WHAT THE HELL IS THE HITS
SPS CHART?

Presenting the brand-spankin’-new HITS SPS Chart. That stands for “Sales Plus Streaming,” which captures all kinds of consumer behavior, including the purchasing of albums and singles and audio streaming—without using the word “consumption,” which always makes us think of tuberculosis.

Anyhoo, in the new chart’s calculus, 10 singles = one album and 1,500 audio streams = one album. One album, of course, equals 16 albums. Just kidding; it’s still one album.

The SPS Chart does not include video streams (VEVO and YouTube), though we feel strongly that this vein of consumer activity most definitely should be counted and will be in the future. Of course, once folks start factoring the hotly contested realm of user-generated video—kittens stumbling on a turntable to the dulcet tones of Meghan Trainor, say—the game will change even more.

We think this new chart comes closer to measuring the pop-music zeitgeist and consumer appetite than ever before. And if you can come up with a better name for it than SPS, kindly keep it to yourself.

Check out the new chart here. Compare it to the figures from our good old HITS Album Sales Chart here.

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