Starting next month, music streaming services will be taken into account when compiling the UK singles chart.
The Official Charts Company made the announcement, explaining that 100 streams of a track will count as one physical sale or download purchase (a stream must last at least 30 seconds to count).
The popular music streaming services that will supply the data to the Official Charts Company include Spotify, Deezer, Napster, O2 Tracks, Sony Music Unlimited and Xbox Music.
With approximately 260 million songs streamed each week in the UK, it seems that the powers that be simply couldn’t go on ignoring the digital streaming services. In turn, with such a large amount of tracks being listened to on these services, they are sure to have a marked effect on the charts.
Martin Talbot of the Official Charts Company had this to say on the move to include streaming: “Audio streaming has grown at an extraordinary rate over the past year ‘ and the time is now right to take this important step. We have been looking at this possibility for some time and now feel comfortable that our methodology is correct and that summer 2014 is the time we should take this step.”