Apologies if this has been asked before but if a song appears on a parent studio album by an artist and then subsequently appears on a greatest hits album by that artist, which album does the song's streams go to for counting/certificaion purposes? The studio or compilation album or both(i.e double counted)?

 

I'm seeing lots of legacy artists on the OCC Album charts by way of their greatest hits albums enjoying healthy streams of their most successful hit songs. Does this mean the patent albums no longer benefit from the songs successful streams? Would be interesting to know. Thanks!

I’m sure I read the streams can contribute to the album and the greatest hits, but I could be wrong.

I’m sure I read the streams can contribute to the album and the greatest hits, but I could be wrong.

 

Yep that's right, a stream counts to the original studio album and the greatest hits album with the most pure sales that week/the one requested by the label. It's why the Beatles' 1 and their red/blue albums keep swapping over. Obviously greatest hits albums do better as they include more popular songs. Think the streaming calculations are 1000 free streams= 1 sale and 600 premium streams=1 sale with the top 2 songs downweighted to the average of the top 16 tracks, which is why greatest hits do better than studio albums

Edited January 7Jan 7 by gasman449

I don't know why the OCC haven't figured out just how flawed it is for a song to count towards two separate albums. I'm not saying there's an easy solution but I'm sure that's the wrong one.

I don't know why the OCC haven't figured out just how flawed it is for a song to count towards two separate albums. I'm not saying there's an easy solution but I'm sure that's the wrong one.

Its something they need to figure out as it does present what i often feel as false album sales.

If the occ discounts the top 2 streamed tracks from an album's chart 'sales', what about if they assigned singles from studio albums to just that album's sales, and ignore from the greatest hits album? That way the singles only on the GH albums would probably be the 2 highest streamed tracks from that album, thereby not affecting the GH album sales. Similarly, only the 3rd highest streamed tracks downwards would be counted to the studio album sales, thereby ignoring the skewed effect the biggest singles' streams would otherwise have. Of course, it means certain massive singles could be completely ignored from the album charts twice over, but if the singles are that big anyway, would it really be the end of the world? Hope my waffling made sense.

I don't know why the OCC haven't figured out just how flawed it is for a song to count towards two separate albums. I'm not saying there's an easy solution but I'm sure that's the wrong one.

It's not perfect but I can see the intent behind it. If you pit the 'struggle' between the 2nd & 3rd most relevant albums, it significantly reduces instances of that awkward switcheroo. Billboard for instance were only allowing one album (I believe they still are but can't check), and these sorts of messy mishaps happened all the time. Like Jessie J's album tanking because Ariana Grande had first dibs on "Bang Bang", or The Weeknd's "After Hours" and "The Highlights" spending years trading places over and over again.

 

A system that leads to one studio album and one hits album is a reasonable enough compromise. If the chart were absolutely littered with constant side by side double ups maybe they'd reconsider, but it's mostly just Fleetwood Mac & Oasis with studio albums that have complete plausible deniability through their reputation, while it's hardly stopping anyone from getting a #1 album, so it doesn't affect the bigger picture really.

 

I'd say look at any given run of 5-10 albums in the bottom half of the album chart and ask yourself if we're really missing out on much of note thanks to some position cloggers. #101-#110 on any given week probably looks pretty similar.

we've discussed it a million times and never gonna agree but really think that

if you wanna stream Elton-Sacrifice and you go to Spotify and search for Diamonds and stream the song, then it should give 1 streaming point to Diamonds

but if I wanna stream Sacrifice and go search for the parent album Sleeping with the Past and stream the song, then it should only give 1 streaming point to that parent album and not Diamonds, why it should?

 

otherwise the album chart is like a who streams more overall on Spotify, they should have an Overall Weekly Streaming chart and have The Weeknd and Fleetwood and Elton and ABBA fight for # every week

 

I think that example just strengthens what the OCC are doing though. If people are really just looking for a specific song, they're gonna search the specific song, not the album its from. At which point, it's totally up to Spotify's whim where it comes from. This could change unexpectedly at some point and cause some otherwise unexplainable chart movement, and even otherwise, the whole thing would be neutering chart positions for no particular reason. Giving the streaming point to both albums is a solid compromise, and works on the basis that unless the studio album itself is getting serious attention (in the case of Elton John, not really, but in the case of Fleetwood Mac & Oasis, for sure), it's only really showing up on one album. For the label, it's their meal ticket (Elton John tells me you've gotta get one of those), so it works for them.

 

Also just an example of that Spotify chicanery. Eminem's "Lose Yourself" shows up on charts & his Spotify page as coming from the "Just Lose It" single. For quite a while, it actually never showed up on his top 10, as part of some glitch in the algorithm since people mostly were streaming it from "Curtain Call" I guess. That lack of exposure really stifled it for a while and is probably why it never ran away with being his most streamed song.

 

Also also I don't think these albums are necessarily immortal. "Diamonds" also charted in Australia's top 50 for over 5 years straight but it spent all of last year gradually petering out and dropped out for several weeks. The perpetuity is probably helped by labels who can see in real time if their artists are losing traction and course correct themselves, resulting in what we see as endless sustainability. When "The Dark Side Of The Moon" spent over a decade consecutively on the Billboard 200, people probably thought that it would never drop out, and made a joke of the system. Streaming is simply demonstrating the same system.

It is actually triple counting. Alan Jones mentioned Eleanor Rigby in his analysis last week, as an example.

 

"The crossover between tracks on The Beatles 1973 compilations – 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 – and 2000’s 1 plays havoc with chart placings and consumption figures for all. That is because OCC chart regulations state that the hits title with the greatest sales DUS on a given week is credited with all of the sales-equivalent streams for shared tracks. That means that when, for example, 1 sells better it gets all the compilation streams for Eleanor Rigby regardless of whether the listener was playing it from that or 1962-1966. This week, 1962-1966 and 1967-1970 sold better than 1, and therefore are resurgent, with the former a re-entry at No.59 (2,299 sales), and the latter jumping 156-42 (2,733 sales), while 1 – which was No.55 last week – now exits the Top 200. This rule, of course, applies equally to all artists, not just The Beatles, but the Fab Four suffer from it more than most, especially since the 2023 re-promotion of 1962-1966 and 1967-1970, with the latter, for instance, suffering 46-153, 59-166, 61-167 and 65-156 slides in the latter half of 2024 alone."

 

Eleanor Rigby - track - Platinum

Revolver - parent album - Platinum 2x

Either

1 - Greatest Hits - Platinum 13x

Or

Beatles 1962-1966 - Platinum 3x

 

So streams contribute three times for these BPI certs.

Yeah I think most notable is divide by ed sheeran as well literally half of mathematics is divide :lol:

Just put greatest hits albums in a separate chart. Ridiculous that The Weeknd's Highlights album was the 2nd biggest album of 2024.

I don't get why the solution wouldn't just be streaming a song only counts towards the album in which it first released from that lead artist. It would clear the clutter of greatest hits albums on the charts, no back and forth would happen because the greatest hits album would be neutered, you wouldn't have to worry about what album the song is listed on because they'd all just go towards the original album, and if you worded it right artists who share lead credit could both put the song on their albums and it'd count for both. Plus, these days do the charts really make a greatest hits album sell better than if it's not allowed to chart? Spotify pays the same regardless and i feel like most people get their news about physical releases of these greatest hits albums via social media or email or whatever

If someone is streaming just a specific song, then its not an album stream in my opinion. Album streams should only count if a person streams a certain percentage of an album otherwise its just single (or song) streams

Edited January 8Jan 8 by braindeadpj

When I used to buy a physical/download, I would generate value (by paying) to that entry. If I stream 1 song, I don't generate the revenue for 2 entities, namely, a single and an album (or more in case of studio album/greatest hits). In my view, labels should be required to indicate when a single is released and those streams be excluded from any album(s). Just my opinion.

I just don't know why they don't just add all greatest hits albums to the compilation chart. Clear out the main chart and make the compilation chart a bit more interesting.

I don't get why the solution wouldn't just be streaming a song only counts towards the album in which it first released from that lead artist. It would clear the clutter of greatest hits albums on the charts, no back and forth would happen because the greatest hits album would be neutered, you wouldn't have to worry about what album the song is listed on because they'd all just go towards the original album, and if you worded it right artists who share lead credit could both put the song on their albums and it'd count for both. Plus, these days do the charts really make a greatest hits album sell better than if it's not allowed to chart? Spotify pays the same regardless and i feel like most people get their news about physical releases of these greatest hits albums via social media or email or whatever

Oh, I should have better clarified. I agree that very few are seeing a Greatest Hits comp. on the chart and thinking 'ooh I need to buy that', but I do think it makes for exposure nonetheless. It's simply another avenue for us to be perpetually reminded that the artist exists, and makes them just that little bit more likely to pop into our heads when we think 'who am I gonna stream today?'. If I want to see what's popular, I look at the charts, and I'm gonna see some artists and not others. Categorically, these compilations distil it to the biggest names winning out on the whole, and you wouldn't get that if all the streams were portioned between studio albums with the top 2 tracks neutralised on each album. The difference between the label and the enthusiastic chart fan is that the label don't care if the album is selling peanuts and being pushed in by people who hardly know it exists. The average music fan doesn't even notice, and anecdotally probably just accepts it as gospel. But then those enthusiastic fans seem to do the same thing too when it suits their interests. So many times on this forum I've seen the topic of auto-play come up and a common response is 'I hope Song/Artist X gets boosted by it next'. That's basically outright admitting acceptance of the idea of an inflated sense of popularity under the pretence that it'll eventually be forgotten or reduced to the increasingly deranged kind of comments that get lost in the shuffle of stan war misinformation. The day I see music fans stop distorting the narratives to talk up their favourites is about as likely to come as labels not wanting to exaggerate their own rosters where payrolls are of concern.

 

The main thing I wanted to say though is that if they do remove all the compilations, I guarantee that there'll be very little satisfaction in the long run. It'll look nice immediately, all those albums rocketing up to better positions, maybe lasting a couple weeks more than they would. But you'll just run into a new set of enemies, whether they be pseudo-compilations that skirt by whatever rule the OCC have in place (remember when Mabel & Becky Hill's albums were the target of these discussions?), or they're just absolute hit factory albums that just aren't capable of declining enough to drop out of the chart. Making the chart easier to enter simultaneously makes it harder to fall out of. Removing a whole lot of albums gives less entries to shuffle around each other. You'll get something like the Australian hip-hop chart where there's a recurrency rule that gutted the bottom half of the chart. You're largely just left with more distinctly separate remnants that are allowed on the chart that can't reach each other with week to week randomness because they're too far apart. The chart would end up even *more* boring than it was before. I'm also always keen to point out the Aotearoa album chart which has a rough 1.5 year recurrency rule. It largely gets rid of GH albums except the new ones (there are 10 this week but most will be gone by the end of the year), and it's not exactly a thrilling chart that I'm eager to check out every week. Everything just gets stuck in a rut after a couple of months.

 

Apologies if my posts keep end up being long winded, but every single time I see some sort of chart 'fix' suggested, I don't think there's ever enough consideration on the long term effects. Nothing short of considerable music consumption habit upheaval will produce the idealised version of the charts that are longed for, because the cracks of a quick fix will always show.

Im pretty sure that if compilations were to be removed, their place wouldn't be taken by new albums but by those big classic albums ala Rumours or Definitely Maybe or Folklore. So we'll have more of those in the top 100. Big albums like The Fame which almost are a Gaga's GH. And agree, sure there would be label shennanigans insisting an album is not a GH ala Mabel/Becky Hill.

 

 

Yeah I generally agree. You'll get some newer albums that ride on initial sales/streams that get a couple of extra weeks, but overwhelmingly it's those albums that are probably #120 every week that get the most out of it. Just like how the #101-#200 section on Spotify has very few songs that haven't already made the top 100.

Oh, I should have better clarified. I agree that very few are seeing a Greatest Hits comp. on the chart and thinking 'ooh I need to buy that', but I do think it makes for exposure nonetheless. It's simply another avenue for us to be perpetually reminded that the artist exists, and makes them just that little bit more likely to pop into our heads when we think 'who am I gonna stream today?'. If I want to see what's popular, I look at the charts, and I'm gonna see some artists and not others. Categorically, these compilations distil it to the biggest names winning out on the whole, and you wouldn't get that if all the streams were portioned between studio albums with the top 2 tracks neutralised on each album. The difference between the label and the enthusiastic chart fan is that the label don't care if the album is selling peanuts and being pushed in by people who hardly know it exists. The average music fan doesn't even notice, and anecdotally probably just accepts it as gospel. But then those enthusiastic fans seem to do the same thing too when it suits their interests. So many times on this forum I've seen the topic of auto-play come up and a common response is 'I hope Song/Artist X gets boosted by it next'. That's basically outright admitting acceptance of the idea of an inflated sense of popularity under the pretence that it'll eventually be forgotten or reduced to the increasingly deranged kind of comments that get lost in the shuffle of stan war misinformation. The day I see music fans stop distorting the narratives to talk up their favourites is about as likely to come as labels not wanting to exaggerate their own rosters where payrolls are of concern.

 

The main thing I wanted to say though is that if they do remove all the compilations, I guarantee that there'll be very little satisfaction in the long run. It'll look nice immediately, all those albums rocketing up to better positions, maybe lasting a couple weeks more than they would. But you'll just run into a new set of enemies, whether they be pseudo-compilations that skirt by whatever rule the OCC have in place (remember when Mabel & Becky Hill's albums were the target of these discussions?), or they're just absolute hit factory albums that just aren't capable of declining enough to drop out of the chart. Making the chart easier to enter simultaneously makes it harder to fall out of. Removing a whole lot of albums gives less entries to shuffle around each other. You'll get something like the Australian hip-hop chart where there's a recurrency rule that gutted the bottom half of the chart. You're largely just left with more distinctly separate remnants that are allowed on the chart that can't reach each other with week to week randomness because they're too far apart. The chart would end up even *more* boring than it was before. I'm also always keen to point out the Aotearoa album chart which has a rough 1.5 year recurrency rule. It largely gets rid of GH albums except the new ones (there are 10 this week but most will be gone by the end of the year), and it's not exactly a thrilling chart that I'm eager to check out every week. Everything just gets stuck in a rut after a couple of months.

 

Apologies if my posts keep end up being long winded, but every single time I see some sort of chart 'fix' suggested, I don't think there's ever enough consideration on the long term effects. Nothing short of considerable music consumption habit upheaval will produce the idealised version of the charts that are longed for, because the cracks of a quick fix will always show.

 

I get what you're saying, but I'd counter to say that I'd rather have a stagnant chart that reflects how successful individual albums are than I would a slightly more fluid chart that allows for essentially lifetime achievement awards for successful artists. If a big classic album re-enters and never leaves the chart because the greatest hits albums are removed, to that I say fair play, they created a successful album. 7 out of the top 20 last week rewarding artists for having a popular catalog is also incredibly boring in its way. I appreciate that a badly written rule will allow for loopholes, but i think the argument is just for a better written rule