When is a sale not really a sale? When a third party decides you've paid too little for something. That's the perplexing situation that the music community is in thanks to Billboard's new policy on counting album sales. In brief, Billboard has arbitrarily decided that any album sold for less than $3.49 will not count as a sale -- during the album's first 4 weeks of release -- for the purpose of creating Billboard's Top 200 Albums sales chart.
You can read all the details about it in this L.A. Times article. This ill advised decision has far reaching impact because, for much of the industry up till now, what has charted on Billboard has been the most accurate gauge of how a song or album is doing. This reliance may very well change now, as Billboard finds itself on the wrong side of history, trying to cling to the remnants of a traditional business that relied on a middleman to dictate what is a hit.
Read the full article on The Huffington Post.
