How Billboard’s New Consumption Chart Could Have A Big Impact
When Billboard implemented sweeping changes to their chart configurations in October of 2012, it was predicted at the time by many that these changes would fundamentally modify the industry in historic ways, ushering in an era where popular American music would rapidly succumb to the monogenre, and distinctions of separate genres would slowly become irrelevant. Artists who did not occupy the “crossover” realm would see diminished significance, and music would all begin to sound the same.
Subsequently that is exactly what we have seen, and the fingerprints of Billboard 2012’s rules changes can be found all over malevolent trends in country music, including the rise of “Bro-Country,” the institution of rap and EDM elements in country in a widespread manner, and the continued struggles of the genre to support and develop female artists. And country music is not alone. The Billboard rap charts have seen similar homogenization, at least in part because of the new rules. Virtually every individual genre’s charts, and thus the music itself and how it’s manufactured and marketed, have been affected in fundamental ways by these changes. And it may about to get much worse.
Many of the changes Billboard made to their charts in October of 2012 were not only necessary, they were much past due. Rating consumer interactions such as streams on Spotify and plays on YouTube were important to give both consumers and industry professionals a better illustration of the importance and performance of a given track. The problematic change was a rule governing “crossover” material. It allowed artists such as Taylor Swift, Luke Bryan, and Florida Georgia Line to receive credit for radio play and other consumer activity in the pop world on the genre specific country charts. This restricted the ability for artists with no crossover appeal to be successful in their genre specific rankings, while artists that released rap remixes, or songs that appealed to pop radio as well as country to fare much greater.
But the October 2012 changes Billboard implemented didn’t fundamentally change the structure of the charts themselves. You still had an album chart, based off of how many cohesive albums—physical or digital—a given artist sold in a week period. You still had the airplay charts, which ranked songs specifically by how many spins DJ’s gave them across the country. And you had the Hot Songs chart, which now took into consideration crossover data, and a new suite of streaming and other consumer interaction data, but it was still the same fundamental chart meant to give a more broad picture of a song’s impact.
Now that all might change. Or at least, these traditional charts may be so significantly diminished in importance, they are rendered virtually insignificant, especially the album charts. And once again, with these chart changes could come fundamental musical changes from the industry to try and take advantage of these new metrics.
This new, sweeping system is currently being called the “Consumption Chart,” and it is presently being constructed by Billboard in conjunction with Nielsen SoundScan—the company that aggregates consumer data, including sales, streams, YouTube views, and other data that goes into building Billboard’s charts. Billboard and SoundScan are currently tweaking on the specifics of the new chart—one of which is how to aggregate streaming data, which is currently being tabulated by hand. Though there is no hard and fast date of when the Consumption Chart may be rolled out, the word from HITS Daily Double is that Billboard hopes to have it in place by the very beginning of next year so that when the new music ranking system starts, it can have an entire year to give a more cohesive picture to both consumers and industry.
One of the strange aspects about Billboard’s 2012 changes is since they happened in not just the middle of a year, but in the middle of a business quarter, it created a dirty data situation where the rules governing songs changed in the middle of the game. There was also little to no warning ahead of the changes being made. Billboard’s new rules came somewhat unexpectedly and were implemented immediately. Though indications are the roll out of the Consumption Chart will wait until the end of the year, especially since Billboard and SoundScan want to give themselves proper lead time to make sure their system is road tested and debugged before being debuted to the public, there’s no guarantee we may not wake up one morning and find that the way music is measured has been massively overhauled yet again.
What Is The Billboard Consumption Chart?
To put it simply, The Billboard Consumption Chart would be a combination of an album and a song chart. Instead of just considering physical album sales to gauge an album’s performance, the new chart would take song plays from streaming data and turn them into equivalent album sales. The idea is to bridge the gap between artists who receive a lot of streaming interaction but have marginal physical sales, and artists who have strong physical sales but don’t experience a lot of streaming activity. All indications are that Billboard hopes that this new Consumption Chart will become the industry standard for rating music.
According to HITS Daily Double:
The weekly chart will combine album and track sales with audio and video streams, assigning an equivalent-album value to each, as in the TEA metric, theoretically providing a more accurate and comprehensive representation of modern-day music consumption … Billboard’s album sales chart will remain in place, but most observers believe it will take on decreasing importance over time as the business acclimates itself to the new system … In some respects, the consumption chart will mirror the present sales charts in that sales and streaming tend to correlate, with certain exceptions … Overall, the most dramatic effect of the consumption chart will be to lengthen the tails of bona fide hits by measuring their aftermarket impact, potentially providing the labels with additional time in which to market these hits.
A mock up of the new chart was made last week, and the biggest takeaway was that albums for artists whose consumers mostly listen to songs on Spotify and YouTube instead of actually purchasing the album received a significant boost in the new metric by making “album equivalent” gains from the amount of streams and plays songs received. For example, the album Settle by the EDM duo Disclosure went from #213 on the album chart based purely off of sales, all the way up to #64 based off of these “album equivalent” streams and plays. That is a 149-spot difference just from the new Consumption Chart reporting method. Another example is Katy Perry’s album Prism, which moved from #61 to #16.
How The Consumption Chart Could Hurt Older and Independent Artists
What this all means is that artists who do well with physical album sales and digital downloads could be significantly diminished in this new system, while artists who primarily have their music heard through streaming methods will see a significant boost. This could immediately put older artists, and independent artists at a significant disadvantage.
Recently we have seen older country artists such as Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, and Billy Joe Shaver set career chart records with their album releases because these artist’s older fan bases are one of the few demographics left that actually buy albums. But since these artist’s streaming footprint is significantly less, this new Consumption Chart would see them fare significantly worse compared to the current system.
Same could be said for many independent artists like Old Crow Medicine Show, Sturgill Simpson or Jason Isbell, whose fan bases are more likely to buy physical albums to help support the artist. These artists have seen significant boosts from chart performances recently, and this could go away under the new system. Artists who rely heavily on vinyl sales like Jack White could also see diminishing returns from the new charting system.
Since these charts are used to gauge the importance and impact an artist has in the marketplace, a diminishing of them on the charts could affect their overall sales, or their acknowledgement by the industry. Once again, just like Billboard’s 2012 chart rules, the new system very well may create even a greater discrepancy between the have’s and have not’s of music, and see more attention paid to the biggest artists, the biggest songs, and the biggest albums.
One big question for the Consumption Chart is if it takes into consideration the greater commitment a consumer shows by purchasing a physical album or downloading an entire copy instead of streaming an individual song or consuming it in a free environment such as YouTube. Does it also take into consideration that these physical and digital sales generally result in more revenue for the artist, the labels, and the industry as a whole? Where streaming is currently gutting the industry, physical sales are one of the the last bastions of revenue, including vinyl sales which are on the rapid increase.
Once again, certain changes are probably necessary to Billboard’s charts to take into consideration the new realities of consumer’s consumption habits when it comes to music. But it shouldn’t be at the expense of artists who are already struggling under the current system.
The good news is that this Consumption Chart has yet to be implemented, and so there is still time to understand what its impact might be and game plan for it, or even to influence the direction it might take before it is rolled out. This opportunity did not pose itself in 2012.
And as Billboard will probably point out, there’s no plans to put away the purely sales-based album chart. But many industry experts believe it will be significantly diminished under the new system. Some believe this new system could be dead on arrival, while others think it is necessary to keep Billboard’s relevance in the marketplace alive.
As HITS Daily Double asks, “In what ways will attempts be made to manipulate the new chart, and what new games will labels play in order to get a leg up on the competition? Will the consumption chart mean the end of the SoundScan-era emphasis on the first week of release, or will the majors figure out new ways to max out that total?”
Either way, if the changes made by Billboard in 2012 were any indication, the Consumption Chart could have a significant impact on music much beyond simply how it is measured.
September 15, 2014 @ 10:28 am
When the RIAA announced in May 2013 that it would incorporate streams into track certifications, it said the following:
The RIAA is not the same as Billboard but I’d be surprised if Billboard’s standard were significantly different. But that’s just streams to track downloads, you still have to convert that to album sales.
Billboard & Nielsen Soundscan already calculate TEA (Track Equivalent Albums) sales by adding sales for an album to 1/10 of the track sales from that album, though they haven’t introduced that as a formal chart yet. In other words to calculate TEA sales, 10 track sales from an album = 1 album sale. They do present TEA sales in their year end industry reports. In 2012, Justin Bieber, .fun, Luke Bryan, & Jason Aldean all placed higher on the year end TEA list than on the album sales list whereas Carrie Underwood placed lower (this is just based on who made the t10 on either list). In 2013, Imagine Dragons, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Bruno Mars, Katy Perry, and P!nk all placed higher on the TEA list than on the album sales list while Luke Bryan, Beyonce, Blake Shelton, and Jay-Z all placed lower (again, this is just based on who made the t10 on either list).
So *IF* those are the numbers Billboard uses for its consumption chart, then it’ll be:
1,000 streams = 10 track sales = 1 album sale
September 15, 2014 @ 12:09 pm
Very good explanation. Thanks!
September 15, 2014 @ 3:29 pm
“1,000 streams = 10 track sales = 1 album sale”
Gotcha.
So, if 1 album sale = 1,000 streams,
and 500,000 sales = 1 Gold Record …
Then I only need 500,000,000 streams to get to gold. Ok. Got it.
(sets Spotify to repeat)
September 15, 2014 @ 9:38 pm
“Then I only need 500,000,000 streams to get to gold. Ok. Got it.
(sets Spotify to repeat)”
Wow, great point! Now that you mention it, streaming totals ought to be incredibly easy to manipulate. I could see musical artists or their fan clubs starting social media campaigns specifically to get fans to stream a certain artists’ music day and night in order to boost their placement on the charts (regardless of whether their computer speakers are actually turned on or not.) Furthermore, what’s to stop people from buying or re-purposing computers specifically to stream a certain artists’ music continuously for days or weeks? The potential for manipulation and corruption seems endless, given how much streaming is going to factor into the new chart configuration.
Also, I still object to incorporating visual media like YouTube into the equation, because it will obviously be exploited to favor the most sensationalistic, racy content: think Miley Cyrus riding naked on a wrecking ball. (Wait, actually don’t do that.)
September 15, 2014 @ 4:12 pm
I think the proof is in the pudding, and if you have artists whose fan bases are notorious streamers hopscotching other artists by 120 spots, then that means there’s going to be some losers in this new system, and it probably means they’re going to be artists whose strength lies in digital sales. And as HITS Daily Double points out (& Dukes), putting this much emphasis on streaming makes it much easier to manipulate the numbers.
It is going to be very interesting to see how this plays out.
September 15, 2014 @ 5:26 pm
Taylor Swift is an enormous digital seller who doesn’t release her songs on Spotify uptil several months after their digital release. It seems like her success won’t be accurately represented on this chart. Adele too.
September 15, 2014 @ 6:04 pm
Yes, Scott Borchetta makes all of his artists wait to release to Spotify, and this could do harm to their performances on this new metric. Since Swift is releasing her album before the end of the year thought, it may not have much of an effect on her for “1989.”
September 16, 2014 @ 12:40 am
I did a little rudimentary math, and I figured out that if I were to set Spotify to endlessly play one of my singles, with a 3:21 runtime, I would get 432.43 plays per day. That’s 157,837.68 plays per year.
At that rate, it would take my little macbook 3,167.81 years to get me a gold record.
This is too much work. I’m going back to drinking.
September 17, 2014 @ 2:25 pm
But how much of the song has to play in order for it to count?
September 15, 2014 @ 11:16 am
It’s just Billboard continually treading water and trying to justify thier very existence.
September 15, 2014 @ 12:04 pm
An observation totally unrelated to this article…
I follow approx 11 different country music bloggers and I swear, at least 90% off the time, a day or 2 after a story appears on here, I see the same story in a bland, neutral, watered down version on at least half of those sites.
September 15, 2014 @ 2:07 pm
I’ll speak for my site, Country Perspective, and tell you that I always try to present different material than is presented here. Occasionally I may review an album that has been reviewed here, but 95% of the time my material is completely different. The sites that are copying SCM are wasting their time. I know my site will never be close to as great as SCM is. Trigger does fantastic work!
September 15, 2014 @ 2:34 pm
I try to keep my blog as original as possible and I always write my reviews before reading the reviews on other sites so as not to be influenced. If something has already been posted elsewhere and I want to make a comment on it, I always direct to an original source.
I agree with you, Josh, my site will also never be as great as SCM. I decided to start it as a forum to express my own opinions, however few people might end up seeing them. We need more out there like you and Trigger who will make valid commentary on the direction country music is continuing to take.
September 15, 2014 @ 6:01 pm
I didn’t take JC’s comments to be in reference to either of y’all.
September 15, 2014 @ 9:29 pm
I didn’t think you did and I’m glad to hear it from you and JC. Keep up the good work Trigger.
September 15, 2014 @ 7:24 pm
No guys, neither of you. Just some that I started following when I joined Twitter and have realized that they pretty much just love everything.
BTW Cobra, is it supposed to take me to your sure when I click on your name? It takes me to a site to make webpages instead.
September 15, 2014 @ 9:18 pm
“Just some that I started following when I joined Twitter and have realized that they pretty much just love everything.”
Sounds to me like you’re talking about the mainstream country blogs. As far as I can tell, it’s in their business model to praise everything that comes down he pike. Or rather, there seems to be an incentive to hire writers who have nothing but praise for pop-country’s shining stars and their wonderful, “groundbreaking” songs.
The greatest thing about this website, whether you agree with all of Trigger’s opinions or not, is that the analysis is truly independent.
September 16, 2014 @ 12:42 am
Dude – I’ve had so much difficulty wading through the crap. It’s always funny when you get one of those folks going on twitter and they accidentally express a real opinion that is completely opposite to what they post “officially.” The backslide is hilarious.
September 16, 2014 @ 4:17 am
*site, not sure
September 15, 2014 @ 2:32 pm
Wonder if this new data could be parlayed into more leverage to demand higher payments from all these streaming services? Obviously the Spotifys of the world aren’t exactly raking in mountains of cash to pass on to artists but this new metric may end up changing the streaming model more than anything. When someone finally learns how to really monetize streaming it’ll be a game changer.
September 15, 2014 @ 3:44 pm
If they’d implemented this a year ago, Katy Perry would have topped it for like 3 months. Thank God they didn’t.
September 15, 2014 @ 7:16 pm
To follow up on the 1000 streams = 10 track sales = 1 album sales formula, the president of Thirty Tigers, David Macias, wrote this article weighing in on royalty payments from streaming services, and said that Spotify pays $0.005 per stream to the owner of a recording (often, a record label) compared to the $0.70 per sale Itunes pays the owner of a recording (for tracks sold for $0.99, I believe that number goes up to around $0.90 for tracks sold for $1.29, and down to around $0.48 for tracks sold for 69 cents).
That doesn’t address retail value or the revenue generated for Spotify (to be fair, neither does the album sales chart, since it doesn’t differentiate between pricing of albums). But I’m using the figure to try to come up with an approximation for the number of streams it would take to generate the same amount of income as a track sale. In the case of a track sold for 99 cents, it’s 140 streams = 1 track sale. In the case of a track sold for $1.29, it’s 180 streams = 1 track sale. In the case of a track sold for 69 cents, it’s 96 streams = 1 track sale.
So from the point of view of the money going to the owner of the recording, the RIAA’s 100 streams = 1 track sale arguably weights streams higher than it should for the hit songs/songs from hit albums (that are priced at $1.29) and even the typical $0.99 track. But I don’t know if it makes sense to decide on a ratio that way.
September 15, 2014 @ 7:37 pm
Very good analysis. 100 seems like such an arbitrary number they came to simply because it’s round and easy. Where numbers and music converge, Windmills Country thrives.
September 15, 2014 @ 10:03 pm
Looking directly at my Spotify streams for my albums:
$0.00030914 on the low end
$0.00832413 on the high end
Note that that’s 3 zeros in the first number and 2 in the second. I’ve never understood the range. On average though, it comes out about .0045 per stream. Some other services are a bit higher – but they don’t produce enough streams to work into the equation. The big ones all average about this number.
So this is real data from real albums. I currently have three albums on the market offering streams through all of the services.
So to add up to one .99 download, I have to sell 222 streams.
To make the $15 I would get for selling a CD I have to sell 3,333 streams.
To pay my rent this month, I just need 251,111 streams.
Fortunately – I still do most of my sales via CD.
September 16, 2014 @ 6:48 am
“So to add up to one .99 download, I have to sell 222 streams.
To make the $15 I would get for selling a CD I have to sell 3,333 streams.
To pay my rent this month, I just need 251,111 streams.”
Have you considered another line of work Sam ? Brutal stats .
September 16, 2014 @ 3:41 pm
Ha! I’ve done other lines of work. Pays good money, but I’d rather be a broke musician as long as I can make enough to survive – who knows how much longer THAT will be possible though?!?! For now I just keep adding new music related things to my list of: selling merch, performing, teaching, consulting, writing, producing, building band websites and graphics, playing sessions for pop punks…
September 15, 2014 @ 9:03 pm
I remember back in the late 90s when Nysync broke some album sales record because girls where buying up like six copies of the album. I don’t know how this is relevant but it did pop into my head as a read this. I find in my forays into the on-line music discussion chart success is mostly used as a way to argue the merits of artists. If say complain that Rhianna in a mediocre artist invariably somebody usually younger will site me her chart stats and sales records they gathered from Wikipedia.
At, which point I have to respond and say the biggest selling single of all time is White Christmas by Bing Crosby and the biggest female group of all time is The Spice Girls and CCR never had a #1 record. So sales tells you as much about artistic merit as reading a cookbook will tell about how talented a Chef is.
And I never understood really HOW Billboard actually works and how THEY became the standard wasn’t or isn’t there a competitor that has different chart stats. I seem to remember something about that.
September 17, 2014 @ 2:33 pm
When Garth was chasing the all-time album sales record with a vengeance he re-released his first six albums as a six-CD box set despite the fact that all the material would have fit on 2-3 discs and added one extra song to each disc to make sure everyone who already had all six albums would buy the set, plus he released another CD with four different covers to entice his die hard fans to buy it four times.
September 17, 2014 @ 9:38 pm
I’ve heard of stunts like that but WOW! That is a whole other level.
September 15, 2014 @ 9:13 pm
I’ve heard that teen pop fans tend to buy singles and stream and don’t buy albums as much. So this probably will benefit the “country” acts making generic pure pop, fake country music mostly for teens and hurt the real artists making actual country music for all ages. Radio already follows streaming charts and when programmers unfairly leap frog males past better female artists and songs, which they do all the time, that airplay increases their streaming because after people hear songs on the radio they go stream them too. So that practice has already been screwing over the female artists radio isn’t playing and it sounds like this change may hurt them even more. Also country radio ignores positive streaming, sales, and callout data for solo females. I’ve seen some of the best songs debut on the top 50 sales chart then radio quickly kill that single the same week, probably to keep women from climbing the sales, streaming, and callout charts and getting more airplay to keep them out of the top 20.
http://www.mjsbigblog.com/the-country-radio-climb-how-are-major-labels-serving-new-acts-male-female.htm
September 18, 2014 @ 1:19 pm
So there’s a consumption chart. Heh? I was thinking, if Taylor Swift’s country music videos like Tim McGraw gets more views on YouTube and Vevo, then her country songs like Sparks Fly will likely to peak apparently high on the new consumption chart. Pretty crazy. All Taylor Swift’s country music videos are pop on Vevo and there’s no Taylor Swift’s country music videos that only have country category on Vevo. Sounds interesting. With Picture To Burn, White Horse, Mean and Begin Again gains more than 50 million views on Vevo, these country songs can make great additions to mainstream pop department, not country. They needs to be shown on pop music stations like MTV and Fuse. So now that Picture To Burn, White Horse, Mean and Begin Again gets more than 50 million views on Vevo while Red gaming more than 35 million views on Vevo, Tim McGraw, I’m Only Me When I’m With You, Sparks Fly and Ours will have their chance to gain 30 million views on Vevo too. Of course, I support Taylor Swift’s Tim McGraw from 2006 since that 2006 country song needs to be played on pop music stations like Radio Disney because it’s Taylor Swift’s first song and it was shown in Japan. Now, if only Carrie Underwood can so the same thing along with Tim McGraw’s number 1 2013 country song, Highway Don’t Care with Taylor Swift for consumption chart for pop because the latter was categorized pop on Vevo. Of course, consumption chart can damage country music in general like Jason Aldean and Miranda Lambert because country music has zero interest in consumption chart. That’s for pop music version of country music like Florida Georgia Line pop music. But hey, it worked well for Taylor Swift along with Carrie Underwood, Tim McGraw’s Highway Don’t Care, Sheryl Crow’s Easy and Kelly Clarkson’s Tie It Up. It also works well for artists that needs more attention in the US like Avril Lavigne. Let’s hope consumption chart can dominate the billboard charts and pay attention to the internet. 🙂
August 16, 2017 @ 9:06 am
It’s interesting that these billboard charts would look at individual songs as well as albums to turn more album sales. This seems like a great idea because you would be able to expose people to more music as well. I wonder how the artists get their music onto things like that or if the billboard supervisor would have to get the copyright stuff from the artist.