Remember when Ed Sheeran single handedly broke the Official Singles Charts?
Cast your memory back to March, and you may remember that all 16 tracks from his latest release ÷ made it into the Top 20 Singles Charts, with him taking up the top 6 spots.
There will now be a cap on the numbers of tracks one artist can have in the Top 100, with only the three most popular tracks eligible for the Singles Chart, at one time. This rule however, does not include tracks that the artist is a feature on (for example, Ed can have three tracks of his own in the Singles Charts, and if he was to feature on fellow chart-dominator Drake’s new single, that would still be eligible).
There will also be a slight change to the way streams are counted. If a song has been in the charts for 10 weeks and shows a decline in sales over three of those weeks, its streaming ration will be cut from 150 streams equalling 1 sale, to 300 streams equalling 1 sale. This is to prevent older songs re-entering the charts.
Official Charts Company chief executive Martin Talbot told Music Week, “This is about injecting energy back into the charts”. The new track cap will be introduced to the charts this Friday, with the chart being published on Friday July 7.