I am really glad to see this coming into place. Now we are getting a better idea of streaming figures it makes to revise their initial figures. I think it is important they try keep a large amount of focus on actual sales. This will give them a bit more influence again.

this is true, and it is probably why they're increasing the ratio. clearly streaming has become more dominant than the OCC ever imagined and this is the way the OCC tries to make sales worth more in the chart.

 

If streaming has become dominant than you reduce the streaming ratio not increase it. When downloads took over from physical they didn't say because physicals are more expensive than downloads, we will say two downloads to one physical. So why alter it for streaming?

 

What has happened is that there are two pressure groups pressing on the OCC. One is in favour of streaming and the other is in favour of sales. Clearly one of them has been more successful over the other with this ruling.

One of the groups thinks that streaming is damaging the Music Industry. It's great if your Bieber or Drake. But crap if you can't get new records into the top 75 due to the fact Drake or Bieber have got 15 tracks in the chart each. When there is only 2 in the sales 75.

 

 

 

It might diversify things in the short term, but streaming's constantly increasing so eventually it'll be like nothing has changed. Would they just constantly reduce it? It seems counter-productive, even if I understand the reasons for it.

Download sales are in terminal decline but they will have a bigger influence on the chart if the streaming ratio is increased. The only logic in that is if the value derived from a stream has reduced. I suspect it has not and they're doing this to breathe some life into a static singles chart.

 

It's going to make year on year sales comparisons more difficult and possibly unfair. This time next year the popularity of streaming might be such that we're back to square one anyway.

I think we should wait for official confirmation of this before going OTT, but if true, I'm not unhappy about it.

 

As for cumulative sales, I think readjusting prior streams is a non-starter - far more practical to simply say streams up to end of 2016 will count 100-1, then from 2017 at 150-1.

 

Mind you, readjusting has been done before - mid-90's sales were overestimated, and had to be adjusted downwards...

 

This would really hammer the lower end of the charts though, reducing sales for a #200 from ~3.5k to just ~2.5k.

Edited December 17, 20168 yr by vidsanta

Incidentally changing the ratio wouldn't have changed this week's Top 3.

 

Streams 100:1 Streams 150:1 Total (using 100:1) Total (using 150:1)

 

Clean Bandit 39266 26177 63335 50246

 

Matt Terry 10682 7121 45827 42266

If this is confirmed I'll be pleased, but like others have said, I wonder what they'll do once streams make up 85% of the singles chart again? Perhaps they will stop increasing the ratio when downloads become as irrelevant as physical singles!

I think we should wait for official confirmation of this before going OTT, but if true, I'm not unhappy about it.

 

As for cumulative sales, I think readjusting prior streams is a non-starter - far more practical to simply say streams up to end of 2016 will count 100-1, then from 2017 at 150-1.

 

Mind you, readjusting has been done before - mid-90's sales were overestimated, and had to be adjusted downwards...

 

This would really hammer the lower end of the charts though, reducing sales for a #200 from ~3.5k to just ~2.5k.

Definitely more practical if they don't adjust the figures before 2017. As streaming was still growing quite abit over late 2015 and throughout 2016 the 100 stream ratio was more appropriate. As it keeps climbing in popularity it will balance out again with the 150 streaming ratio, so I can't imagine figures from 2016 will look overinflated compared to future years (if that makes sense).

 

I am really hoping they give a clear End Of Year countdown with the combined, sales only and streaming only available to see separately. Would be very interesting to see the differences between the three.

Music Week have now confirmed this but OCC are being a bit vague about why they're making the change.

 

http://www.musicweek.com/news/read/officia...treaming/066932

Steve from AATW Records (who, like me, wants OCC to adopt a more sophisticated method of counting streams) has posted what this week's top 20 would have been under new rules

 

https://twitter.com/steve_aatw/status/810837632582320128

I'm all for changing the ratio if it makes the charts less stagnant but are the OCC now saying that 150 streams is the same as paying £0.99 to download a song from iTunes? If not, the ratio should be left alone if it's already a fair and accurate value.

I am really hoping they give a clear End Of Year countdown with the combined, sales only and streaming only available to see separately. Would be very interesting to see the differences between the three.

 

Yes, and hopefully the fact that for a song's total chart sales you won't be able to simply add sales and streams/100 together, means that they will get quoted separately more often.

 

It all rather supposes that OCC have a notional figure of how much the chart should 'sell' each week - 8M, 9M, 10M? Anyone got an average for the last 10 years?

Steve from AATW Records (who, like me, wants OCC to adopt a more sophisticated method of counting streams) has posted what this week's top 20 would have been under new rules

 

Is that the guy who did all the iconic single covers for AATW eurodance acts in the early 00s that all looked the same but in different colours with a stripe in the middle? :D

 

The top 20 doesn't seem to have changed that much, but we will need to see the whole top 40. Little Mix have had the biggest impact. But there should be a bigger ratio.

Yeah it's bound to change things way more at the bottom than at the top, I should imagine next year will see quite a few more entries to the top 75 (until streams catch up again as sales collapse further).

 

I'm hoping that the streaming charts get faster anyway soon, but that's in Spotify's hands really, it's obvious that a large chunk of the charts is made up of passive playlists listens so those playlists would need to be refreshed much more regularly, with more different songs pushed on a more frequent basis.

I can only assume this'll help big selling new releases reach the top 40 or get a chart play, which is great, but apart from that I doubt it'll do much. Will probably make the charts slightly more interesting for the first few months though, which we can't complain about.

What I don't understand is why if they decided 100 streams equals 1 download in terms of money, then why cd singles were not changed to make them count more, say an average price of £2.99 so they count for 3 sales. It might have given acts an incentive to keep releasing them even if just in limited amounts through their own website.

Yeah it's bound to change things way more at the bottom than at the top, I should imagine next year will see quite a few more entries to the top 75 (until streams catch up again as sales collapse further).

 

I'm hoping that the streaming charts get faster anyway soon, but that's in Spotify's hands really, it's obvious that a large chunk of the charts is made up of passive playlists listens so those playlists would need to be refreshed much more regularly, with more different songs pushed on a more frequent basis.

 

I think streaming will get faster in the future, we are just going through an adjustment period at the moment. I usually look at the Swedish chart who first introduced it back in 2010. Their chart is still slow but it seems to have got faster the past year or two and they seem to discover new hits a bit quicker. Also, their #1 turnover has increased too, from about 11 to between 15-20 which is where I think the UK will eventually settle on.

What I don't understand is why if they decided 100 streams equals 1 download in terms of money, then why cd singles were not changed to make them count more, say an average price of £2.99 so they count for 3 sales. It might have given acts an incentive to keep releasing them even if just in limited amounts through their own website.

 

Aren't the German charts still based on revenue? It's an interesting model, but I feel like it would be easily exploited in the UK where acts with eager fanbases would happily pay £5 for a special CD single, so even selling 5,000 of something like that would equate to 25,000 chart sales under the model you've suggested.

Aren't the German charts still based on revenue? It's an interesting model, but I feel like it would be easily exploited in the UK where acts with eager fanbases would happily pay £5 for a special CD single, so even selling 5,000 of something like that would equate to 25,000 chart sales under the model you've suggested.

 

Yeah I think it is hence why they still have a fair amount of cd singles.

 

Well I would suggest putting a cap on the price of cd singles at £3 and them being 3 sales.

Another thing that would help the charts a lot is if Spotify changed their playlist to top 200