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| Should million-sellers include streaming? |
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 7th January 2015, 05:40 PM
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#21
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 BuzzJack Gold Member
Joined: 18 May 2007
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QUOTE(Graham A @ Jan 7 2015, 01:03 PM)  It's stupid to count them for weekly sales too! Streaming is a listen to track which nobody owns. People listen to the million sellers all the time from the past. But those listened to where not recorded. What makes it worse for streaming is that you don't even have to listen to all the track, so the contribution could be to sales could be just a casual person listening to the song because it's popular, then finding out they don't like it! However if you fork out money for a record you probably do like it, hence why in the past people bought records in huge numbers and the term "a million seller" was born. It stood out from the rest of the records that were on sale and was a special achievement. However does this still apply to a million seller? The status of the million seller has been somewhat downgraded in the past few years since downloads came along. Since downloads are cheaper than the records prior to the introduction of the format. So a record that sold 1 million copies precisely. In the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's made more money than a download record selling the same. Also before downloads, records were deleted so a record selling a huge amount couldn't stay in the shops long and often the record company restricted sending copies out of the big sellers to open up the market for new tracks. This changed with the download market and records now continue to sell. This means that over a long time even a modest selling record in the day can still have the tag "million seller" applied to it. However streaming is even worse for paying out and so a 1 million stream of even allowed streams is as low or lower than the download, so the status of the term "million seller" become pointless. For the average music lover, streaming is far more convenient than downloading. Why should the tastes of these people be ignored? Download figures are decreasing and will continue to do so. I expect within 5 years we'll be back down to 20,000 sales for a #1, if not even less. What is the point of the official chart if it doesn't reflect popularity? Do they have to wait for everyone to stop downloading and the chart to become totally irrelevant before you'd even consider adding streams to be necessary? A song that is streamed 1 million times is clearly more popular than a single that sells 10,000 copies to a small fanbase. |
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7th January 2015, 05:53 PM
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#22
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BuzzJack Platinum Member
Joined: 21 November 2009
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I don't think streams should be included in million-sellers. It would be unfair to a lot of songs that charted before streaming was implemented in the charts and not give a true representations of the sales of songs if streaming was included (songs like "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Someone Like You", "I Gotta Feeling" and many others would likely have gained a lot more sales had streaming been implemented much earlier).
P.S: I know streaming wasn't around during the original runs of "Bohemian Rhapsody", but like many classic acts, Queen still gets quite a lot of streams which have added up over the years. This post has been edited by Envoirment: 7th January 2015, 05:54 PM |
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7th January 2015, 06:44 PM
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#23
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 Right in front of my salad?!
Pronouns: he/him
Joined: 7 March 2006 Posts: 82,478 User: 12
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Sales are decreasing and the market for downloads seems to be shrinking. Time to move with the times and have combined million sellers.
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7th January 2015, 07:49 PM
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#24
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BuzzJack Enthusiast
Joined: 21 November 2006
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I'm still curious as to how streaming is calculated. I thought, originally, you only had to play a song for at least 30 seconds for the stream to count! This seems wrong to me. For a stream to count, the full duration of the song should be a must.
I don't think streaming should count towards million 'sellers'. |
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7th January 2015, 07:50 PM
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#25
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 BuzzJack Idol
Joined: 8 December 2010
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I've altered the title/question of this thread otherwise the poll is really confusing! People may have selected "yes" to should million sellers be sales-only without realising that "yes" meant "yes, streaming should count".
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7th January 2015, 07:52 PM
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#26
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BuzzJack Idol
Joined: 8 December 2010
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QUOTE(highlander69 @ Jan 7 2015, 07:49 PM) I'm still curious as to how streaming is calculated. I thought, originally, you only had to play a song for at least 30 seconds for the stream to count! This seems wrong to me. For a stream to count, the full duration of the song should be a must. But what would happen if someone listened to pretty much the whole song apart from the last two seconds when they've pressed play for another song? |
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7th January 2015, 07:53 PM
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#27
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Former iconic poster with no consistent posting style
Pronouns: Don't take em seriously tbh
Joined: 20 June 2014 Posts: 20,582 User: 21,005 
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QUOTE(highlander69 @ Jan 7 2015, 07:49 PM) I'm still curious as to how streaming is calculated. I thought, originally, you only had to play a song for at least 30 seconds for the stream to count! This seems wrong to me. For a stream to count, the full duration of the song should be a must. I don't think streaming should count towards million 'sellers'. QUOTE(liamk97 @ Jan 7 2015, 07:52 PM) But what would happen if someone listened to pretty much the whole song apart from the last two seconds when they've pressed play for another song? Is there a source to confirm this rather peculiar theory? I know last.fm requires 50% play to scrobble... This post has been edited by SPINNING ADAM: 7th January 2015, 07:54 PM |
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7th January 2015, 08:05 PM
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#28
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3:23
Joined: 18 January 2008
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Yes, absolutely! You've got to move with the times!
I fully expect the OCC to relaunch the million 'sellers' list at some point in the near future to include streaming data and the readjusted sales for the 1994-1998 period~ |
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7th January 2015, 08:43 PM
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#29
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BuzzJack Platinum Member
Joined: 20 April 2009
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I voted no but I do agree it's a very difficult issue. I guess my main problem is how arbitrary setting a particular number of streams as equivalent to 1 sale is - whether you choose 100 or any other number. Steaming and buying music are two very different things - yes there are differences between selling 1 million CDs 15 years ago and 1 million downloads today but at least they fundamentally represent the same activity.
I think there should be an official streaming chart and an official sales chart and they should be kept completely separate. I'm not actually convinced sales will keep dropping off because whereas downloads were more or less a perfect substitute for CDs, streaming isn't a perfect substitute for owning a song. I still want to buy my music because I hate the thought that it could be taken away if I was effectively renting it (eg the Taylor Swift saga). However if in 5 years time the weekly sales chart Number 1s were only selling 20K it might be the case that the streaming chart was the one everyone cared about. There also might be a list of 100 million streaming songs and this might be seen as the new milestone in popularity. I wouldn't have a problem with any of that - it's just that I don't like having a chart that combines two things which I see as fundamentally incompatible. |
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8th January 2015, 01:47 AM
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#30
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BuzzJack Climber
Joined: 22 December 2013
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QUOTE(AcerBen @ Jan 7 2015, 05:40 PM) For the average music lover, streaming is far more convenient than downloading. Why should the tastes of these people be ignored? Download figures are decreasing and will continue to do so. I expect within 5 years we'll be back down to 20,000 sales for a #1, if not even less. What is the point of the official chart if it doesn't reflect popularity? Do they have to wait for everyone to stop downloading and the chart to become totally irrelevant before you'd even consider adding streams to be necessary? A song that is streamed 1 million times is clearly more popular than a single that sells 10,000 copies to a small fanbase. Streaming should not have been introduced to the sales chart. It's a sales chart not what people listen to. If the sales chart doesn't reflect what music people are enjoying then you simply switch to streaming totally. Then leave the sales chart to die a slow death, even to those with a small fanbase. Predictions based on figures from the present however don't have much bases in fact. The future is very difficult to predict. Many people have been caught out in the past on all sorts of issues, because they base future predictions on current knowledge. To give some examples. You might recall a prediction about 1999. Back in the early 1980's a TV presenter tried to work out what the world would be like in 1999. He used an astrological computer to get information, as the original prediction about 1999 was based on Astrology. It came up with a bad disease spreading around the world centred on Africa. The conclusion at the time was due to the cold war and germ warfare. That is the kind of thing you get working with statistics and the straight line approach that many people have from modern education about future events. In reality the computer simply predicted AIDS as nobody ever thought that the cold war could end like it did. This is not an isolated thing; back in the 1st Century an astrological event was predicted as a birth of a King. Because that's what they thought at that time. Instead it was the birth of the Christen religion. Alternatives to your view that streaming will continue to grow could depend on technological changes, musicians attitudes to how they get paid and loads of other factors. The main reason that streaming was introduced to the chart was to stop the BBC Radio One top 40 looking like the iTunes chart for the week. The BBC not liking a chart that looked like a commercial company and being one of the main funders of the said chart. Popularity had little to do with such actions. A more popular chart would have included the views from the video sites such as YouTube, but the BBC would have objected to them being included. If a song is only bought by a 10,000 strong fanbase then it would not join the million seller lists for the most popular records in the UK. And the million seller list would remain static. But there is nothing wrong with the list remaining static. However there is something wrong with adding a record that has been listened to a million times. For as I say the people only have to listen for a short period of time and you can do that if some site offers a preview of the top 40 records each week. With loads of people going down the top records, play 30 seconds of each record and occasionally playing in full the ones they like. If 10,000 people do that, you will have million sellers in a few weeks especially if the records hang around the top 40 like they do now. Because every top 40 record counted not the ones that people just played in full. You only have to look at the ridicules figures for streams of records that show in the current charts to see that counting them towards the million sellers list is stupid. Then you have to take into account that people listening to these records in some case have not even forked out any cash at all to do so. In which case the record's revenue (taken into account to qualify for the chart) has come from adverts from the likes of Cola companies. None of the previous records that have made the million sellers got there from commercial firms adverts, at least not directly. The whole idea of popular music is to listen to it. That's why people make it. They don't want it to be forgot about next day. Just because for the first time in history we can actually count the people listening to the music doesn't mean they should add that to those where the public of the past spent a great deal of money buying the records that they wanted to listen to. This post has been edited by Graham A: 8th January 2015, 01:57 AM |
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8th January 2015, 04:01 AM
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#31
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"Jayrusaleminians" - Umi.
Pronouns: he/him
Joined: 4 April 2007 Posts: 41,455 User: 3,217
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QUOTE(Graham A @ Jan 8 2015, 01:47 AM) However there is something wrong with adding a record that has been listened to a million times. For as I say the people only have to listen for a short period of time and you can do that if some site offers a preview of the top 40 records each week. With loads of people going down the top records, play 30 seconds of each record and occasionally playing in full the ones they like. If 10,000 people do that, you will have million sellers in a few weeks especially if the records hang around the top 40 like they do now. Because every top 40 record counted not the ones that people just played in full. You only have to look at the ridicules figures for streams of records that show in the current charts to see that counting them towards the million sellers list is stupid. Then you have to take into account that people listening to these records in some case have not even forked out any cash at all to do so. In which case the record's revenue (taken into account to qualify for the chart) has come from adverts from the likes of Cola companies. None of the previous records that have made the million sellers got there from commercial firms adverts, at least not directly. The whole idea of popular music is to listen to it. That's why people make it. They don't want it to be forgot about next day. Just because for the first time in history we can actually count the people listening to the music doesn't mean they should add that to those where the public of the past spent a great deal of money buying the records that they wanted to listen to. I'm not sure whether you know all the OCC rules regarding streaming, apologies if you do, but just to clarify... An individual is only able to contribute 10 streams of a song per day towards the charts - any more than 10 streams within that day aren't counted. That works out as a maximum of 0.1 sales per day, and 0.7 sales/70 streams per week, per person. Therefore 10,000 people listening to the same song the maximum number of times per day (which would be 700,000 for the whole week between them all) would only end up contributing 7,000 units to be added to a song's weekly sales total for that chart week. I assume a lot of people won't actually stream the same song 10 times a day all week, so it'll be the accumulation of many more people that are making up the total streaming units. Also this isn't about "adding a record that has been listened to a million times". Most hit songs achieve streams considerably more than 1 million. 1 million streams (the streams that are actually counted) equates to just 10,000 units. Uptown Funk had (presumably just eligible) streams of 2.56 million last week alone, contributing 25,551 additional units to his weekly figure. Sorry if I misunderstood or missed the point of what you were saying, but I don't think the situation with streaming is quite as rash as you're making it out to be! It's not something that's easily manipulated, it's just reflecting popularity. The 30 seconds things isn't ideal, but there's probably a lot of people who don't listen to a song the whole way through to the moment a next song begins. I think maybe 100 seconds would be more reflective that a person has actually kept this song playing and listened to it all. By the way, if anything I've written above is actually incorrect information re: streaming rules, then I apologise in advance - but that's my understanding of it at least. ~ All in all this discussions reminds me of 2005, when downloads were added to the charts. There was a lot of resistance back then - "surely a download isn't equivalent to a physical sale" etc. 10 years on and the concept of physical singles sales making up the bulk of the chart is (sadly) a distant memory. Who knows what will happen in the next 10 years? We could be reminiscing about the days when people actually paid money to download song files. The concept of the singles chart being based on what people are spending their cash is most likely going to stop being the main definition of what the chart is all about, and instead it'll be about listens. Therefore I think as time passes, we need to try and embrace/accept streaming data more and more, if we're going to continue following the UK charts. The singles chart being 100% sales based is over, so looking to the past and feeling aggrieved about "the public of the past spending a great deal of money buying the records they wanted to listen to" is a bit of a moot point now. Buying habits changed over the years, from format to format, but now we're experiencing a transition where people are changing the way they access music altogether. If a song passes a million in 2015 with a fairly significant contribution from streaming, that's just a sign of the times & I think it should really be accepted as a "million" achievement. Its popularity was such that it undoubtedly sold a lot of downloads, but it was also streamed a hell of a lot too. I think it's quite curious that the OCC made the big decision of including streaming data in to the weekly charts, but are still quite reluctant to state what a particular song's overall figure is with sales & streams combined... they're still reporting song totals with just sales figures, even the ones no where near a million. It's strange that they want these streaming units to contribute to the sales of songs in the weekly charts, making them higher, but they don't want those streams to be recognised in a song's actual total, the accumulation of those weekly figures. Therefore at the moment it seems like they're more concerned about what the weekly sales look like, rather than embracing streaming as a factor in a song's overall total. I think as time goes by they may need to alter this approach to what they regard as being totals. Ella's 'Ghost' is on course to achieve a million units this week, but it probably won't pass a million purely on sales for a very long time to come. (I actually have no idea how much it's purely sold, but I assume it could have well over 100,000 of its total come from streams). I assume the OCC won't pass comment on it passing a million units. I don't think they have with Ed Sheeran's 'Thinking Out Loud' either, although Music Week are more keen to point out million "unit" sellers. |
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8th January 2015, 10:31 AM
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#32
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BuzzJack Climber
Joined: 18 October 2011
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No, I don't think streaming should count towards million sellers. However, they should start a new category for songs that pass 100 million streams or something.
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8th January 2015, 11:06 AM
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#33
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They've had the very Tunnocks, Mary
Joined: 13 March 2011
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I did protest a bit about streaming being added to official 'sales' nearly a year ago. I'm still not entirely sure how streaming a song ad infinitum for 100 times a day counts as a sale.
But really, when it comes down to it - what is the point? Obviously streaming isn't going to go away as a 'format' if you will now, and it's clear the OCC have taken this on board earlier than they did with downloading - and perhaps wisely so too to avoid the same sales slump the charts suffered in that weird 2003-7 period. Even I use a premium account on Blinkbox Music now, albeit primarily to listen to old music (interestingly, can someone clarify if streams from this count towards sales?) to the tune of £1 a week. The old saying is true...if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. |
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8th January 2015, 11:55 AM
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#34
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BuzzJack Legend
Joined: 18 February 2010
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QUOTE(ThePensmith @ Jan 8 2015, 11:06 AM) and it's clear the OCC have taken this on board earlier than they did with downloading. This is debatable imo. Spotify was already pretty big and growing fast in 2010 (this is when I first started to use it) and streaming only got added to the charts in 2014. I think it was the sales decline late 2013 that made the OCC add streaming (maybe that and also other charts around the world starting to include it). I reckon of sales had carried on increasing they still wouldn't have included it yet, but the sales decline made them realize streaming is really taking over. This post has been edited by Eric_Blob: 8th January 2015, 11:56 AM |
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8th January 2015, 01:02 PM
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#35
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BuzzJack Platinum Member
Joined: 20 November 2014
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If people complained to OCC about streaming slowing down the singles chart like they complained about compilations slowing down the album chart, they might remove it
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8th January 2015, 01:36 PM
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#36
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BuzzJack Enthusiast
Joined: 15 March 2006
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I think each different 'sale' (Streams, downloads, physical) should be counted separatley and not combined or compared to each other. Its a whole different ball game today than what it was in the past, everything should be treated individually. However whilst the OCC and BPI are lumping everything together its going to be very difficult to do so.
i.e if a song sold 750,000 in the physical age. thoat would be its physical sale, then if it sold 200,000 downloads that would be its download sale and same for streams This post has been edited by fiesta: 8th January 2015, 01:40 PM |
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8th January 2015, 01:52 PM
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#37
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BuzzJack Gold Member
Joined: 18 May 2007
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QUOTE(Graham A @ Jan 8 2015, 01:47 AM) Streaming should not have been introduced to the sales chart. It's a sales chart not what people listen to. If the sales chart doesn't reflect what music people are enjoying then you simply switch to streaming totally. Then leave the sales chart to die a slow death, even to those with a small fanbase. Predictions based on figures from the present however don't have much bases in fact. The future is very difficult to predict. Many people have been caught out in the past on all sorts of issues, because they base future predictions on current knowledge. To give some examples. You might recall a prediction about 1999. Back in the early 1980's a TV presenter tried to work out what the world would be like in 1999. He used an astrological computer to get information, as the original prediction about 1999 was based on Astrology. It came up with a bad disease spreading around the world centred on Africa. The conclusion at the time was due to the cold war and germ warfare. That is the kind of thing you get working with statistics and the straight line approach that many people have from modern education about future events. In reality the computer simply predicted AIDS as nobody ever thought that the cold war could end like it did. This is not an isolated thing; back in the 1st Century an astrological event was predicted as a birth of a King. Because that's what they thought at that time. Instead it was the birth of the Christen religion. Alternatives to your view that streaming will continue to grow could depend on technological changes, musicians attitudes to how they get paid and loads of other factors. The main reason that streaming was introduced to the chart was to stop the BBC Radio One top 40 looking like the iTunes chart for the week. The BBC not liking a chart that looked like a commercial company and being one of the main funders of the said chart. Popularity had little to do with such actions. A more popular chart would have included the views from the video sites such as YouTube, but the BBC would have objected to them being included. If a song is only bought by a 10,000 strong fanbase then it would not join the million seller lists for the most popular records in the UK. And the million seller list would remain static. But there is nothing wrong with the list remaining static. However there is something wrong with adding a record that has been listened to a million times. For as I say the people only have to listen for a short period of time and you can do that if some site offers a preview of the top 40 records each week. With loads of people going down the top records, play 30 seconds of each record and occasionally playing in full the ones they like. If 10,000 people do that, you will have million sellers in a few weeks especially if the records hang around the top 40 like they do now. Because every top 40 record counted not the ones that people just played in full. You only have to look at the ridicules figures for streams of records that show in the current charts to see that counting them towards the million sellers list is stupid. Then you have to take into account that people listening to these records in some case have not even forked out any cash at all to do so. In which case the record's revenue (taken into account to qualify for the chart) has come from adverts from the likes of Cola companies. None of the previous records that have made the million sellers got there from commercial firms adverts, at least not directly. The whole idea of popular music is to listen to it. That's why people make it. They don't want it to be forgot about next day. Just because for the first time in history we can actually count the people listening to the music doesn't mean they should add that to those where the public of the past spent a great deal of money buying the records that they wanted to listen to. Your germ warfare analogy is insane. Streaming is clearly the future. Why would you prefer the sales chart to die a slow death than have the official chart attempt to reflect popularity, which is the whole point of it? They have only started including streams to help the chart be seen as relevant. If a large proportion of young people are turning away from downloads to streams, they have to reflect this, otherwise there's no point in having a chart at all. |
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8th January 2015, 02:09 PM
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#38
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They've had the very Tunnocks, Mary
Joined: 13 March 2011
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QUOTE(Eric_Blob @ Jan 8 2015, 11:55 AM) This is debatable imo. Spotify was already pretty big and growing fast in 2010 (this is when I first started to use it) and streaming only got added to the charts in 2014. I think it was the sales decline late 2013 that made the OCC add streaming (maybe that and also other charts around the world starting to include it). I reckon of sales had carried on increasing they still wouldn't have included it yet, but the sales decline made them realize streaming is really taking over. Excellent point - but most people probably hadn't heard of streaming as an avenue for music listening to such a great extent until 2013, when 'Get Lucky', 'Blurred Lines' etc all smashed it outside of 'sales' as it were. Those two songs, in my opinion, were probably responsible for putting Spotify etc on the map. One could argue that 2013 was the year that sparked the OCC's idea, doubtless, but if you compare the average sales for a single to go top 10 against those of 2004 or 2005 when it really was in the doo doo, it wasn't in as much of a dire straits, I think. A slump yes, but not as big as people made out. |
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8th January 2015, 10:19 PM
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#39
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BuzzJack Climber
Joined: 22 December 2013
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QUOTE(AcerBen @ Jan 8 2015, 01:52 PM) Your germ warfare analogy is insane. Streaming is clearly the future. Why would you prefer the sales chart to die a slow death than have the official chart attempt to reflect popularity, which is the whole point of it? They have only started including streams to help the chart be seen as relevant. If a large proportion of young people are turning away from downloads to streams, they have to reflect this, otherwise there's no point in having a chart at all. I don't think I made my point clear enough. If the streaming is the future you make the main chart the - entire chart - streaming. You leave the sales chart as a sales chart. People once said the vinyl record sales were dead, but we know they are now picking up sales. So don't fall for the hype that sales charts are dying. They might be being murdered, but they are not dead yet. There are lots of things that could affect the future of streaming. You saying it is the future is not a given thing. All it shows that you along with lots of other people have a bad view of history and therefore the future. You only have to look at movie predictions of the future to see how wrong things can get if you follow your line of thinking. For example the airwaves should be full of private aircraft, or cars powered by fusion flying around the sky. Oh and in 2005 if you said that the download will be the future and it's how people will consume music for years to come. You can see your argument about streaming being the future as insane too. More young people watch YouTube than stream records. That's not included in the UK chart, because YouTube is competition to the BBC services and the BBC (who fund the chart) won't allow it. It's another example how something can be stopped by something completely alien to it. |
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8th January 2015, 10:21 PM
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#40
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 #38BBE0 otherwise known as 'sky blue'
Joined: 27 October 2008
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In the 1940s it was sheet music, people buying sheets with the music printed on it. Times change, you move on. Get over it!
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