Back in the day, we’d buy music by going to the record store, browsing the CDs, trying them out before making our decision. The process is much simpler these days where we don’t even have to leave our house to buy music, or have to go to a music store. We can be riding the subway home and buy an album without having to leave our seats.
Safe to say that the music landscape is changing. That being said, with the music landscape changing, how will features and services like music charts change and adapt with it? Well over in the UK, the Official Charts Company has announced that they will start including music streams in their Top 40 list. This will come into effect on the the 6th of July.
Of course this means that music streaming services like Spotify, Deezer, Napster, O2 Tracks, Xbox Music, Sony’s Music Unlimited, and the likes will have to submit their streaming data. To prevent possible fraud and manipulation of the charts, the Official Charts Company will be counting every 100 streams as equal to one download or a purchase of a single as long as the song is played for more than 30 seconds, so companies can’t manipulate the charts by pressing play and stop non-stop.
It’s interesting that music charts will now start taking streaming into account. After all it was only earlier this year that there were reports that digital music sales were on the decline, suggesting that consumers are starting to turn towards alternatives, such as streaming, so perhaps now record companies and artists will have a more accurate way to gauge their popularity and success.
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