Singles chart to include music streaming services

The UK singles chart is catching up with the internet.

Starting on Sunday, July 6, the UK’s official singles chart will include figures from streams of 30 seconds or more from a variety of music streaming services including the popular Xbox music, Spotify and Deezer.

The proposal was announced by The Official Charts Company in an attempt to better reflect the public’s music preference, as online streaming data more than doubled its reproduction counts to over 200 million per week this year.

Official Charts Company CEO Martin Talbot said: “The Official Singles Chart is, and always has been, the most trusted and definitive measure of Britain’s music tastes. Just as it has evolved through the years to reflect the most popular music in the UK, from 10-inch to 7-inch, vinyl to cassingles, CD singles to downloads, this is the latest stage of that progression.”

BBC Radio 1, which broadcasts the top 40 each Sunday, also backed the new initiative saying: “We are moving from an era of music purchasing to one dominated by music streaming and it is vital that the Official Singles Chart evolves to reflect this.”