You know what its like to be the #1 album? That might all change. --- Throughout its nearly 60-year history, this is how the Billboard album chart has worked: capturing popularity only at the instant someone decided to buy an album. Honestly, it hasnt been a bad system — it serves as a proxy for artists popularity week to week, and as albums ride the chart for months and years, you can interpret a long run as a sign that a disc has gone viral, infecting new waves of fans (or, in the case of Pink Floyds Dark Side of the Moon or Bob Marleys Legend, new generations). ... Well, it may be time for us to coin a new term: the Streaming Era. Or maybe we should call it the Consumption Era? Not as catchy, I know — but consumption may be the most apt term for what Billboard intends to measure with a just-announced overhaul to its flagship album chart. The new Billboard 200, which will premiere next week — Billboard calls it the charts biggest upgrade in more than 23 years — will not only factor in streaming music from providers like Spotify for the first time. Its going to rewire the chart in fundamental ways. Now, the chart will capture albums both at the moment of purchase and later, reflecting their playability and ongoing digestion by the public. In essence, the music businesss longtime authority for defining what a hit is has determined that it is no longer enough to measure an albums place in the market simply by how many people bought it. ... This streaming rule captures an aspect of music fandom thats wholly new to the album chart: consumption on an ongoing basis. Unlike the CD buyer whose OutKast purchase is tallied once and then never again, a Spotify user who falls in love with the same album will have her playback counted on the Billboard 200 chart week after week. Mind you, the 1,500-to-1 ratio means these plays dont count nearly as much as the sale — but cumulatively, millions of streams will add up, giving a chart boost to albums months after they debut. This data, combined with the traditional, single-event album buyer, is meant to give a fuller picture of an albums currency. People should see this new chart as a ranking of an albums popularity throughout its relevancy, Silvio Pietroluongo, Billboards Director of Charts, told me. How many albums did you purchase and play over and over? How many did you play once, then never again? This new chart is like a heat index of albums — heres what hot, not only this week but continuing to generate that kind of interaction and passion.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 23:29:07 +0000
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