Billboard 200 to Make Streams Counts for Album Charting

More news coming from the omnipresent Spotify today, this time regarding the future of tracking and reporting on album successes. The infamous Billboard 200, which charts albums solely on sales alone, will take a big new approach to incorporating data in their upcoming December 3 chart and subsequent charts following. The Billboard 200 will now recognize 10 digital track sales from the same album as the equivalent of one album sale. Intriguing certainly but hold on, there’s more. Additionally, 1,500 song streams from an album will equal the equivalent of one album sale. As you may have guessed, this will inevitably alter the potency of certain artists chart presence, for example, The New York Times described this change as profitable for major pop stars like Ariana Grande, but indicates a hinderance for artists like Barbara Streisand, who does not use streaming services. Billboard will be pulling data from all the major streaming services like Spotify, Beats Music, Rdio, Rhapsody, Google Play and Xbox Music. While the news may be harrowing for some, this addition is likely a more apt representation of album success in today’s increasingly digital world and, well, older generations may just have to get with the program.