According to Billboard, starting early next year they will be including YouTube streams into their Billboard 200 album charts. YouTube will not be the only streaming platform that will be factored in according to the company. They say that they will be including other poplular platforms as well such as Apple, Vevo, Tidal and even Spotify. The company says that this will definitely affect the overall genre consumption too.
According to Billboard, these changes will go into effect starting January 18th. 2020.
Billboard at the beginning only included sales as the only model on which songs were added into it’s albums charts however, they have been gradually trying to change this for a few years now and started adding audio streams into it as well such as Spotify, Xbox Music and even Google Play but they never included video streams to this category. Video streams were added in a separate song-specific chart since the year 2013 but never included in the album charts. This is however all about to change and this will greatly affect the final result from the moment they take this into effect.
In the music industry Billboard Charts have a very important place and are seen as a sign of success if someone makes in on these charts especially on the top of the chart.
According to Billboard, they will only include official videos in the results saying they will only count:
official licensed video content uploaded by or on behalf of rights holders.
Further stating that they are going to work around any manupulation in the stream count. Billboard says it’s working closely with Nielsen Music to:
assure there are safeguards in place to guard against automated streams and/or excessive streaming from singular IP addresses.
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