Official UK music streaming chart launches
That’s right – it’s time for Spotify, Deezer and friends to stand up and be (literally) counted
Remember preparing your tape recorder on a Sunday evening, eagerly awaiting the chart show to get all the new tracks recorded? Well, the days of measuring how many 45s have disappeared from the shelves of Our Price are gone (along with 45s and Our Price). Streaming services are the better measure of what’s hot in the Hit Parade – hence they’re getting their own chart.
On Monday, May 14th, the first Official Streaming Top 100 will be unveiled at 1pm at OfficialCharts.com as well as being published in Music Week. The streamers used to measure the chart will be Spotify, Deezer, We7, Napster, Zune (Xbox Live) and new mobile phone start-up ChartsNow.
With around 2.6 billion streams a year in the UK alone, it certainly is time to start measuring music popularity differently. If nothing else it can push revenue into streaming and bring down its price – hopefully. Is it too much to hope we might get Top of the Pops back as a vidcast?