SWEET STREAMS (ARE MADE OF THIS)

The UK’s Official Albums Chart will take streams into account for the first time from the end of this month. The first chart that will count streams from the likes of Spotify and Deezer will be published on Sunday 1^st March on the Official Charts Company (OCC) website. The change is coming into effect to coincide with this year’s BRIT awards, which take place this week on 25^th February.

Other streaming services that will be incorporated into the figures include Napster, Google Play, O2 Tracks (Musicqubed), Rara, Rdio and XBox Music.

Official Charts Company Chairman (and Founder of Infectious Music) Korda Marshall said: “The Official Charts are a UK institution, followed both by music fans and the industry, so we do not make changes to them lightly. But with more and more people listening to albums via streaming services, it is right that we are now going to reflect streaming in the Official Albums Chart“.

Marshall continued: “It is particularly appropriate that this change will take place from BRITs week, when we will be celebrating some of today’s biggest album artists, like Ed Sheeran, George Ezra, alt-J and Royal Blood, among many others”.

Streaming started counting towards the Official Singles Chart for the first time in July last year. According to the OCC, streaming doubled year on year in January 2015, from 25 million to 50 million streams a day in the UK.

All streams will be counted from the standard version of each album but the two most streamed tracks (most likely to be the singles) will be ‘down-weighted’ to effectively prevent them from distorting the album’s overall popularity.

Find out more here.

In related news, plucky upstart service Google Play has been named the official download and music streaming partner for the BRIT Awards this week- viewers will be able to download and stream the audio of live performances shortly after the show from their store.