German album charts to include streaming data

Starting Friday (05.02.2016), physical album sales, digital downloads and - for the first time - music streams of at least 30 seconds will be tallied together to calculate the German album charts. Apple Music, Spotify and Deezer are among the streaming services commonly used in Germany.

In Germany, streaming has already played a role in the singles charts since 2014, so this week's change only impacts album charts.

That explains why Rihanna's new single, "Work," which was released last week with her album "Anti" exclusively via the streaming service Tidal, has debuted at spot 31 on the German singles charts, but is not yet appearing on the album charts.

Florian Drücke, head of the German music industry association, the Bundesverband Musikindustrie (BVMI), emphasized that music is listened to these days from a variety of sources - from vinyl record to cloud. He pointed out that "in the past year, streaming has set a growth record and now makes up nearly 14 percent of revenues."

"At the end of 2015, 100 million music streams per day were counted in Germany," said Mathias Giloth, head of GfK Entertainment, which tallies the German charts for the BVMI. "In light of these numbers, integrating streaming into the official German album charts is the logical consequence."

In the US, "Billboard" magazine assembles the definitive music charts. In December 2014, it revamped its Billboard 200 album charts to take streaming into account, saying it better reflected consumer habits.

kbm/eg (with dpa)