The Official Chart Company has announced that they will be changing the rules of the Official Singles Chart Top 100 this month in order to bring new music and breaking artists to the forefront .
This includes introducing a cap on the amount of tracks from each artist, and a new stream:sale ratio for older tracks.
This comes after a year of multiple listings for artists such as Drake, Stormzy, Chainsmokers, and Ed Sheeran, with a peak in controversy after all 16 of the tracks on Sheeran’s ÷ album featured in the Top 20. As a result, only the three best tracks from each artist will be eligible to feature on the chart, but this will not include tracks in which they are a feature.
In addition, if a record has featured for at least 10 weeks, any of its tracks that sees a decline in sales for three consecutive weeks will need double the amount of streams to count as a sale, at 300 streams:1 sale rather than the 150:1 ratio that was introduced last year. This is to stop album streaming success spilling into the singles chart.
These new rules hope to boost chart hits by about 10% annually, and allow new tracks from upcoming artists to more easily progress up the chart.
“This is all about supporting new music,” Martin Talbot, Official Charts Company chief executive, has said in a statement to Music Week. “It’s tougher than ever for new music and developing artists to break through, and this is us doing our bit.”
The changes will be officially implicated June 30, so that the first chart with the new rules will be published July 7.
