Because the answers two those two questions are not always related.

The first question relates to me and my listening habits - you can't infer the behavior of the population based on a sample of one.

 

Of course not - that's why I worded my question to try and avoid the implication I was referring just to my own listening habits (alas I seem to have failed in that attempt). :nocheer:

 

 

 

Right now albums are only having a tiny fraction of their sales dictated by streaming, in the UK anyway. Over in the States, however, it's out of control. A few weeks ago Adele's 25 "sold" more than 55,000 copies purely from people streaming "Hello". And last week BBTM by The Weekend sold around 39,000 copies, but only 13,114 were from actual purchases. Whilst streaming has now pretty much taken over the singles market, is the albums market next?

At the moment I don't really see a big taking over because the methodology for album streams are much more complicated:

 

Check the very first post of this thread: http://www.buzzjack.com/forums/index.php?s...t&p=5255990

"The top 12 most streamed tracks are taken from the standard edition of an album. The top 2 songs will be downweighted, to the average of the other 10 songs. This is to combat an album being artificially boosted by one or two hit singles. The total of these songs is then added together and divided by 1000 to give a streaming total for the album."

 

Adele's 25 has no streams because only Hello is available to stream and that's by far not enough to add anything to the album's sales.

 

PS: The only thing I don't know, what if an album has only 8 tracks? How come this 12 tracks rule?

I don't think it will happen, but I must be honest that's a very valid point. I was a bit surprised when I read at that time that also streaming from free subscriptions wil lbe counted if the royalties are paid (by adverts for example).

 

If I could change the rules somehow I would change two things:

 

1. streaming would count only from paid subscriptions, and nothing from free subscriptions. It would surely change the chart somehow as I'm pretty sure the bigger share of the Spotify users use the srvice for free.

2. I would change the 30 sec rule. Now if you listen to a song 30 seconds long it will count. I would change it to 1 min 30 sec, that's almost half a song and if someone want to multilisten to a song, that is a length that maybe won't worth doing it.

 

I think the counterargument about free streams though is that in either case the marginal cost is the same either way. If you're paying a subscription it's costing you the same per month whether you have it running 24-7 or don't touch it for the whole month. So effectively each stream costs you nothing. That's probably the thing that convinced the OCC, although there are also practical considerations like what if somebody takes a free trail and then cancels before they have to pay?

As regards the effect on the chart, I think the relevant question is not how many accounts are free vs paid, but how many streams come from each type of account: it may very well be that paid users stream more than free ones.

 

I don't really think increasing the length would make much difference. Even if you had to listen to a song in full the really determined hypers could still do it, and that would just disadvantage legitimate listeners who got called away a few seconds from the end of the song. Also there are a lot more songs under 90 seconds long than under 30.

 

Right now albums are only having a tiny fraction of their sales dictated by streaming, in the UK anyway. Over in the States, however, it's out of control. A few weeks ago Adele's 25 "sold" more than 55,000 copies purely from people streaming "Hello". And last week BBTM by The Weekend sold around 39,000 copies, but only 13,114 were from actual purchases. Whilst streaming has now pretty much taken over the singles market, is the albums market next?

 

In the US the album chart includes also the downloads of individual tracks of the album.

We were now discussing album streams with some friends

 

If you stream an album in full once? How much does it represent in terms of sales?

How many times one has to listen to

An album in full to generate one sale

For the album charts?

 

A friend said 1000 but that sounds like a lot

We were now discussing album streams with some friends

 

If you stream an album in full once? How much does it represent in terms of sales?

How many times one has to listen to

An album in full to generate one sale

For the album charts?

 

A friend said 1000 but that sounds like a lot

 

See this from the FAQ in post 1:

 

OK, so how does it work for albums then?

It's slightly different for albums. Streaming has been included amongst physical and digital sales since February 2015. Firstly, each stream is 0.001 sales this time, meaning that 1 sale is equal to 1000 streams (not 100). This means that sales have even more precedence in the album chart.

 

http://www.officialcharts.com/media/646890/streaming-into-albums-chart-formula.png

 

The top 12 most streamed tracks are taken from the standard edition of an album. The top 2 songs will be downweighted, to the average of the other 10 songs. This is to combat an album being artificially boosted by one or two hit singles. The total of these songs is then added together and divided by 1000 to give a streaming total for the album.

 

The OCC said of this method: "The reason for the down-weighting is to ensure that if an album features up to two runaway hit singles, streams of these tracks do not skew the performance of their parent album in the Official Albums Chart. Extreme examples of this include huge hits such as Blurred Lines on the Robin Thicke album of the same name, Get Lucky on Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories, All Of Me on John Legend’s album Love In The Future, or Uptown Funk on Mark Ronson’s Uptown Special - but this is also a broader issue affecting many more albums."

 

http://www.officialcharts.com/media/646895/streaming-into-albums-chart-graph.png

 

Otherwise, the same rules apply. Only 10 plays per user per day, and 30 seconds of each track must be heard.

 

Does streaming have a big effect on the album chart?

Definitely not. It boosts some albums but not noticeably at the top end of the chart. To date, every official #1 album has been the biggest selling. Some albums have however been denied a top 10 position due to streaming, such as Kacey Musgraves' Pageant Material in 2015, which debuted at #11 officially.

 

So really, you don't have to listen to an album in full even once. I could play Drag Me Down from One Direction's Made In the A.M. album 10 times every day for a week (the maximum) and it would contribute 0.07 sales to the album. I hope that answers your question!

We were now discussing album streams with some friends

 

If you stream an album in full once? How much does it represent in terms of sales?

How many times one has to listen to

An album in full to generate one sale

For the album charts?

 

A friend said 1000 but that sounds like a lot

Your friend is almost right. Subject to the rules in Joseph's post, you need to listen to 1,000 tracks to generate one sale. That could be one track 1,000 times, two tracks 500 times each or whatever. Note that it isn't possible to generate one sale in a week because of the restrictions.

Thanks thats what i was trying to figure out

I always stream albums in full and this week i may have listened 25 times to

Daughter's new album in full

So was wondering if i had made an album sale

But not even close

Re: 15-year-olds dominating the singles chart, yes they always have, they have more leisure time and enthusiasm than older music fans, which is great - but they have never at any stage excluded any other age group from the chart, which is pretty much the case nowadays with a Logan's Run dead at 30 cut-off point, barring the odd download driven scraping in.

 

In terms of American Charts, theyve always been a mish mash of whatever the music industry wants them to be - and invariably they want to control them, much as the UK music industry now sees streaming as an opportunity to get loads of cash. The CD single didn't die in the USA due to lack of interest, they became adverts to force consumers to buy albums if they wanted a track. Downloading freed that and showed just how artificially high album sales had become. Chart rules change all the time, I'm not saying don't include streaming because obviously the music biz loves the extra cash and will be pushing hard for it, and streaming companies still hope to have captive paying users forever more once the idea of "free" music dies out (it's not a sustainable model for music artists to rely on advertising only to make a living). I am saying the ratios are all wrong though and they need correcting, the ratio may have been logical when it was adopted in order to give the charts some streaming presence, it's not logical now that sales have halved.

Forgive me, but how does the music industry in the UK benefit from the inclusion of streaming in the charts? I must be missing something big but to my mind I can't think of... anyone who profits from the official chart including streaming figures. People will stream (generating £££) whether it's a chart component or not.

the Biz always gets behind new music technology because it forces consumers to buy all over again as older formats get scrapped - streaming is a bit different inasmuch as there's now nowhere else to go in terms of formats, only re-boot older (nostalgic) formats, but most of the product available to stream is pure cash for the big record companies (both of them :lol: ) as artists get little compensation for a format that wasn't invented when they signed their contracts. It's no coincidence that both Taylor Swift and Adele are on independent labels and can withhold their Art (and sell more albums and singles - once streaming "sales" are stripped out), the 2 biggest pop stars on the planet know streaming is going to take over but they are refusing to let the streaming companies walk over them the way they walk over many other acts who have no say in the matter.

 

Record companies and streaming companies want to make it seem like the only format that matters is streaming and all else is dead and doomed, obviously pushing their own pop stars at the expense of the indie sector competitors. There's a lot of talk about streaming "saving" the music biz, when in fact all it's done is substitute money from downloads for money from streaming - bearing in mind cash and sales had been at an all-time high (for singles) this decade.

 

 

Mint Royale has had a go at recalculating the chart "using a bespoke formula which used week on week streaming change as a multiplier to give a new total."

 

This would be this week's chart

 

 

Personally I'd tweak it a bit so that it was based slightly more on actual sales/streams but I do like the idea of basing it on "behaviour changes" like the sales chart does.

1975 falling 15-38 on both the official chart and this one :o

that chart makes absolutely no sense, in what world is Ex's & Oh's and Army amongst others that high? :lol: I'll stick with the official chart.

Forgive me, but how does the music industry in the UK benefit from the inclusion of streaming in the charts? I must be missing something big but to my mind I can't think of... anyone who profits from the official chart including streaming figures. People will stream (generating £££) whether it's a chart component or not.

 

It doesn't. But the BBC and Spotify do.

The BBC benefits because the charts no longer look like the iTunes chart for the week. The BBC doesn't like the idea of supporting commercial companies. So by mixing the charts up the public can't go to the iTunes chart and see what will be number one or top ten next week. Thus it no longer looks like a commercial company's chart for the week.

Since the BBC put up a great deal of the money for the charts they have a great say in how they look. Spotify benefit's over it's rival company iTunes. The two have been insulting one another for ages.

 

An element of the Music Industry does benefit from the long term use of streaming. Since a record or download is only purchased once. One amount of money. But since streaming a track is unlimited, then the public will pay for the record over and over again.

Of course there is a flaw to that. Since it's like renting a record. And the public on the whole doesn't really like renting anything. So the streaming bubble will burst eventually.

 

It doesn't. But the BBC and Spotify do.

The BBC benefits because the charts no longer look like the iTunes chart for the week. The BBC doesn't like the idea of supporting commercial companies. So by mixing the charts up the public can't go to the iTunes chart and see what will be number one or top ten next week. Thus it no longer looks like a commercial company's chart for the week.

Since the BBC put up a great deal of the money for the charts they have a great say in how they look. Spotify benefit's over it's rival company iTunes. The two have been insulting one another for ages.

 

An element of the Music Industry does benefit from the long term use of streaming. Since a record or download is only purchased once. One amount of money. But since streaming a track is unlimited, then the public will pay for the record over and over again.

Of course there is a flaw to that. Since it's like renting a record. And the public on the whole doesn't really like renting anything. So the streaming bubble will burst eventually.

 

I don't think the BBC is that invested in the charts really, otherwise it wouldn't have crammed them into a Friday drive time show that only plays the top 25 and a show on the children's channel. They recognise that most people don't care and those that do have already worked it out from what's available online. Back in the day, it didn't matter that the chart was released on Tuesday and was on telly on TOTP on Thursday, everybody still tuned in on Sunday. Now OCC are doing updates on an almost daily basis and anything older than a few days is chip wrappers.

 

I don't see a bubble that will burst - I see the new online consumerism. If people are connected on a plethora of devices more or less all the time, then streaming is the only method which makes sense. Even when you buy stuff it still sits on the cloud so that it follows you around, so you're really just renting space to keep stuff - more efficient just to access it from a central database whenever you need it. People have record collections which define part of who they are - if you want that then you still buy physical. I can't see anyone getting excited about their download collection.

Edited January 30, 20169 yr by btljs

This is a good article on the BBC News website:

 

Has streaming broken the UK singles chart?

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-36794105

Moved that post to the streaming thread! Thanks for posting, it's a really interesting read. It's crazy how things have slowed down this year :(

http://www.digitalspy.com/music/feature/a8...ever-heres-why/

 

I hope he does surpass 16 weeks now just to put the final nail in the coffin.

Its unfair to blame Drake, its a great song actually those Indian influences in the song and the Kyla sample is used well too. It's my favourite one by him so far by quite a bit.