Billboard 200 Chart Will Now Factor Official Video Plays From Youtube

Billboard has made another important change to one of their main charts to make it more in tuned with the times.

The company announced on Friday that their album chart, the Billboard 200 will now include video plays from YouTube and other streaming services. The other plays means official video content on streaming services like Apple, Spotify, Tidal and Vevo. The addition of video will also impact Billboard’s genre album consumption charts, such as Country, R&B/Hip-Hop, Latin and others.

The move comes more than 6 years after the inclusion of the video plays in their singles chart, the Hot 100. But there still remains a difference: in the Hot 100 chart, even streams from user-generated videos are counted whereas for Billboard 200, only official licensed video content uploaded by or on behalf of rights holders will be counted for sales. The changes take effect with the charts dated Jan. 18, 2020, which will reflect sales and streams for the period of Jan. 3-9.

“As the steward of the definitive charts that uphold the industry’s measurement of music consumption, our goal is to continually respond and accurately reflect the changing landscape of the music,” said Billboard-The Hollywood Reporter Media Group president Deanna Brown. “Our decision to add YouTube and other video streaming data to our album charts reflects the continuing evolution of the music consumption market and the ways in which consumers connect to album-related content.”

Lyor Cohen, global head of music at YouTube, called the changes a “very important moment in making the chart a more accurate representation of what people are listening to.”

Last month, Billboard made some changes to some rules regarding counting of bundles towards first week totals.