There’s been a shake-up on the compilations chart.
The Official Charts Company has changed the rules so that streaming data will count towards sales for compilations featuring original material.
The rule change is set to have a significant impact on the chart and sales totals. The Frozen 2 soundtrack (UMC/Walt Disney) climbed 7-2 on the compilations chart on Friday (November 29). The album has weekly sales of 12,041 (38.6% from streams), according to the Official Charts Company.
“The scale of consumption will be fully reflected, as the Official Charts Company changed the rules governing the compilation chart to also include streams where tracks constitute new, previously unreleased material,” said an Official Charts Company spokesperson.
Other beneficiaries this week include the original Frozen soundtrack, the Children In Need Got It Covered album (Silva Screen) and the Top Boy (Warner Music) soundtrack. The compilation inspired by the Netflix series has made an impact with Dave’s track Professor X (228,969 sales), streams for which have been registered for the singles chart. But now streams for the digital-only album also count towards the compilation chart.
The previous rule depressed sales figures for albums that had heavy streaming consumption, such as The Greatest Showman Reimagined.
However, the change will not include compilations such as the Now series, which do not feature original songs. Now’s co-MD Peter Duckworth has previously spoken to Music Week about how the absence of streaming ‘sales’ has made a 100,000 weekly total more difficult.
Now That’s What I Call Music recently reported that revenues were down in what has become a challenging physical compilations market. Compilation album sales are down 35% year-on-year so far in 2019.
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