Dark Matter on Amazon and Apple Music

BF25394 said:

igotid88 said:

I forgot how many paid and free streams count as 1 equivalent. I think it was 150 for paid and 375 for unpaid. Let's just say for example all 946,000 were from paid streams. That's just over 6k equivalent 

That's for the album chart, and it's 1,250 and 3,750.

The Rock & Alternative Airplay chart is only tracking radio airplay.

BF25394 said:

Yes, they count singles, but it's not ten songs 125 times each. An album will get credit even if it's only one song that's getting the lion's share of the streams. In this case-- if Dark Matter were commercially available as an album-- 1,250 paid (or 3750 free) streams of the title track would translate to one SEA (streaming equivalent album) unit. So even if all 946,000 of the streams were paid (which we know they aren't; the official visualizer has 844,000 streams on YouTube, albeit not all of those in the seven-day period we're talking about here), that would actually translate to about 757 SEA units. That's bupkis, and the real number is certainly less than that since all of the streams are not actually paid streams. This is why Dark Matter's first-week chart placement is going to be driven almost entirely by physical album sales plus digital downloads, and then it is going to plummet after that.

Unfortunately, this formula is so broken, it's hard to put much stock in it even as I continue to pay attention to it. Think about it: if you buy the album when it comes out, it will get credited for chart purposes as one full sale that will go towards its placement on that week's chart. But that's it. It doesn't matter how many times you consume that album going forward; it will never count toward the chart again because, obviously, Luminate has no way of tracking how many times you spin your CD or LP. But the streaming will always be counted in subsequen t weeks. Each stream counts for less but, if we're trying to track weekly consumption, we're grossly undercounting consumption of album-oriented artists beyond the first week. The sale counts for more, but it only affects the chart for one week. Thus, a pop or hip-hop album that stays in the top ten for weeks is not necessarily being consumed more than a rock or country album that debuts in the top ten and then drops like a rock in subsequent weeks.

This is without even getting into the arbitrariness of the 1,250 paid/3,750 free scheme.

BF25394 said:

I just heard the song on KROQ in L.A., and there was a prerecorded intro from Mike. It specifically said, "Check out our new song 'Dark Matter' on the world-famous KROQ," so it was not something left over from a previous album's promotion.