James Delahunty
10 May 2012 13:56
New weekly chart tracks streamed music.
The Official Charts Company (OCC) in the UK is to compile a top 100 chart of music streamed from services such as Spotify. It estimates that 2.6 billion audio streams were delivered in the UK last year. The new chart tracking what's currently popular will launch next Monday.
The chart, however, does not include video streaming services, which rules out YouTube. Nielsen Soundscan has reported that a whopping 55 percent of all music streamed online comes from YouTube videos.
Nevertheless, the OCC is correct to recognise streaming music with its own charts, as music streaming has overtaken paid downloads.
Streaming has become a new source of money for the industry, but not everybody is convinced that it is enough to replace record sales, or that it is distributed fairly. Rock group Black Keys decided to withhold their new album El Camino from Spotify due to issues with royalties.
"It's set up to be a little bit more fair for the labels than it is for the artists, I think," said Black Keys' Patrick Carney. "It still isn't at a point where you're able to replace royalties from record sales with the royalties from streams."