I agree with Bjork. As was noted in the other thread Apple Music clearly can tell when an album is actually being streamed, and judging by their chart next to no one is actually listening to Mabel’s, Becky’s or Jax Jones’ albums yet they’re all comfortably in the chart.

 

They should have an Artists chart too to replace what the Albums chart has become then keep the Albums chart to track what albums people are actually streaming and buying.

I mean Mabel not even being top 1500 on Apple album streaming just shows no one is streaming that album,

it's just streams from playlists...

 

by comparison, I randomly checked a couple of albums I like... for instance Damien Rice - O which is from the early 00s, like nearly 20 years ago

it's there in the chart at like 700-ish... so even albums from 20 years ago are doing better than Mabels

but she's at #11 on the Album Charts

 

and same with Elton John... on the Apple album streaming chart Diamonds is at 300-ish... not top 15 like it's been for the last 9 months in the UK charts

I didn't even know Becky Hill had an album until I saw it was certified Gold a couple of weeks ago :drama:

That AM album chart is verrry interesting for a chart nerd :') What surprises me is ANTI is Rihanna's highest album by over 100 places, but last time I asked it hadn't been in the Top 200 albums chart since March 2019 while Loud and GGGB had.

another interesting thing if you look at that AM album chart is how well indie albums do

in the charts, indie music only do well on week 1 cos of physicals and then all indie artists are gone in week 2

but if you take a look The Streets and DMA's are still top 20,

even Jessie Ware is top 50... so if the OCC counted album streams properly instead of playlists, she'd be in the charts instead of gone in week 2

same with many others indie acts like Phoebe Bridgers or Paul Weller

I didn't even know Becky Hill had an album until I saw it was certified Gold a couple of weeks ago :drama:

It's less of an album and more of a hits compilation - out of the 14 tracks on it 8 of them were chart hits (plus an orchestral version of I Could Get Used To This)

I think the albums chart would be better presented as a sales chart (with only *complete* streams of albums [if possible]) and the current chart we see converted into an overall "What artists is the country consuming?" chart (with *all* songs by each artist included).

The problem with the argument that the album chart should remain only sales based is that there are certain albums which definitely are being consumed as full albums but that consumption is almost entirely on streaminsales. Juice WRLD's album last week was #35 on sales but it'd be absolutely preposterous to pretend that's an accurate assessment of interest in the album.

 

Personally I think the way it works for studio albums is fine, but maybe greatest hits albums should have some sort of extra restrictions on them and there should be some kind of restriction on the clearly loophole exploting behaviour of acts like Jax Jones and Mabel. I don't know exactly what though. x