Streams from Spotify, Deezer and more to count towards UK music chart
From July 2014, 100 streams of a track will count as one physical single sale
From July 6th, streaming services will be taken into account when compiling the UK singles chart.
The Official Charts Company announced the move over the weekend, and revealed that 100 streams of a track will count as one physical sale or download purchase (a stream must be at least 30 seconds to count). That might sound a little arbitrary, but is designed to reflect the weighting of streaming a track against that of actually paying for a song – and with 260 million songs streamed each week in the UK, it’s sure to have a marked effect on the top 40.
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Services that will supply streaming data to the Official Charts Company include Spotify, Deezer, Napster, O2 Tracks, Sony Music Unlimited and Xbox Music.
Martin Talbot of the Official Charts Company had this to say on the move to include streaming: “Audio streaming has grown at an extraordinary rate over the past year – and the time is now right to take this important step. We have been looking at this possibility for some time and now feel comfortable that our methodology is correct and that summer 2014 is the time we should take this step.”
[Via Official Charts Company]
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Sam Kieldsen
Contributor 
