Streaming is about to weigh even more heavily on the Billboard album charts. The magazine announced Tuesday that it's changing its formula for factoring in streams, reducing the number of track streams needed to equate to one album sale. The changes are designed to "better reflect an increase in streaming revenue and changing consumer behaviors," an article announcing the changes explains.
Billboard began factoring on-demand streams into its album charts, including the all-genre Billboard 200 chart, in November 2014. They've since tweaked their approach several times, giving more weight to paid streams vs. free streams starting in 2018 and factoring in YouTube plays at the start of 2020.
Currently, 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand track streams count for one album sale. Under the new formula, beginning with charts dated Jan. 17, 2026 (encompassing data from Jan. 2-8), one album sale will now be equal to 2,500 ad-supported or 1,000 paid/subscription streams. "The change means that it will take 33.3% fewer ad-supported on-demand streams of songs from an album, and 20% fewer paid/subscription on-demand streams of songs from an album, to equal an album unit," Billboard writes.
Paid streams continue to be weighted more heavily than free streams, but the ratio has narrowed from 1:3 to 1:2.5. Billboard is instituting the same ratio change for its main singles chart, the Hot 100.
It continues to be strange to watch actual album sales be deprioritized on a chart that used to only measure album sales, but it's hard to dispute that a greater emphasis on streaming reflects the reality of the music industry today. As for the impact of these changes, it will matter slightly less when artists like Taylor Swift convince their fans to buy umpteen physical variants of the same album, but it also seems like it might lead to new album "sales" records the next time Swift (or someone in the same tier of stardom, like Morgan Wallen) drops an album.
