Billboard rankings will now include streaming

NEW YORK, Nov. 19 (UPI) -- Chalk up another mighty blow for digital streaming: Industry powerhouse Billboard magazine will for the first time now incorporate streaming services into its ranking for top albums.

Billboard and its data provider, Nielsen SoundScan, will begin including both streams and downloads of music tracks to determine its weekly ranked listing of Billboard 200's most popular albums.

Billboard's chart director Silvio Pietroluongo said the change will more accurately reflect how people enjoy music.

"Now we have the ability to look at that engagement and gauge the popularity of an album over time," he told the New York Times.

Albums that start big will likely stay longer on the top of the chart under the new ranking system.

Billboard and SoundScan will tally streams from several services, including Spotify, Google Play, Rapsody and Beats Music, counting 1,500 songs streams as the equivalent of one album sale. The formula will also count the sale of 10 separate songs from an album as the equivalent of one album sale.

Record companies are generally pleased with the change, and have complained that basing music popularity on actual purchases of albums is no longer an adequate measurement of how fans consume music. Yet the change will create timing problems for record companies and artists eager to see streaming and actual album sales peak at the same time.

Album sales in the first half of the year were down 15 percent over the same time last year, according to SoundScan, with sales of downloads and CDs declining. Yet streaming from services like Spotify -- which let listeners pick exactly what songs they want -- was up 42 percent in the same period.

The new numbers will be included in the next Billboard 200 chart, covering both sales and song plays or downloads, beginning Monday, to be published on Billboard's website the first Thursday of December.