The Tide Has Turned: ARIA Album Charts To Count Streaming Towards Its Weekly Results

Almost two-and-a-half years after first integrating digital streams into its Singles chart measurements, ARIA has announced that it will update its Albums charts ranking process in kind.

The change in determining the Albums results will impact the charts for the week ending Saturday 13 May, and is an attempt to more accurately reflect the realities of Australian music-consumption habits, which have seen streaming growth almost double since 2015 to comprise the largest slice of the local recording industry's $350 million-plus revenue pie (38.5%, according to recent figures, while all physical sales account for just over 30%).

Key points

• Spotify plays will count towards album chart results, as will data from Apple Music, Deezer and Google Play
• Streaming data will contribute towards Gold and Platinum album accreditation
• New methodology is based on models used by the UK's official chart and several European rankings

Before the new methodology is implemented, ARIA will also update and extend the way it determines Gold and Platinum status for full-length albums. From this Friday, 5 May, Albums will be eligible for such accreditation by shifting 35,000 and 70,000 units respectively — the level at which they've been for several years — but now taking into account streaming activity as well as album sales.

The newly recalculated chart results will draw on streaming information from existing popular streaming services Apple Music, Deezer, Google Play and Spotify, as well emergent platforms whose influence and reach is still growing.

Using a blanket standard where 10 tracks are seen as being equivalent to one album, the measurement process involves capping stream figures for an album's top two-most-played songs at the average number of streams achieved by the next eight-highest-streamed tracks on the album. In the case of albums with fewer than 10 tracks, the top-two average is calculated from all remaining songs on the record.

The reason for this, according to ARIA, is to prevent warping chart results for albums that have had one or two songs perform particularly well in comparison with the remainder of their track list.

The chart then aggregates the top 10 tracks (or complete track list, dependent on album length) and divides by 10 (again, adjusted for albums with nine or fewer songs) before dividing that result by the stream conversion factor (SCF), which ARIA has set at 1:175 (i.e. 175 streams = one sale) based on a combination of local market conditions and methodology adopted in the UK and on several European charts.

This gives a result known as the stream equivalent album (SEA) value, which, once obtained, is added to physical and digital sales to determine the album's overall chart position. All said and done, the final result should be a much better reflection of the nation's actual listening habits, according to ARIA chief executive Dan Rosen.

"The ARIA Charts are an Australian institution, followed by the music industry and fans alike, so it is essential that we continue to reflect how Australians are consuming music," Rosen said in a statement.

"With streaming now the primary method of music consumption in Australia, ARIA can ensure that the ARIA Albums Chart will continue to be the most accurate indication of the nation's favourite music each and every week."

We'll find out what the first streaming-inclusive Albums chart looks like on Saturday 13 May — if nothing else, maybe someone will finally unseat Ed Sheeran from #1 (if nobody manages it this week).