Last year, You Tube announced that they would not be a part of the calculations for streaming data on the Billboard music charts.
On November 9, YouTube’s global head of music Lyor Cohen announced that the video streaming service would be returning to the Billboard charts next year.
After Billboard announced that they would be making some changes to the methodology used in calculating streaming for the charts.
“Billboard’s new methodology better reflects how fans engage with music today across both subscription and ad-supported services,” said Cohen.
Beginning January 16, Billboard will calculate album streams by 1,500 streams per album via ad-supported streaming – down from 2,500 – and 1,000 steams per album via paid subscription on-demand official audio and video streams – no change.
An album sale is calculated by one album sale or 10 individual tracks.
Billboard was the first to add You Tube streaming data into their chart calculations back in 2013.
In 2019, Billboard began assigning different weights to paid and ad supported streams.
You Tube withdrew their streams from the chart calculations over the weight differentiations; but returns with the new guidelines.