Billboard/Soundscan working on new "consumption" chart

[Verisimilitude]

CHARTOLOGY: The music business is bracing itself in anticipation of the so-called consumption chart Billboard and SoundScan are jointly creating, with endless questions about how said chart will impact and possibly alter their marketing methodologies. The weekly chart will combine album and track sales with audio and video streams, assigning an equivalent-album value to each, as in the TEA metric, theoretically providing a more accurate and comprehensive representation of modern-day music consumption. It’s expected to make its debut the first week of January, or as close to it as possible, so that the full year can be measured in this new way, with year-to-date totals accompanying the weekly figures. That time frame also gives the two companies time to get their systems in place; for now, streaming is being measured by hand, a dauntingly labor-intensive task. Billboard’s album sales chart will remain in place, but most observers believe it will take on decreasing importance over time as the business acclimates itself to the new system.
　

In some respects, the consumption chart will mirror the present sales charts in that sales and streaming tend to correlate, with certain exceptions. For example, Interscope’s Disclosure album Settle, released in 2013, continues to generate a high volume of YouTube views and audio streams on Spotify and elsewhere, but sales have yet to follow suit; U.S. sales are at 125k. "Latch" is doing considerably better with 1.7m, but Sam Smith’s vocal has been a key factor in the single’s success. In a mock-up of last week’s consumption chart, the Disclosure album, which　placed #213 in pure sales with a modest 1.8k, vaults to #64 with a total album equivalent of 8.9k, thanks to 3.3m streams and 48k sales of "Latch." An even more dramatic example is Tove Lo’s debut EP Truth Serum on Island, which is #302 in album sales but has a total consumption rank of #48, the result of 4.3m streams and 64k singles sales on "Habits (Stay High)."
　

Overall, the most dramatic effect of the consumption chart will be to lengthen the tails of bona fide hits by measuring their aftermarket impact, potentially providing the labels with additional time in which to market these hits. Katy Perry’s PRISM (Capitol), for example, moves up 45 slots from its pure sales ranking　of #61 to #16, while Jason Derulo’s Talk Dirty (WB) goes #82-22.

Among the myriad questions being asked around the business, perhaps the most common is, will people still care about pure sales charts once the consumption chart is established as the standard? More intriguingly, in what ways will attempts be made to manipulate the new chart, and what new games will labels play in order to get a leg up on the competition? Will the consumption chart mean the end of the SoundScan-era emphasis on the first week of release, or will the majors figure out new ways to max out that total?

hitsdailydouble.com/news/newsPage.cgi?news10068m01

[Gary]

We all kind of thought that was inevitable.


Music is still being "consumed" as much as ever (I believe). With the rise of streaming, there is more than one way to "consume". The most popular album may not necessarily be the one that sells the most anymore.

[cause_for_celebration]

Excited about this :)

[Live Your Life]

Interesting...

[badrobot]

Great idea.

I think the trickiest part involves how to integrate streaming where music is featured but not necessarily primary -- basically the same discussion that's been going on since Harlem Shake came along.

[Caviar]

I love this idea. Too much emphasis is placed on first week sales.

[YourFaveIsAFlop]

This is either going to better reflect what we already know to be true in terms of which artists are successful and which aren't that is currently being lost in the present formulation, or its going to be a hot mess and you'll have random songs featured in viral videos suddenly hitting with #1 albums for a week and disappearing, in which case this chart will be essentially meaningless

[jma]

I think this is a good idea too - also proud that Settle has sold 125K - thats pretty good when you compare others artists in their genre. They went platinum in UK (approx 300K in sales I belive), so they probably have sold 500K worldwide.

[Devil Marlena Nylund]

I like it!

[surfy]

Okay, can someone explain this a little better for me, or help me understand:

They are combining streaming (of audio and visual streams for individual tracks) and sales (of both the album and single tracks) and combining them to form a new Billboard 200?

[badrobot]

Not replacing BB200, it's a new chart.

[The Upper Hand]

Sept 11, 2014 16:39:42 GMT -5 surfy said:

Okay, can someone explain this a little better for me, or help me understand:

They are combining streaming (of audio and visual streams for individual tracks) and sales (of both the album and single tracks) and combining them to form a new Billboard 200?

I think it's more like a merge between the Billboard 200 and the Hot 100 (except for airplay points).

Gary right?

[43dudleyvillas]

Currently, the RIAA uses a 100:1 ratio to convert track streams to track sales for certification purposes, and the Soundscan Track Equivalent Albums (TEA) chart uses a 10:1 ratio to convert track sales into album equivalent sales. So on this new consumption chart, if those ratios are maintained, we're looking at 1000 streams being treated as equivalent to a single album sale. Does that sound right or am I missing something?

And if that is right, any opinions out there on whether these ratios ought to be adjusted?

[jenglisbe]

For me the only question is how to determine what sort of a stream is equivalent to a sale. As in, how much of a song needs to be listened to to count as a sale? And how much of an album has to be listened to? If you listen to 6 out of 12 songs on an album, what does that mean?

[Juanca]

It's a great idea. It'll probably closely correlated with the newer Artist chart too.
A key adjustment that I think should be considered is the video streams so that viral videos ala Harlem Shake, Charoulette or whatever its name is, or stuff like the kissing video are not part of the computation.
I think track/album equivalents are good measure.
I wish videos had been incorporated MUCH earlier, and I mean the 80s :) the impact of music videos on songs was undeniable!

[felipe]

Sept 11, 2014 11:16:45 GMT -5 Caviar said:

I love this idea. Too much emphasis is placed on first week sales.

I've always wondered about that. Why is so much emphasis placed on first week sales? Is there an actual answer (like, having stores more likely to offer the album) or is it just to show off big figures?

I don't get why some acts release 2 or 3 singles before the album release and only dop the actual album some 4 months after beginning promotion. I assume the point is to have a larger first week, but wouldn't the album ultimately sell more if it was available since the release of the first single?

[Gary]

I don't know much about this yet but it sounds exciting. A "consumption" chart would to me mean all the ways to "consume" music. Album and track sales, audio and video streaming. How they do it will be interesting to see.

[someguy]

This should be interesting to see. The only issue I have with it is the fact that streaming an album will count the same as buying it. I wonder if there'll be a way of only counting one household once per album/song. Reason being, someone could buy an album and listen to it every day, but it would only be counted once. Someone else could choose not to buy the album, stream it every day, and then it could be counted over and over again. I wonder if they'll have a way to address this.

[Enigma.]

Interesting. Billboard hasn't told about this yet?

[badrobot]

Sept 12, 2014 18:15:35 GMT -5 jenglisbe said:

For me the only question is how to determine what sort of a stream is equivalent to a sale. As in, how much of a song needs to be listened to to count as a sale? And how much of an album has to be listened to? If you listen to 6 out of 12 songs on an album, what does that mean?

I don't think the album thing will calculate that way. They'll probably count the total song streams and divide by 10 to get TEA streams. So if one person listens to 10 songs from an album, and ten other people only listen it 1 song, it would add up to the equivalent of 2 album streams.

Thinking further about this, I'm curious how they'll handle albums that haven't been released yet, but have singles out.

[Juanca]

Yeah
Like Mimi's last era (#Beautiful vs triumphant) or J Lo's (Live it up scrapped from her album project)

[YourFaveIsAFlop]

I would think if this is supposed to be quasi replacing the album chart, individual tracks not on an album (yet) would be ineligible and only able to chart on the Hot 100. But who knows.

[badrobot]

Also... how will they handle EPs? Or scenarios where an artist releases an EP and then follows up with an album which has many of the same songs? For example, Robyn's "Body Talk" series.

Or even more confusing, how about greatest hits albums?

Or what about songs that are on multiple albums (would "We Found Love" also count for Calvin Harris's album, for example)?

And then there's remixes... they count for the singles chart, but would they count for the albums chart?

I'm starting to see why they're taking a few months to figure this out.

[areyoureadytojump]

I'm sure they've been doing test charts for a while.

Labels and retailers also have input.

[badrobot]

^I'm sure -- just curious. I hope they are more transparent about how it all works than they've been with streaming, where it sometimes seems like new rules are being made up on the spot.

[jenglisbe]

Sept 14, 2014 11:50:44 GMT -5 badrobot said:

Sept 12, 2014 18:15:35 GMT -5 jenglisbe said:

For me the only question is how to determine what sort of a stream is equivalent to a sale. As in, how much of a song needs to be listened to to count as a sale? And how much of an album has to be listened to? If you listen to 6 out of 12 songs on an album, what does that mean?

I don't think the album thing will calculate that way. They'll probably count the total song streams and divide by 10 to get TEA streams. So if one person listens to 10 songs from an album, and ten other people only listen it 1 song, it would add up to the equivalent of 2 album streams.

Thinking further about this, I'm curious how they'll handle albums that haven't been released yet, but have singles out.

So, a stream of 1 song would count as both a stream for the single and toward an album stream? I can see that, but it would be different than downloads where a download of a single song doesn't count toward the album as a whole.

[badrobot]

^the article says the chart will include track sales. I think people are getting caught up on the album thing. This chart sounds like it's intended to show how people are "consuming" *everything* related to an album, not trying to say this replaces album sales.

[#LisaRinna]

This could be either good or result in a huge mess.

[kanimal]

A) As long as social media is not a factor, I'm fine with this. The correlation between social media and more commercially relevant forms of success in TV, movies and music is rather minimal.

B) Can someone explain why consumption on data from SINGLES is being applied to albums? Like....the fact that Latch did well doesn't mean "Settle," as a whole, is being greatly consumed. Same with Tove Lo - "Habits" is really hot, but "Over" isn't being consumed at an impressive rate.

I could see incorporating single sales + streaming data for *all* TRACKS - but I don't see how only looking at an album's lead single means anything. That Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" was such a smash obviously didn't drive anyone to consume her whole album.