U.K. MARKETSHAREGATE

Our friends over in Britain have been splitting hairs over the way we reported those Q1 2016 marketshare figures in this story earlier this week. Sony told us the all-albums numbers were categorically wrong, so we changed them—whereupon Universal hit back with their complaints over the updated story. We’re not sure who’s right anymore, so we’re just going to go ahead and print them both.

Sony says these numbers are representative of the industry standard way of reporting them, and followed by the Official Charts Company and trade magazine Music Week. They include streams, they say, but not the streaming of an album’s singles that might unfairly upweight album share.

Over to Universal, who tell us the above numbers are without budget, and don’t include any kind of streaming at all, which is, of course, bizarre in 2016. According to UMG, these are the ones we should be going with (they also don't include the streaming of an album's singles, but do include the streaming of non-single tracks):

Either way, Max Lousada’s WMG is still the best performer in terms of marketshare increase. We'll report back at the mid-way point of this year with updated figures, by which time we hope Sony and Universal have sat down over a nice cup of tea and worked out their differences.