It all feels rather strange to me right now, that people can pay next to nothing, to listen to a song for a minimum of 30 seconds, never own a copy of it and it can get to no.1. :wacko:

 

A song is not going to get to #1 on 0.01 'sales' :lol:

So glad they are adding this to the chart it will help revive some of the poor sales for all the one week no.1s we've had that would have sold a lot more had they not been held back for so long, Calvin Harris looks to do quite well from this seeing as summer is still quite high as is sing seeing as its sales have plummeted.

 

But looking back over this years no.1s to say it the changes would only be felt further down the charts it actually would have meant we wouldn't have had four months of 1 week no.1s if streaming had been included at the start of the year. Route 94 were pipped to a second week at no.1 by 5,000 sales but on Spotify that week they would have had an extra 5,600 sales just about allowing them to just about be no1 for a second week.

 

Then Mr Probz which after rather be has had very persistent high weekly streams would have had an extra 10,000 sales to put him ahead of Calvin giving him three weeks. Also Sam Smith would have just about clinched a second week ahead of second city.

 

Also I can see theres a couple of songs already on spotify that will chart before the digital version is released, Nico & Vinz being the main example. This I think is a good way forward and gets round the held back release rubbish and i can see a lot of labels maybe following this tactic allowing the song to build up on spotify then release the single so a song could sell 30-60k before its officially released and help boost sales in the long run and as It becomes more popular the bigger the sales will become.

Hopefully the fact that Tsunami and I Wanna Feel would have missed number one if streaming was counted is persuasive enough for Ministry of Sound to allow their releases onto Spotify. But seeing as they are so against it, I can't see it happening until album sales of their compilations become really low.

A song is not going to get to #1 on 0.01 'sales' :lol:

 

Not unless you could persuade 10 million people to stream it... :P

I've always believed streaming should be counted and charted, but that it should be separate to the official sales chart.

Reason is, how can you accurately decide how many streams should equal one sale? The decision appears to based on royalties paid for a stream, but this has nothing to do with the reasons for people streaming a song. The listener does not care about royalty rate. It does not factor into their decision making process, so setting the ratio based on that seems pointless. If all you care about is how much money somebody earned off the back of a track being streamed then you might as well compile a net earnings chart and use that as your guage for popularity, except of course that wouldn't work very well either.

The decision to use 100:1 has massive implications for a artists perceived success, although I appreciate they say that generally the impact on the sales chart positions will be minimal. In the past a sale was a sale. Somebody bought a copy and that was counted. Simple. Now I know they may have never given it a second listen, but they parted with their hard earned money based on a perception that the music was good. They chose to pay for that music specifically.

Now people stream music all day long because they have access to it as part of a paid subscription or maybe even a promotional deal. They're not paying with their wallets in the same way. Often people don't even choose many of the songs they end up listening to yet these songs, played without deliberate intent will be counted as equal to those others that are deliberately chosen by the listener. Seems strange to me. Perhaps this is considered to be statistical noise by the chart compilers.

It sounds as though automatic track selection will become (if it is not already) an important aspect of chart performance that music companies will try to influence. How realistic is it that Sony could buy priority for their tracks so that when a person's chosen track is finished the next one cued up by the system automatically is one of theirs, hence boosting chart position? Sounds reasonable to me, and I'd be surprised if it's not done already.

Also, it's an incredibly easy task to set up any number of virtual machines each constantly streaming tracks of your own choice. This makes influencing the new singles chart much easier than it is now, as it can be done for free!

Edited June 25, 201411 yr by bobmoo79

I suppose this was inevitable in the end, but I am quite sad that it's finally happening. Having said that, it will be nice to see the weekly "sales" go up a little even if they aren't true sales figures. This change will only increase the ease with which songs are selling a million copies these days too - for example if streaming had been added this time last year, Pompeii probably wouldn't have left the top 40 for more than a few weeks since release! It will be interesting to see what songs make re-entries on the week of the big change too. Also, it's going to be annoying that singles released after streaming is added will end up with higher overall sales and certifications than those released before, whilst not necessarily having been more popular, but that problem was the same when they included downloads and it isn't really a reason to justify not changing the rules, just an annoying consequence of it.

 

I'm assuming most of this has been said before, but I'm just adding my opinion to this! :lol:

I suppose this was inevitable in the end, but I am quite sad that it's finally happening. Having said that, it will be nice to see the weekly "sales" go up a little even if they aren't true sales figures. This change will only increase the ease with which songs are selling a million copies these days too - for example if streaming had been added this time last year, Pompeii probably wouldn't have left the top 40 for more than a few weeks since release! It will be interesting to see what songs make re-entries on the week of the big change too. Also, it's going to be annoying that singles released after streaming is added will end up with higher overall sales and certifications than those released before, whilst not necessarily having been more popular, but that problem was the same when they included downloads and it isn't really a reason to justify not changing the rules, just an annoying consequence of it.

 

I'm assuming most of this has been said before, but I'm just adding my opinion to this! :lol:

Has it actually been stated anywhere that streams are going to be added to the overall sales of a song? My assumption was that they'd be combined for the purpose of the chart, but the actual sales and streams would still be kept separately. Like a song could debut selling 60,000 copies and 500,000 streams and for chart purposes that means it sold 65,000 copies but it's sales total would still only be 60,000. It just makes sense for it to stay that way to me.

Has it actually been stated anywhere that streams are going to be added to the overall sales of a song? My assumption was that they'd be combined for the purpose of the chart, but the actual sales and streams would still be kept separately. Like a song could debut selling 60,000 copies and 500,000 streams and for chart purposes that means it sold 65,000 copies but it's sales total would still only be 60,000. It just makes sense for it to stay that way to me.

I was hoping that this would be the case for those reasons, but it seems quite a complicated way of doing it, plus it would make the sales section look quite messy (not that the general public know or care). I could easily be wrong, but I assume if they want to add the streams to sales of songs for the purpose of the chart, they will also add in the streams to the total sales seeing as that's essentially what they're counting. Also, the BPI announced that it would "take streaming into account when awarding gold discs" (I read this in a news article in the Times on Monday) so I'd assume that means they are being counted towards total sales as well?

Do we already know if they're updating all of their previous certifications for songs or only moving forward?

 

Would I be right in guessing that Chasing Cars would be popular on streaming - if so, that'd extend its chart run even more (as if it needs it)... :P

Would I be right in guessing that Chasing Cars would be popular on streaming - if so, that'd extend its chart run even more (as if it needs it)... :P

 

I would assume so too (although I don't know for sure how much streams it gets). But it seems like the sort of song that would get a lot of streams.

There's no way in hell Chasing Cars still gets enough streams to regularly make the top 75 surely?

 

People seem to have difficulty understanding the ratio so far. The biggest track of the week will likely only get a boost equivalent to 15,000 in sales. I wouldn't be surprised if Chasing Cars weren't even getting that number in *streams* a week. Given the typical demographic profile for streamers it's not exactly the obvious go-to recurrent hit in streaming.

Just look at the streaming charts, I don't think Chasing Cars is in there

There's no way in hell Chasing Cars still gets enough streams to regularly make the top 75 surely?

 

I never stated top *75*... ;)

 

Just look at the streaming charts, I don't think Chasing Cars is in there

 

But that only covers T100 - it could well be in the next 100 places...

But that only covers T100 - it could well be in the next 100 places...

So what? It will only show it is not top 100 most probably on the official chart either :P

Am I the only one here who got vidcapper's point? :lol: Chasing Cars re-enters the chart (whether we're talking top 75, top 100 or top 200) all the time, and streaming would probably help it even more.

 

He doesn't expect it to suddenly jump into the top 40 next week because of streaming. He's not stupid. But when it does re-enter next time, I could imagine streaming would boost it 1 or 2 places more than it would get, since it's a song I imagine does well in streaming, even today.

Edited June 27, 201411 yr by Eric_Blob

Because streaming literally only applies to that one song.

Because streaming literally only applies to that one song.

 

You know some songs get more streaming than others? For example, streaming would have improved Pompeii's chart run (and probably will in the future). Other songs would have worse chart runs if streaming was included, but I think Chasing Cars is one of the ones that would benefit from it (not that it needs to :lol:).

 

I think Chasing Cars is boring personally, but I can imagine it does well on streaming. I saw Wonderwall in the top 100 on Spotify a while ago, so I think older songs can still get significant streams.

You know some songs get more streaming than others? For example, streaming would have improved Pompeii's chart run (and probably will in the future). Other songs would have worse chart runs if streaming was included, but I think Chasing Cars is one of the ones that would benefit from it (not that it needs to :lol:).

 

I think Chasing Cars is boring personally, but I can imagine it does well on streaming. I saw Wonderwall in the top 100 on Spotify a while ago, so I think older songs can still get significant streams.

I think 'Mr. Brightside' being top 100 officially on streaming for 33 weeks suggests that 'trickle-streaming' happens and that big recent indie songs benefit from it, so if Chasing Cars gets prominent usage on a TV show it could benefit a lot

There are lots of older songs in the positions between 100-200 in the official chart, so if Chasing Cars move up from 134 to 131 is it something special? If it would move back into the top 75 would be more interesting but I don't think it will because of streaming personally.