Nielsen Soundscan has switched up the formula
Billboard has been tweaking its formula on how it songs land on the Hot 100 over the years, adding more digital avenues as part of the formula. After adding Youtube as part of their charts, they also incorporated a Twitter Trending 140 and now Spotify, Beats Music, Rdio, Rhapsody and Google Play streams will be counted as sales.
Nielsen SoundScan, who supplies Billboard their data, will count 1,500 song streams as a sale on the Billboard 200. 10 downloads of individual tracks will also count as part of the formula for album rankings. This change is in direct response to the new digital way of how fans listen to and seek music, as opposed to the traditional physical sales in the old models.
With album sales dwindling, Billboard hopes that this becomes a better gauge of measuring statistics, as people find more ways of consuming media.
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