charts discussion Should BB Change Their Rules On Streaming Equivalent Albums?

[Pop Art]

For those that weren't aware, Billboard recently announced that they are changing their rules on bundles. In that article, they said the following.

 

Quote

First announced on Monday, the latest rules are designed to address widespread concerns that an accurate measure of consumer intent -- which has been the basis of the Billboard charts since their inception -- is being undermined by increasingly-common bundling practices. The new guidelines will better ensure that Billboard chart rankings more accurately reflect the conscious purchasing decisions of consumers and level the playing field for all artists.

If consumer intent is the historical basis of Billboard charts as they claim, do you think they should change how they calculate streaming equivalent albums (SEA)? How can a stream of a song from any source (such as a playlist, from the album page itself, from a YouTube video, etc.) inherently mean the listener is intending to consume the album and not just the song itself? The answer is that it can't, so it seems their core mission and how they're calculating their album charts are misaligned.

 

To be clear, it would be absolutely foolish to eliminate streaming from album charts, but I think it's clear that how it's included needs to be reevaluated. How they would change it is up for debate – perhaps they could only count streams from the album page itself, or weigh those more and streams via other mediums (like playlists) less. What do you think?

[Brando]

So does this mean the sale of an album shouldn't count if you bought a physical album and only ended up listening to 3 or 4 songs which you like most while ignoring the rest?

[fridayteenage]

2 minutes ago, Brando said:

So does this mean the sale of an album shouldn't count if you bought a physical album and only ended up listening to 3 or 4 songs which you like most while ignoring the rest?

how often in the age of apple & spotify do people do this?

 

i've never done this.

[Almighty Gaga]

Yes. The UK has the perfect rule for this. They should adapt it, and while they're at it they should also adapt their recurrent rules and their 3 songs per artist limit rule.

[Pop Art]

3 minutes ago, Brando said:

So does this mean the sale of an album shouldn't count if you bought a physical album and only ended up listening to 3 or 4 songs which you like most while ignoring the rest?

That's a good point, but the reality is there's no way to measure consumer listenership through a sale while there is through streaming. There really is no perfect conversion between sales and streaming.

[iHype.]

The funny thing about this is Pop artists would do worse if a rule removing/limiting playlisting streams was done.  In reality Hip-Hop fans stream full albums the heaviest, and Apple Music streams would have even more dominance as Spotify streams would take a huge hit.

 

This is like when y'all also want radio removed. 

 

[slw84]

what I don't get is why people say an album was streamed 1B times when it's really 2 songs of 400M and then the rest of the tracks of like 5-10M

 

This should mean the album was streamed at least 5M times and has a total of 1B streams for each track.

 

it sounds like they are trying to make it as if the album was actually streamed 1B times.

 

There's double counting with the hot 100 and billboard 200 both counting singles and I don't think they should tbh.

 

bb200 should count less and bbhot 100 should count more.

[slw84]

2 minutes ago, Almighty Gaga said:

Yes. The UK has the perfect rule for this. They should adapt it, and while they're at it they should also adapt their recurrent rules and their 3 songs per artist limit rule.

what's their rule???

[istan4badgalriri]

1 minute ago, iHype. said:

The funny thing about this is Pop artists would do the worse if a rule removing/limiting playlisting streams was done.  In reality Hip-Hop fans stream full albums the heaviest, and Apple Music streams would have even more dominance as Spotify streams would take a huge hit.

 

This is like when y'all also want radio removed. 

 

Right  

[SignificantOther]

No, it's fine. If you use UK rules, you'll have albums at the top selling 30k. 

[Almighty Gaga]

3 minutes ago, slw84 said:

what's their rule???

"Under the revised methodology, the Official Charts Company takes the 12 most streamed tracks from one album, with the top-two songs being down-weighted in line with the average of the rest. The total of these streams is divided by 1000 and added to the pure sales of the album. This calculation was designed to ensure that the chart rundown continues to reflect the popularity of the albums themselves, rather than just the performance of one or two smash hit singles."

[Pop Art]

5 minutes ago, iHype. said:

The funny thing about this is Pop artists would do worse if a rule removing/limiting playlisting streams was done.  In reality Hip-Hop fans stream full albums the heaviest, and Apple Music streams would have even more dominance as Spotify streams would take a huge hit.

 

This is like when y'all also want radio removed. 

 

This is true.  But still, in principle it should be changed probably.

[Plague]

Whatever but they should change the rule for once and keep it at least for a year and not changing it almost every time as they feel like they have to... It's stupid.

[Brando]

16 minutes ago, fridayteenage said:

how often in the age of apple & spotify do people do this?

 

i've never done this.

I'm not sure you got what I was trying to say. Have you never bought an album and then only ended up liking a few tracks and never wanted to hear the rest?

[lcylcy]

can we expect more say visual albums like Beyonce's ST with all tracks looking like they're singles?

[Brando]

16 minutes ago, Ialmostdo said:

I once heard that it’s better to look stupid than to speak and leave no doubts. Wanted to pass that along to you. 

Your quote doesn't make sense. But in case you missed my point: it's really hard to measure music consumption accurately. 

[badgirlriri]

First of all, this myth that people used to listen to albums in full more than today can start, tons of people just got an album to listen to the single or full songs they liked. Modern times will reflect that as well.

 

I clicked on this thread thinking it'd be about the streaming thresholds which imo are unrealistic and should be downweighted to be a more accurate representation of how popular something is.

[Lindt]

29 minutes ago, iHype. said:

The funny thing about this is Pop artists would do worse if a rule removing/limiting playlisting streams was done.  In reality Hip-Hop fans stream full albums the heaviest, and Apple Music streams would have even more dominance as Spotify streams would take a huge hit.

 

This is like when y'all also want radio removed. 

 

this tbh  almost as if they WANT the gender gap to get worse 

[slw84]

35 minutes ago, Almighty Gaga said:

"Under the revised methodology, the Official Charts Company takes the 12 most streamed tracks from one album, with the top-two songs being down-weighted in line with the average of the rest. The total of these streams is divided by 1000 and added to the pure sales of the album. This calculation was designed to ensure that the chart rundown continues to reflect the popularity of the albums themselves, rather than just the performance of one or two smash hit singles."

Oh I love this. It's a fair and balance way. Not completely accurate but definitely more fair

[More Than A Melody]

I think they should think about implementing something similar to the Rolling Stone chart, where vinyls or deluxe editions of the albums are worth more. But perhaps extend that to pure sales in general. Not necessarily down weight streams, but five more importance to pure, especially when it’s physical, for instance

[Cesar]

1 hour ago, iHype. said:

The funny thing about this is Pop artists would do worse if a rule removing/limiting playlisting streams was done.  In reality Hip-Hop fans stream full albums the heaviest, and Apple Music streams would have even more dominance as Spotify streams would take a huge hit.

 

This is like when y'all also want radio removed. 

 

This

[Cesar]

1 hour ago, Almighty Gaga said:

"Under the revised methodology, the Official Charts Company takes the 12 most streamed tracks from one album, with the top-two songs being down-weighted in line with the average of the rest. The total of these streams is divided by 1000 and added to the pure sales of the album. This calculation was designed to ensure that the chart rundown continues to reflect the popularity of the albums themselves, rather than just the performance of one or two smash hit singles."

This too would only really affect pop girls (aside from Taylor, Ariana and Billie). Not sure why y’all want this.

[Chromatica]

1 hour ago, Almighty Gaga said:

"Under the revised methodology, the Official Charts Company takes the 12 most streamed tracks from one album, with the top-two songs being down-weighted in line with the average of the rest. The total of these streams is divided by 1000 and added to the pure sales of the album. This calculation was designed to ensure that the chart rundown continues to reflect the popularity of the albums themselves, rather than just the performance of one or two smash hit singles."

This rule is stupid imo

[Zaram]

1 hour ago, Almighty Gaga said:

"Under the revised methodology, the Official Charts Company takes the 12 most streamed tracks from one album, with the top-two songs being down-weighted in line with the average of the rest. The total of these streams is divided by 1000 and added to the pure sales of the album. This calculation was designed to ensure that the chart rundown continues to reflect the popularity of the albums themselves, rather than just the performance of one or two smash hit singles."

It’s interesting how other countries handle charts so much better.

billboard is truly the worst chart

Billboard 100 with the limited amount of weeks to chart and Billboard 200 who is heavily influenced by the Hot 100 Dir to hit singles

[professor2000]

1 hour ago, Brando said:

So does this mean the sale of an album shouldn't count if you bought a physical album and only ended up listening to 3 or 4 songs which you like most while ignoring the rest?

Exactly. 

 

Also, I don't know if I necessarily agree with UK's rule. 

 

People back in the day bought physical albums to listen to those 2-3 popular songs most of the time.  So I'm not sure why those need to be down-weighted for streaming.  Most of the time those are singles, and most of the time singles are driving interest in the album. 

 

That's probably why BB never followed suit.