Billboard Announces Chart Factor Changes; Paid Streaming Services to Get More Weightage

The way music fans consume music has drastically changed over the past couple of years with streaming services being the main go-to place to catch your favorite songs, especially for the younger generation. Keeping this in mind, both Billboard and RIAA have constantly made alterations to their chart ranking and award (Platinum, Gold) criteria to keep up with the times.

Today, chart bible Billboard has announced some changes to their ranking factor for both their singles and albums charts, in lieu of new streaming and distribution models which are offering fresh user experiences every day. To give recognition to the new ways, Billboard has announced new methods to incorporate streaming data into their various charts.

Starting from 2018, plays occurring on paid subscription-based services (such as Amazon Music, Apple Music, TIDAL etc.) or on the paid subscription tiers of hybrid paid/ad-supported platforms (such as SoundCloud and Spotify) will be given more weight in chart calculations in the Hot 100 chart than those plays on pure ad-supported services (such as YouTube which are free to the user) or on the non-paid tiers of hybrid paid/ad-supported services.

The overall scheme of calculations will still be made up of streaming, radio airplay and sales of digital songs. The Billboard 200 will now also include two tiers of on-demand audio streams — paid subscription audio streams and ad-supported audio streams as mentioned above with the former getting more weightage. But they have decided not to include YouTube streams into the 200 chart, as was being considered earlier. The three metrics for the 200 album chart will continue to be: traditional album sales, track equivalent albums and streaming equivalent albums.

This also addresses the controversy from July this year when Tyler, The Creator accused TIDAL of exploiting the streaming rules by placing Meek Mill’s Wins & Losses album in front of the TIDAL paywall, thereby affecting the overall numbers.

Below is a detailed chart of list of streaming services contributing plays on both the Hot 100 and the Billboard 200 chart, and their respective genre charts.

Hot 100 (+ Genre Charts) Streaming

Billboard 200 (+ Genre Album Charts) Streaming Services