Spanish charts to include YouTube plays commencing from the first week in 2022 according to Promusicae, the Spanish recorded music industry association. Promusicae will be implementing the global framework agreed between IFPI and YouTube on how to add YouTube plays to national sales charts. Although some countries such as the UK and the USA already include YouTube in their charts, the majority of countries internationally have not done this so far. Together with Germany, Spain becomes one of the first European countries to publish charts containing YouTube plays.
Promusicae, as the Spanish IFPI national group, was actively involved during last year in integrating and testing the YouTube data as part of a working group which included Australia, Brazil, Philippines, Indonesia, Mexico and South Africa. It is expected that these countries will incorporate YouTube data in January with other countries joining throughout the year.
YouTube, with over 2 Bn monthly logged-in users globally has become an important platform for listening to music and this change to the charts will become an essential part of music industry marketing strategies, launch plans and show contact between artists and music fans that use the platform.
The criteria for counting a YouTube play into a national sales chart are:
- YouTube has developed data collection processes following the guidelines outlined by IFPI which they will get from all countries.
- Only views of official music content offered by official channels will be counted. User generated content will not count.
- As already happens with other services, such as Spotify, a view or a listening stream shall only be considered valid when exceeding 30 seconds of duration.
- Views generated by advertising campaigns are excluded.
- Consumption generated by logged-in users shall be valid whether they are free or paid for plans.
- Views shall be accounted for differently depending on whether they are ad-supported or premium subscriptions. Each one will have a specific weight accordingly to the nature of each market, as already happens with music listened to in audio streaming services.
