The rise of streaming has been well documented in 2016, thanks to major successes from the likes of Beyonce and Drake who both set and broke streaming records with the release of their albums respectfully.
The exceptional growth of streaming in the UK has led to the decision by The Official Charts Company to change its conversion rate.
Stream numbers were first introduced into the chart in 2014 and had previously been equated to sales of downloads by being divided by 100. As of January 2017, they will be divided by 150, with the rate to change from 100:1 to 150:1.
Since 2014 the number of streams delivered per week (274 Million) has more than tripled. The figure is now at 990 million streams per week thanks to the rising popularity of streaming platforms such as Spotify Apple Music, Tidal and Amazon.
Official Charts chief executive Martin Talbot says: “It is testament to the rapidly changing nature of music consumption in the UK – and the huge shift we are seeing towards streaming – that we are updating the way we measure the contribution of streams to the make-up of the Official Charts as quickly as we are. Streaming is growing exponentially and the weighting we use to reflect its impact will inevitably keep evolving with it.”