Audio streams to be integrated into ARIA Albums Chart

The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) is pleased to announce that the ARIA Albums Charts are for the first time set to include on demand audio streams for the chart published on Monday, 15 May 2017.

The move to include streaming into the Albums Charts follows the successful addition of streams to the ARIA Singles Chart from November 2014. This change reflects the dramatic growth in streaming, which has doubled in value since 2015 and is now the largest component of the Australian recording industry’s revenue.

ARIA Chief Executive Officer, Dan Rosen said “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. 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.”

Streaming data will continue to be collected from on demand streaming services Apple Music, Deezer, Google Play, Spotify (and other services as they develop and become chart data contributors). The new measure will see this streaming data being used in all of ARIA’s Album Chart calculations which consist of genre albums charts including Country, Classical and Urban.

To reflect the difference in value between streaming and purchasing (download and physical), ARIA has developed a conversion rate reflective of the local market conditions and based on methodology adopted by the UK’s Official Chart Company and several European charts. 

To determine rankings for the ARIA Albums Chart, qualifying streams from an album will be combined to produce a stream equivalent album (SEA) value which can then be aggregated with other qualifying sales. For further details on the calculation process please see below.

ARIA Album Accreditations will also, from Friday 5th May, extend to include chart eligible stream equivalent activity (including Streaming Equivalent Album sales) and are issued for albums achieving Gold (35,000 units) and Platinum (70,000 units).

The first ARIA Albums Chart to incorporate streams will be unveiled at 5pm on Saturday, 13 May at ariacharts.com.au.

SEA Calculation

1.    The two tracks attracting most streams are reduced to the level of the average of the next eight highest streamed tracks associated with the album (or all tracks where an album has fewer than ten tracks). This ensures that albums with one or two hit singles do not distort the performance of an album within the albums chart.

2.    After the methodology above is applied, the streams of the top ten tracks (or all tracks where an album has fewer than ten tracks) making up the album are aggregated together and converted using the streaming conversion factor established for the singles 1:175 and the widely used rate of ten tracks = one album.