'We're seeing the change to a consumption model': How streaming has transformed the albums chart

by Andre Paine

 

Source: Music Week

 

It’s a brave new world for the music industry in 2021 with the albums chart now a competition between not just artists but formats - physical and streaming.

 

The latest chart for week 33 illustrates the divergence with two artists who suit each model: The Killers and Olivia Rodrigo.

 

The Killers’ Pressure Machine (EMI) made No.1 with 25,110 sales - 7.1% from streams and 83.8% physical (Official Charts Company). In contrast, Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour rebounded to No.2 with 10,093 sales (91.8% from streams, with a mere 664 physical sales - 6.6%). Incredibly, Sour was not even available on vinyl until Friday (August 20).

 

Sour has 263,631 sales to date and has topped 10,000 sales in every one of its 13 chart weeks. It has shifted plenty of physical copies - 36,247 CDs and cassettes to date - and its new vinyl edition could even help Rodrigo reclaim No.1 on Friday (August 27). Streaming still accounts for 83.8% of the album’s total.

 

The performance of Olivia Rodrigo’s album shows how labels and artists can now set up camp in the Top 40 if they can connect to a streaming audience. But as a 2021 debut artist, Rodrigo is the exception. The easiest way to do it is with old favourites - catalogue releases that are played on repeat.

 

As Music Week’s new research into the chart longevity of the biggest albums shows, catalogue and pre-2021 LPs are now ruling the charts (Rodrigo excepted) and potentially crowding out new releases. Only four studio albums released in 2021 make the overall Top 20 for the first half of the year, alongside streaming perennials by Dua Lipa, Harry Styles, Queen, Pop Smoke, Fleetwood Mac, Lewis Capaldi, Elton John, Ed Sheeran, Oasis and ABBA.

 

Classic catalogue, in particular, has become lodged in the upper reaches of the chart as older consumers embrace streaming. And it's a global phenomenon. According to MRC Data’s mid-year report of the US market, catalogue album consumption (including both pure sales and streams) was up by 18% compared to the first six months of 2020 and increased its share from 63.9% to 66.4%.

 

Streaming now makes up around 80% of the albums market, although D2C campaigns can still power a fan-focused physical campaign to No.1 in most weeks. So can the albums chart accommodate both formats and truly reflect the popularity of music releases?

 

Here, Music Week quizzes BPI & BRITs CEO Geoff Taylor about the biggest change to the charts in recent years...

 

We’ve seen the impact of catalogue streaming on the charts. Is there a concern that new artists trying to break through are getting crowded out?

 

“It is an obvious truism that catalogue gets bigger every year, so as a new artist you have more and more music to compete with every year. There are some examples of catalogue artists who have really nailed streaming success. Whether it's Queen or Elton John, there are certain artists who have really managed to push through to the streaming audience and connect. So new artists have to compete with that. It's certainly not getting easier to break new artists, and it's a global market, there's more competition from overseas now. You have to be patient, and I think you're seeing that with labels, that they're sticking with artists, being patient and trying to break them for the long term.”

 

With streaming reaching a tipping point and being embraced by older music fans, are their listening habits having a distorting effect on the charts?

“I actually wouldn't call it a distorting effect, because if the audience is becoming more representative of the population as a whole, then it's actually reflecting that people have always listened to a lot of their old favourites. Perhaps what you're seeing more is the change from a purchasing model to a consumption model. So previously people would listen to CDs that they'd acquired in previous years and that didn't affect the chart. What would affect the chart was only what they bought. Now, of course, we're measuring something different, which is what people are listening to. So I think we're seeing that change.”

 

But isn’t that a huge change if the albums chart is moving closer to something like an airplay chart?

 

“I challenged the comparison to an airplay chart, because there it's the radio station, DJs and playlists that are picking the music. Whereas here, it’s the fans in terms of what they're choosing to listen to. But we're always thinking carefully about the methodology of the chart. It is obviously important that we keep it fresh, and that we keep it focused on new music because that's what people are interested in, in terms of the chart. For the chart to do its job, it needs to accomplish that. That’s why there are some mechanisms like SEA-2 [whereby the OCC neutralises the two biggest streaming tracks on an album to the average of the 10 other tracks] that help to make sure that the chart focuses on new albums, and that there is sufficient renewal in the charts to keep them interesting.”

 

The accelerated decline mechanism seems to have a marked impact on the singles chart, but is there potential for more to be done to ensure that the albums rundown remains fresh?

 

“The albums chart is more of a challenge in a streaming environment, because it's harder to identify pure album consumption from streaming behaviour. We don't get the data from the streaming services to clearly identify an album listen from a single listen. So we’ve had to do that with the chart rules like SEA-2 to make sure that the albums chart is sufficiently distinct from the singles chart. I think that’s worked reasonably well, and the albums chart does shine a light on different music than the singles chart, which is important. But this is always a conversation, have we gone too far in that regard? We don't want to prejudice albums that have strong hit singles.”

 

https://www.musicweek.com/digital/read/we-r...ms-chart/083985

It’s a good read that article, obviously BJers would argue that a listen to a track on a famous Elton John album counts for both that albums and the greatest hits it’s on which wasn’t highlighted but I liked the answers he gave.

But isn’t that a huge change if the albums chart is moving closer to something like an airplay chart?

 

“I challenged the comparison to an airplay chart, because there it's the radio station, DJs and playlists that are picking the music. Whereas here, it’s the fans in terms of what they're choosing to listen to.

Lies! It's the playlist editors who get to decide which music is listened to. :angry:

Lies! It's the playlist editors who get to decide which music is listened to. :angry:

But it's the choice of the consumer to play that playlist, and unlike on a radio station, they can skip a song if they don't like it, or listen to music away from the playlists. That's why it's not comparable to an airplay chart.

 

If the playlists were taken away, random user-made playlists would probably gain a shit ton of followers instead from people seeking out new music, while established hits + classic songs will probably climb even higher without an obvious source for current hits. In relation to the album chart, this will only help the countless GH albums.

I am probably the exception but I only but physical CDs. I have never streamed and never will. It doesn’t interest me at all.

Something I just realised...

we always talk how if you go to Spotify and stream Elton John-Sacrifice from his parent album Sleeping with the Past

you also give an extra stream to his Diamonds Best of... no rationale behind it, it's how it is...

 

but the weird thing is that if you stream the song from another Greatest Hits,

like his Very Best of Elton John, your stream doesn't count for that greatest hits but still for Diamonds

so actually there is no way that you can give streams to the Very Best of Elton John right now :D

I suppose in those cases it's just cleaning up the clutter. An artist with multiple overlapping compilations having them all spread out arbitrarily* would create a chart that ceases to function in any logical way. The best thing the current situation has going for it is that we more or less can understand the breakdown of these streams, whereas otherwise we'd have an unclear fraction like 'oh, Green Day's compilation should be a little bit higher but we don't know how many streams have been siphoned by the other one'. Of course to that you could say that they get enough of an advantage as is, and I tend to believe that they should just be shipped off to their own chart but for the chart to function as it intends to right now, it's the only option to lap them all up together.

 

*Because what really matters 99% of the time is which one Spotify decides is the 'Top result'

but there are compilations with very good sales in the past that cannot add sales from streams

like the Beatles and those 1962-1666 or 1966-1969, I reckon all the streams go to 1 no matter what you stream

but there are compilations with very good sales in the past that cannot add sales from streams

like the Beatles and those 1962-1666 or 1966-1969, I reckon all the streams go to 1 no matter what you stream

Only for the tracks that are on '1' and either 62-66 or 67-70. '67-70' has about 1,000 chart sales each week and 900 of them are from streaming. The album is at number 133 this week. '62-66' isn't in the top 200 and hasn't been for quite some time and presumably most people probably stream directly from '1' for their earlier hits which means that the other tracks on the 62-66 album are more or less ignored.

 

Arctic Monkeys also doing well on streaming, and Bob Marley in the Summer, I'm presuming Michael Buble's Christmas album is down to streaming as well

I am probably the exception but I only but physical CDs. I have never streamed and never will. It doesn’t interest me at all.

I am 90% this way, I listen to albums via streaming just to see if I like it and if I do I just buy the physical, with artists I follow I automatically buy the physical. The only real plus for me personally is I now no longer waste money on buying an album that i end up not liking.

Part of streaming via the album chart is still confusing with the Elton John example been a good one, the allocation of a song that is available on various albums for me is just all over the place.

Equally some albums now charting probably have very few actual sales but consistently chart ahead of an album that might have 1000 actual paid for/physical sales.

I'd love to see a top 100 album chart purely based on sales just to see what albums are actually selling with paid for sales just to give an idea.

I'd love to see a top 100 album chart purely based on sales just to see what albums are actually selling with paid for sales just to give an idea.

 

Is this what you want?

 

https://www.officialcharts.com/charts/albums-sales-chart/

the OCC has some bizarre rules (3-track limit, ACR) but this rule of giving an extra sale to a GH even when you stream the parent album or a different GH makes no sense to me and is the worst rule they have... also I cannot see how it makes sense, the OCC is always claiming they want to make the charts more dynamic and interesting, then benefiting the GH so much is counter-intuitive and goes against all what they preached... like in the past they moved all those Now 102 and Hits 35 to a different chart, so they should do the same now...

^

I think they do that in France,I believe the compilations chart includes Greatest Hits albums.