and Martin Talbot. Jx
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