Spotify: Ministry of Defence

In addition to putting an end to their long running stand off with the Ministry of Sound label, Spotify has announced ‘the Viral 50’ chart that will measure streaming and user sharing on the platform.

This is separate chart to the Spotify Top 50, which simply displays the most streamed songs of the week. Referring to simply judging the success of music in sales or stream units as “An antiquated method of defining success”, a statement on Spotify Artists site said: “Looking exclusively at “units” is an antiquated method of defining success, and doesn’t provide the full picture of how a song, artist, or album is performing in the current and ever-changing landscape of the music industry”.

It continued: “It’s clear that we need a way to capture all the various ways people are consuming music, instead of only relying on how many people purchased the song and nothing more”.

The new chart will incorporate shares of the track, immediate repeat plays, additions to playlists and other listener behaviours in a possibly ill-advised attempt to capture the streaming ‘zeitgeist’. Which, according to Spotify, appears to mainly be songs featured in movies, TV programmes, adverts and at high-profile events. And of course Ed Sheeran, whose recent album ‘X’ became the most streamed album on Spotify ever with 23.7 million streams globally.

Elsewhere in Spotify’s world, Ministry of Sound have finally landed on the platform after holding off for years, even bringing a lawsuit to the service last year when users started imitating Ministry releases with playlists.

Spotify settled out of court but that all seems to be in the past now, with various Ministry albums and playlists appearing on their official channel despite the continued absence of London Grammar’s debut album, the appropriately titled ‘If you wait’.