Lee Thompson examines how On Air/ On Stream could change the Official Chart

14 August 2014 - Editorial

There’s a bit of a tense standoff happening in the UK music industry right now that none of the parties involved really want to talk about but is affecting business in quite an interesting way.

A few weeks back, the much-trumpeted inclusion of streaming data finally came to the Official UK Singles chart. It was a bold move with a general positive thumbs-up from most people and we’ve seen the Top 40 landscape change forever as a result. However, there’s frustration at many majors in the short term, particularly with the crucial Q4 on the horizon, because of several key factors.

We all know Apple and Spotify have a well-documented uneasy relationship with each other. Beats co-founder and now subsequently one of the head honchos at Apple, Jimmy Iovine, was quoted in May as saying he was unimpressed with the fact that Spotify had 10 million paying customers worldwide and that he was now ready to ‘run the race’. Many industry insiders are sure that when a Beats/Apple music streaming service is pushed effectively, it’ll no doubt supersede the success of the iTunes download store in just a few short years. Until then, nobody with one eye on the future wants to upset Apple and they have the industry over a barrel with their current demands, many of them simply with a view to protecting their hugely successful business model, of course, but which could be holding back how many majors in the UK want to market their product more effectively straight away.

Over at the two influential media powerhouses that are Radio 1 and Capital, both stations want to be able to see a track build over several weeks through upfront playlisting and labels are keen to see this continue, with a view to a strong debut impact when a track is finally released on download. Everyone wants to be playing hits that are right for their audience. That all important Top 10 place on the iTunes chart by 6pm Sunday evening affects everything for the week. Capital’s Vodafone Big Top 40 show is broadcast to twice the audience nationally of Radio 1’s chart and when they lock down the first 18 hours of sales for the week and play those ten big songs, more than two million people hear that countdown.

Now, in terms of streaming, we’re generally currently seeing a song reach its full impact potential at around three weeks into its post-download  chart life release. This isn’t ideal for labels. They’d love to see convergence where a track has been able to build for five to six weeks on streaming services and reaches a million or more plays (equating to 10k+ extra units on our Official Chart tally) at the same point the download comes out to buy. This has actually happened in the past few weeks – those great tracks by both Nico & Vinz and Magic! sat just a few spots outside the UK Top 40 on streaming alone but this is the exception rather than the norm at the moment. And there wasn’t much to lose, as they were two acts that nobody had heard of until their songs starting exploding around the globe.

It’s felt by many internally at the majors we’ve spoken to that the perfect scenario would be that all tracks become available to stream at the exact time they go to radio, similar to the old ‘On Air/On Sale’ project, which received little support from radio especially in the end. So now you could have ‘On Air/On Stream’. Radio may still be a stumbling block though.

Understandably, Apple doesn’t want to see early streaming happen any time soon. If you tried to look for both Rude or Am I Wrong on the day that they went on sale in the iTunes store as downloads, they were both effectively buried away. No pre-order packshots or artworks were to be seen pre-release and on the day itself, unless you knew it was out, there was no featured spot on the music homepage. The interesting thing, however, was that both songs had built so perfectly as streaming tracks and were high on pre-release radio airplay too, so they shot straight into high chart positions on iTunes Top Songs list. Naturally we’re not privy to any stats but on personal experience, we think most people probably use that much more as a guide to what to buy rather than those floating tiles at the top of the site, so nobody really lost out in the end.

We’ve heard of several key acts at all of the majors who want to replicate the model of Nico & Vinz or Magic!’s debuts but can’t, simply as it could prove too damaging to the label relationships at Apple on one side and the radio stations on the other. So we have an unfortunate impasse that doesn’t look like it’ll be resolved anytime soon. By the way, Kiesza’s latest single Giant In My Head was streamed early too and, when we looked on Sunday morning in the week’s new release section on iTunes, was nowhere to be seen. Capital had also blanked the track so far. However, by lunchtime, it was already sitting at No.4 on the Top Songs chart list.

Where do we go with all this now?

Maybe, it’ll take one of the majors to simply break ranks and say ‘this is crazy, let’s just do it’ to effect change here. We all know the public get frustrated by not being able to consume a track, whether to buy or to stream, as soon as they become aware of it. Bringing streaming in line across the board with radio on every release would seem to be a good first step. Maybe this can happen when the Beats streaming service launches and Apple want to see their business grow quickly. The danger is that they may start asking for exclusives, simply to hold back all their competitors. As an industry, we need to take a hard look and ask ourselves if that dangerous precedent is something you’d be keen to want to set so early on.

As an outsider looking in, we sympathise with every business involved in this unfortunate stalemate that’s genuinely affecting consumer choice and consumption. But unless several heads are banged together and someone takes a maverick approach, we’re all stuck with it.

Hand-on-heart, can you confidently say that everyone involved in your own line of business is really happy with that?