Billboard charting 2020 will look very different from here on out, now that Billboard has finally made streaming official for charting success. Gone with 2019 are the album charts that made it easy for independent artists to garner the prestigious label of being a Billboard charting artist, as all but a few genre album charts have been converted over to consumption.
Billboard charting 2020 will require artists to have a strong streaming strategy to supplement the declining album sales market and should be considering how to leverage on-demand (Spotify, Tidal, Amazon, Apple, Napster, etc) & programmed streaming (Pandora, iHeart, etc) as well as YouTube music videos and art tracks with what is known as Streaming equivalents:
- SEA (Stream Equivalent to One Album Sale) = 1,500 Streams of any Song/Track on that Album
- SES (Stream Equivalent to One Song Sales) = 150 Streams of that Song/Track
- TEA (Track Equivalent to One Album) = 10 Digital Track Download Sales of any Song/Track on that Album
It is important to note that all your music must be properly registered and associated in SoundScan for these sales and streams to count towards Billboard Charting 2020 – IHM helps every artist that joins our platform to make sure this is done correctly.
In further news for Billboard charting 2020, it has been known that since 2013, Billboard has been incorporating video streams towards song-specific charts, but the albums chart has been excluded until now. The first release of the Top 200 albums chart with this new data included was on January 18, reflecting the results from the third to the ninth.
Along with the indie coveted Heatseekers & Independent Albums charts, a large amount of genre album sales charts are now gone as well. This elimination of multiple sales only charts shows how Billboard Charting 2020 is intent on reflecting consumption accurately.
But what do these changes mean for you and how you can make your streaming success count? For instance, let’s take a look at how changes to Billboard Charting in 2020 have affected one of the easier charts to get on in 2019.
Week 52 of 2019 it took 25 album sales to break into the charts at #10
Week 02 of 2020 it took a sales equivalent of 1,038 units to be #10
High amount of streams, with an equal amount of promotions on top of your online and live show direct-to-fan sales are both critical to your success as an indie artist in 2020 and beyond. IHM can help you build a custom momentum plan that works to align your vision, audience, goals and budgets using one of our many turn key services like Spotify growth plans where our Spotify SEO team monitors and optimizes your campaign daily to keep your Spotify momentum growing. Streams are generated by an ad spend, all streams are real, and artists don’t get taken down like similar services who offer more streams for less.
Don’t forget about the inclusion of video data as well and sign up for one of IHM’s Youtube Promotions packages. As always, YouTube Promotions recoup part of your promotional budget through royalty payments from the platform and your performing rights organization, IHM can help to make sure you are properly set up to receive your full royalties. All promotions packages run 4-6 weeks and continue until the minimum number of views or greater are met. Likes and comments are based on the performance of past campaigns and are not guaranteed.
Use these promotions and/or a custom mix of many more to boost your momentum and build what we call a proper consumer behavior profile that will pique the interest of the industry, media and fans alike. It takes just $10 and 20 minutes of your time to start your path towards becoming one of the few artists that will be able to tout they are Billboard Charting 2020. #makeitcount and click here to get started today!
