An analysis by Mark Mulligan of MIDiA Research on music charts and the measurement system to gauge music popularity. We need a proper system here in Trinidad and Tobago to drive the growth and sustain the importance of the industry beyond hubris and collateral impact.
Context: I spent a couple of years working in an Internet measurement company in the early 2000’s so I have some direct experience of measurement methodologies.
If streaming is changing the music industry then it is only logical that the way in which the market is measured should change too. We are in a transition phase where consumers are abandoning ownership for access, and also often swapping spending for free. It is a period of uncertainty and there is an understandable clamour to make sense of it with new approaches to measurement. Hence Billboard’s decision to incorporate streams into its album charts (with 1,500 streams equalling one ‘sale’) and other moves such as the UK’s Official Charts Company’s incorporation of streaming. But it is not just the methodologies of the charts that are changing, their entire purpose is shifting. In fact, before we reinvent charts we need to be…
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