In the new blog post published todayYouTube has announced its intention to remove its streaming data from all Billboard charts effective January 16, after a ten-year partnership.
Message follows Billboard announcement Tuesday (Dec. 16) that it is changing its formula for charting tables, which will now lean more heavily towards streaming, but will also give “more weight to paid streams rather than ad-supported ones.” Billboard reportedly first began weighing paid streams more carefully in 2018, and it appears that the rule change was the result of negotiations with streaming services and YouTube was no longer happy with the way Billboard was doing its calculations.
YouTube's relationship with Billboard began in 2013, when the Billboard song charts began incorporating the platform's streaming data and became the first chart in the world to do so. The Billboard album charts began using YouTube data in 2019, and the platform is now voluntarily hiding data for all Billboard charts in the US and around the world.
“Billboard uses an outdated formula that values subscription-supported streams higher than ad-supported streams,” said a YouTube blog post written by the platform’s global head of music, Lyor Cohen. “This does not reflect the way fans interact with music today and ignores the massive participation of fans who do not have a subscription. Streaming is the primary way people experience music, accounting for 84% of recorded music revenue in the United States. We simply ask that every stream is counted fairly and equally, regardless of whether it's subscription-based or ad-supported, because every fan matters and every listen should count.”
According to BillboardStarting January 17, the Billboard 200 and other genre album consumption charts will “reflect that an album consumption unit will be equal to 2,500 ad-supported streams or 1,000 paid/subscription official audio and video streams of songs on an album,” which is different from the previous album consumption unit, which was 1,250 paid or on-demand subscription streams or 3,750 streams with advertising support. This means Billboard will soon use 20% fewer paid streams/on-demand subscriptions and 33.3% fewer ad-supported on-demand streams to equal an album's equivalent unit.
If and when this change goes into effect next month, it will undoubtedly have a huge impact on the Hot 100 and could even discourage artists from making music videos. However, these changes will likely matter less when artists like Taylor Swift release 17 more physical versions of the same album, but it could also cause the new album to “sell out” the next time they do so.
“We are committed to achieving fair representation across all charts and hope we can work with Billboard to return them to where they are,” Cohen concluded in his post. “In the meantime, if you're interested in what music is trending on YouTube, you can visit our charts. Here”
In other news, YouTube platform will The Oscars will be broadcast exclusively from 2029.
