Wednesday, February 3, 2016

1500 Track Streams Now Equals 1 Album Sale

1500 Track Streams = 1 Album SaleThe RIAA announced that it will now count 1500 track streams as 1 album sale when it comes to qualifying for awards like gold records.

This means that 150 streams now equals 1 track sale, thus 10 track sales (1,500 streams) then equals 1 album sale.

It's nice that there's some metric, but there's a big flaw in this logic.

1500 plays of the same song now equals 1 album sale, which is hardly the same thing as a true album sale.

When you buy an album you pay for 10 songs, and although you may not listen to them all as much as the ones you like, you did pay for them all and are exposed to them all.

That's far from the case with the 1500 = 1 logic.

Another thing is that until the announcement on Monday, 100 streams was considered 1 sale, so the bar for a sale has been raised (probably rightfully so).

It's great that the RIAA has announced this metric to reward performance, and although it doesn't seem to be as fair as real sale once was, I can't think of (nor have I read) a better idea of how to measure this.

Ideas anyone?

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