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Business News Digital Labels & Publishers
Streaming stats could be incorporated into main singles chart
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 22 June 2009
Following the news earlier this year that a streaming music chart would be launched, tracking the music being most played on services like Spotify and We7, the boss of the company behind to the UK music charts has admitted such data may well be incorporated into the flagship singles charts moving forward, though he’s not sure when that would happen, though admits it could be sooner than we all expect.
Although the main singles chart has included digital data for a while, of course, it currently only counts tracks which are sold via a la carte download platforms like iTunes and Amazon MP3.
Interviewed by the BBC about the ever changing make up of the music charts in the digital age, Official Charts Company chief Martin Talbot said: “The key task that we’ve been getting to grips with over the past 18 months has been ensuring that post-download, and post-permanent ownership of music, we’re also counting how consumers are consuming their music in other ways. The charts have always been there as a popularity poll, as a means of identifying what are the hottest records of the moment. That’s been relatively simple when people have bought stuff to keep forever. But that’s going to become increasingly more complicated”.
Asked about whether data from streaming services would be incorporated into the main chart, Talbot said: “I think ultimately it’s bound to happen. But that could be five years, it could be 10 years, it could be 20 years”. He said it would all depend, to an extent, on if and when streaming music services started to result in a slump in a la carte download sales, and started to become the primary way at least some demographics consume music. He admitted: “I’m sure [that scenario] will come upon us quicker than we might anticipate but none of us really know when it will happen”.
If and when streaming stats are incorporated, Talbot says an equation will have to be identified that recognises one listen on a streaming service probably shouldn’t equate someone paying 79p to download a track. He concluded: “Knowing what a stream is worth compared to a purchase of a download, for instance, is very difficult to identify at the moment, but that’s obviously going to be the next step”.
