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by jsgo 2965 days ago
At this stage, I think as far as for metrics of this nature, it is time to stop quantifying album streams and focus on streams of tracks within the albums (in the example you gave, someone streaming the entire album should count 20x). I, myself, still buy albums in full, but I think there's a significant number of people who go for singles at this stage. Streaming, probably just as much of a divide.

To focus at the track level is about the only way to quantify for both cases.
1 comments
okmokmz 2965 days ago
>it is time to stop quantifying album streams and focus on streams of tracks within the albums

They already do this (or at least the RIAA does)

>In the new structure, 150 streams of a song equals one paid download, and ten paid downloads equates to an album download. So, an artist’s music will have to be streamed on any of the approved, included services 1,500 times for an album “sale” to be counted. [1]

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/hughmcintyre/2016/02/13/now-tha...

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jsgo 2965 days ago
> ten paid downloads equates to an album download.

But it gets fuzzy here. If the album has 10 tracks, it makes sense, but for ones with less than that or more than that, it doesn't hash out.

I'm just saying for these kind of metrics they should, now, stick to the track level but group them by album (ie Taylor Swift would have x streams/downloads from 1989 and y streams/downloads from Reputation).

Albums in these metrics just muddies the water too much and doesn't really quantify for those who go for singles. Say an artist releases a really, really popular song on a terrible album that no one buys/streams. That song performs well, lots of streams and lots of downloads or buys. Should the album be considered a hit if it is just a single track on it that performed well? Even if no one, or relatively few, streamed or bought the album proper?

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simlevesque 2965 days ago
> for ones with [...] more than that, it doesn't hash out.

Chris Brown released an album last year exploiting this fact. He released a fourty track double album. If that album is streamed in it's entirety a thousand times, he gets four sales on the charts. Many hiphop act did the same last year. The last Migos album had 24 songs and their label had just released a 30 songs compilation 2 months prior. Drake's last project was dubbed a 'playlist' and had 22 songs.

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