UK charts face shakeup to combat the dominance of streaming

Currently 100 streams of a song are needed to equal one sale, but from next month it'll take 50% more - 150 streams - to hit that level. 11 different tracks have made number one so far in 2016 - this is considerably lower than the 42 in 2014, or even the 26 last year.

This move is being made to try rebalance the formats as streaming takes hold as one of our preferred means of music consumption.

Chief chart overseer Martin Talbot tells CMU: “It is testament to the rapidly changing nature of music consumption in the UK - and the huge shift we are seeing towards streaming - that we are updating the way we measure the contribution of streams to the make-up of the official charts as quickly as we are. Streaming is growing exponentially and the weighting we use to reflect its impact will inevitably keep evolving with it.”

In 2016 Drake has ostensibly been the biggest benefactor of the current rules, spending a huge 15 weeks atop the UK Top 40. It was today revealed that Drake's megahit is the first song to be streamed a billion times on Spotify.