Illustration by William Joel / The Verge
Billboard has announced that YouTube streams will be factored into the Billboard 200 albums chart starting early next year. Video streams from other platforms will also count, including Apple, Spotify, Tidal, and Vevo, and Billboard says the change will also impact genre album consumption charts, like country, Latin, and others. Billboard’s charts have historically been seen as a barometer of success within the music industry.
Video streams have counted toward many of Billboard’s song-specific charts since 2013, but have never been incorporated into the albums chart. Billboard has been slowly updating its albums chart for years to shift it from being purely sales-based to a “multi-metric consumption” model. It added audio streaming to…