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> The STATE of the album chart~, what should be done?
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HausofKubrick
post Mar 29 2021, 07:15 PM
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I think everyone here is aware of how ~inaccurate~ the album chart is for album sales. An artist can have their back catalogue being streamed across various albums, and they all count towards one greatest hits. An artist could have an album that ~3 people have heard in full, and yet it is able to chart top 40 because people are replaying 3 singles off it in decent numbers. So what can and should be done?

MY PROPOSAL:
- streams count towards the album.. they are being streamed from and not the highest selling greatest hits
- at least ~75% of an album should be streamed in order for it to count towards sales
- make the ratio less if they want to continue inflating sales to make them seem healthy with the two proposed ideas above

Would this work better? Gaga.png

DISCUSS~
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Bjork
post Mar 29 2021, 07:18 PM
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even simpler: don't count playlist streams towards album chart,
Mabel's album would get 0 streams per week this way smile.gif instead of getting 2.3k fake album sales a week
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Klaus
post Mar 29 2021, 07:37 PM
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Find a way to measure when people are actually streaming an album. I remember Spotify used to do an album chart and I’m sure it never seemed as messy as the state of the current official chart.
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danG
post Mar 29 2021, 07:45 PM
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unfortunately it seems the industry is all too happy to count these playlist streams so they can pretend acts like Mabel, Becky Hill, Jax Jones are having hit albums and inflating the sales figures of the likes of Dua Lipa, Lewis Capaldi, Harry Styles too even if they have genuinely big albums. so I doubt they’re going to change this aspect of the chart.

not that it’ll “save” the album chart but they really need to get a hold of the sheer number of greatest hits albums in the chart though, there are as many as 32 GHs in the top 100 this week. then you also have old albums doing well because they have a good few hits on them like Rumors, Morning Glory, AM etc also clogging up space in the chart.
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HausofKubrick
post Mar 29 2021, 07:48 PM
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QUOTE(Klaus @ Mar 29 2021, 08:37 PM) *
Find a way to measure when people are actually streaming an album. I remember Spotify used to do an album chart and I’m sure it never seemed as messy as the state of the current official chart.

Definitely! Artists that have a few hit singles are being FAR heavily outweighted in the stakes that contribute to the album chart than artists that potentially have albums listened to (/consumed?) from start to end as intended, aka - what an album actually is. nocheer.gif make it make sense - there's a singles chart for a reason!
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Padamic Tension
post Mar 29 2021, 07:55 PM
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QUOTE(HausofArgento @ Mar 29 2021, 08:48 PM) *
Definitely! Artists that have a few hit singles are being FAR heavily outweighted in the stakes that contribute to the album chart than artists that potentially have albums listened to (/consumed?) from start to end as intended, aka - what an album actually is. nocheer.gif make it make sense - there's a singles chart for a reason!

I agree, i dont think the "weight" is attributed correctly at all which is why there are about 25 albums staying on the chart week after week even thought people are only listening to a a handful of songs on the said album.
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-Jay-
post Mar 29 2021, 09:23 PM
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I really dislike the current state of the album chart! sad.gif

I find it strange that the OCC have been very preoccupied with making the singles chart appear to be fresher than it truly is, yet they're seemingly satisfied with the staleness of the album chart. It's brimming with Greatest Hits albums and old studio albums (let's define "old" as more than 104 weeks, i.e. 2 years... because more often than not, artists have moved on from an album after that period of time). 140 albums in this week's Top 200 fall into these categories. So just 60 could be considered as being somewhat current.

The more recent albums that achieve longevity, such as Mabel - #24 this week, but she only sold 33 pure copies (physical + download). 2,566 of her 2,599 weekly total is from streaming - 98.73%.

Ed Sheeran - Divide sold 207 pure copies last week - even if he'd sold 0, his 3,541 streaming figure would have been enough for him to place at #13 instead of #11.

Katy Perry - Teenage Dream at #58 with 1,584 sales - 1,565 of it is streaming.

I definitely believe that their methodology for counting album streams is flawed and could do with being looked at - it favours those who have a successful and long singles campaign, but that doesn't exactly mean that the album is being heavily consumed.
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jszmiles
post Mar 29 2021, 09:59 PM
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QUOTE(Klaus @ Mar 29 2021, 09:37 PM) *
Find a way to measure when people are actually streaming an album.


Actually where is the problem to do so? when all streaming tracks got almost perfect album tags.... just the sales probably will get downgraded to 1K to score #1 position
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jszmiles
post Mar 29 2021, 10:01 PM
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QUOTE(Jay❄ @ Mar 29 2021, 11:23 PM) *
The more recent albums that achieve longevity, such as Mabel - #24 this week, but she only sold 33 pure copies (physical + download). 2,566 of her 2,599 weekly total is from streaming - 98.73%.

Ed Sheeran - Divide sold 207 pure copies last week - even if he'd sold 0, his 3,541 streaming figure would have been enough for him to place at #13 instead of #11.

Katy Perry - Teenage Dream at #58 with 1,584 sales - 1,565 of it is streaming.


thanks for the stats, interesting to read. Do you have their sales positions to compare them? I wonder where those 19 sales put Katy on the list.
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HausofKubrick
post Mar 30 2021, 06:19 AM
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Jay clap.gif

My most simple logic that I hope the OCC eventually adhere to is: an album sale should mean that an album has been consumed. Leave the hits for the singles chart!
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Colm
post Mar 30 2021, 06:46 AM
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Where can I find the rules on how the album chart is compiled using streams?
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Sour Candy
post Mar 30 2021, 07:14 AM
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I'm not that fussed about studio albums hanging around for long. Divide has 3 HUUuUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE hits on it, it's fair that it's doing well on streaming. it is also his biggest album to date by far. Fleetwood Mac's Rumours is a bona fide classic with songs like Dreams, Go Your Own Way, The Chain and You Make Loving Fun on it - again, totally understandable that it is doing well.

What I don't get is that OCC can't make GH's ineligible in the current climate when they very quickly removed the soundtracks (TGS, ASIB) from the album chart. Regarding artists like Oasis, Elton John and Queen, when the song consumption comes from several eras, it is not really fair.
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T Boy
post Mar 30 2021, 08:02 AM
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It’s too difficult for new albums to take off. Personally, I’m not sure I’d have ever included streams, at least not in the way that they have. They were included to artificially inflate waning sales but they barely even do that now.

I think the pandemic has had a bit of an effect though not a major one. People aren’t able to go to the shops and it’s easier just to stream playlists when you’re stuck in the house. It just irritates me when new albums disappear after 1 or 2 weeks.
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vibe
post Mar 30 2021, 08:07 AM
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What a mess !!

Especially for us chart addicts.
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Dircadirca
post Mar 30 2021, 08:19 AM
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I think it all just boils down to a sheer lack of album consumption. We can all look at the resultant chart and say streams are excessive but the truth is that if anything they're extremely *underweighted*. 1 person buying an album is the equivalent to 100-600 (probably around 200 on average) people listening to an entire album, that's quite a magnitude. If not many people are buying albums, this is the state of affairs because you can't contribute people mentally admiring the continued existence of an album to the chart, they need to actively consume it. Like I'm not sure which albums *should* be charting high over the streaming magnets that are because the consumption just isn't there. If you restrict partial listens, sure it'll help first week releases, but you'll also create an album chart where complete genuine obscurities chart high, vanish away, and we'll just see a new bland equilibrium with a slightly different coat of paint ("AM" for instance was pretty much always on the chart every week before streaming was added, so it could easily remain a staple regardless of whether residual streams of "R U Mine?" and "Snap Out Of It" are the main contributing factor). Mabel only makes a mockery of it due to the constant tracklist updates, making sure there's always a hot single in tow (Dua Lipa's pretty guilty of this as well, it just feels less egregious).

We can make claims about what we feel *should* be charting higher and lower, but it's just the OCC's job to count the numbers which may or may not agree with your perspective of what popular music is. I've seen plenty of people dismiss the popularity of hip-hop just because 'no one *I* know listens to it', which just shows how easy it is to misconstrue the reality of what's popular if you disregard raw numbers. The OCC's approach and ruling with these numbers is arbitrary but I honestly think it's quite fair and generous. The best compliment I can give is that they have clearly outlined what they are doing with the numbers and they are accurately doing that, so you can discern the information they provide and scrutinise it. You have no idea how good you have it compared to the ARIA Charts which is pure unclarified chaos that never gets audited.
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Sour Candy
post Mar 30 2021, 08:19 AM
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Hit albums don't disappear in 1-2 weeks, if the album has at least some momentum, it'll stay for several weeks (like Celeste's latest or Foo Fighters) despite not being that big on streaming.
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-Jay-
post Mar 31 2021, 02:28 AM
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QUOTE(jszmiles @ Mar 29 2021, 11:01 PM) *
thanks for the stats, interesting to read. Do you have their sales positions to compare them? I wonder where those 19 sales put Katy on the list.

You're welcome! biggrin.gif

In the Album Sales Chart, Yungblud at #85 sold 237 pure copies (the #86-#100 albums don't appear in the overall Top 200); Ed Sheeran's Divide with 207 sales wasn't enough to be Top 100. So 19 copies for Teenage Dream must be pretty low down the sales chart list.

Of just the albums that are in the official Top 200, Teenage Dream's 19 pure sales [11 CDs, 7 Downloads, 1 Vinyl] makes it the 165th best selling pure seller out of those 200 albums.

120 albums in the Top 200 sold less than 100 pure copies!


I find it interesting just how low the pure sales of some of the regularly featured chart albums are these days, particularly the Greatest Hits albums, which will clearly remain permanent fixtures of the chart with the current methodology, even if it's debatable whether there's specific interest in these particular compilations. Personally I feel like they're just acting as a representation of these artist's most popular hits in streaming playlists. Anyway, here are a few examples:

#9 - Queen - 'Greatest Hits'
3,923 - overall
3,476 - streaming (88.61%)
447 - pure [274 vinyl, 93 CDs, 80 downloads]

#12 - Fleetwood Mac - '50 Years - Don't Stop'
3,681 - overall
3,652 - streaming (99.21%)
28 - pure [21 CDs, 7 downloads and 1 vinyl]

#14 - Elton John - 'Diamonds'
3,291 - overall
3,131 - streaming (95.14%)
160 - pure [67 downloads, 52 CDs, 41 vinyl]

#16 - Eminem - 'Curtain Call - The Hits'
3,042 - overall
2,938 - streaming (96.58%)
104 - pure [33 vinyl, 29 CDs, 42 downloads]

#18 - Oasis - 'Time Flies 1994-2009'
2,994 - overall
2,793 - streaming (93.29%)
201 - pure [115 downloads, 86 CDs]

#31 - Michael Jackson - 'Number Ones'
2,342 - overall
2,286 - streaming (97.61%)
56 - pure [34 downloads, 16 CDs, 6 DVDs]

#34 - Maroon 5 - 'Singles' (#34 is a new peak position)
2,085 - overall
2,061 - streaming (98.85%)
24 - pure [17 CDs, 7 downloads]

#73 - Jason Derulo - 'Platinum Hits'
1,438 - overall
1,436 - streaming (99.86%)
2 - pure [1 CD, 1 download] tearsmile.gif
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Rush
post Mar 31 2021, 04:51 AM
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^ Nice to see those figures! Out of curiosity, are there any albums in the top 100 (or top 200) with literally 0 pure sales?

The funniest(?) thing about Maroon 5's 'Singles' is that it was just a quick compilation thrown out with zero publicity and a half-baked tracklist missing numerous reasonably-successful singles of theirs, and now on top of that it's 5 years out of date - imagine how much better it would be doing if they re-released it with 'Memories', 'Girls Like You', 'What Lovers Do' and so on added laugh.gif Kind of similarly with Eminem, his 2nd biggest song on Spotify is his 2002 album track ''Till I Collapse', and I'm kind of surprised they've never tacked it onto his GH for extra streaming points.
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Sour Candy
post Mar 31 2021, 05:14 AM
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rotf.gif at somebody buying Jason Derulo's collection in physical format. Hope the person is ok.
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Dircadirca
post Mar 31 2021, 05:22 AM
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QUOTE(Sour Candy @ Mar 31 2021, 01:14 PM) *
rotf.gif at somebody buying Jason Derulo's collection in physical format. Hope the person is ok.

Truly they are ridin' solo on that one
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