Audio streams will soon be included in the official Aria singles charts. While a separate streaming chart has been published by Aria for the past two years, this marks the first time they will be integrated with sales charts and reflects changing patterns in music consumption.
Aria chief executive officer Dan Rosen said of the move: “The streaming market is still evolving, but it has become mainstream in that a lot of music fans are accessing music this way. And you want to be able to reflect that in the charts.”
According to an Aria report, streaming revenue doubled to $20.9m in 2013 and now comprises 5.9% of Australia’s total market.
Streaming service users do not pay per song, and instead pay for a subscription that allows access to a database of songs. Streams, however, generate a dollar value that is paid out to the rights holder (usually the artist) by the service.
Rosen will not reveal the exact ratio of streams to physical and download purchases making up the new chart figures. The matter is complicated by the diversity of pricing schemes both across services and within services for different artists. Rosen says an average figure has been calculated and will continue to be monitored and updated where necessary.
The five subscription-based music streaming services currently contributing to the charts are Deezer, JB Now, Rdio, Samsung Music Hub and Spotify.
When asked how the two charts differ in terms of trends, Rosen highlighted that songs tend to move slower on the streaming charts compared to the sales charts. This can be explained by how number of plays are reflected in a streaming chart, unlike in a sales chart which only reflects the number of users who have purchased a song.
A streaming chart therefore favours songs that are both popular in terms of number of users and number of times played by those users. The most recent Aria singles chart, released on 3 November, has six newly released songs, unlike the streaming chart which has none.
The most streamed track this week is Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off, which has dropped to number three on the official Aria singles chart. X Factor winner Marlisa Punzalan takes out second position on the Aria singles chart, but does not appear on the streaming chart.
Rosen also notes that while “early adopters” were the first to take up subscription-based music streaming services, bringing with them specific musical preferences, the ongoing penetration of these services into the market has seen a shift in the chart towards more mainstream tastes.
Australia follows the adoption of streaming in official chart figures across the world. Earlier this year the UK’s Official Charts Company began including streams on their singles charts, with 100 streams equivalent to one single purchase (whether download, CD or vinyl).
The US Billboard Hot 100 draws on an even wider number of sources, including data from social media sites such as YouTube. They report a general ratio breakdown of sales (35-45%), airplay (30-40%) and streaming (20-30%).
Rosen said they will continue to monitor the industry and examine the possibility of including streaming figures in the album charts.
The first Aria top 50 singles chart to incorporate stream figures will be published on 22 November.
