Music Streaming to contribute to the charts
Songs played through streaming services such as Spotify will contribute to the official UK singles chart from next month, the Official Charts Company has moved.
With downloads having been incorporated into the UK’s official music chart for years, streaming will contribute to the charts for the first time on Sunday July 6.
With millions of tracks being streamed in the UK per week, the new move will see 100 streams of a song act as the equivalent of one purchased track.
According to the head of the Official Charts Company, Martin Talbot, the move is an effort to ‘future-proof the charts’.
He added: “So far this year we've seen nine tracks which have been streamed more than one million times in a week. Last year there were only two tracks that had reached that kind of level.
"So we're seeing a huge growth, up 50 per cent in the first half of this year."
With Talbot suggesting that the Charts Company had been looking at the idea for “some time,” music streaming in the UK has doubled in popularity during the past 12 months. There are now more than 200 million tracks streamed per week.
As well as Spotify, Deezer, O2 Tracks, Music Unlimited, Napster, Xbox Music and Rara will all provide the Official Charts Company with weekly streaming figures.
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Via: BBC