YouTube is drawing its data from Billboard for use in the publisher’s top US music charts. The decision is a response to a recent one change Billboard made its ranking formula, which continues to add more weight to paid, on-demand streaming compared to free, ad-supported streaming.
Billboard justified its decision to adjust its old formula by saying the change “will better reflect the growth of streaming revenue and changing consumer behavior.”
In other words, streaming now matters more than buying albums or songs, so it wants its charts to reflect that.
But YouTube doesn’t like the new formula because it doesn’t want there to be much — if any — differentiation between free and paid streams, especially if the changes are meant to reflect the way consumers enjoy music today.
“Billboard uses an outdated formula that weights subscription-supported streams more highly than ad-supported streams. This does not reflect how fans engage with music today and ignores the massive engagement of non-subscription fans,” a YouTube blog post published Wednesday explains. “Streaming is the primary way people experience music, make up 84% of US recorded music revenue’.
“We simply ask that every stream be counted fairly and equally, whether subscription-based or ad-supported, because every fan matters and every game should count,” the post notes.
The ranking changes will be reflected starting with charts published on January 17, which will include data from January 2 to January 8, 2026. This will affect the Billboard 200 and genre-based album charts. Additionally, the ratio between paid/subscription and ad-supported on-demand streaming tiers will adjust to 2.5:1 for the Billboard Hot 100, Billboard said.
To protest the new formula, YouTube said it would no longer provide data to Billboard after January 16, 2026.
Here’s what this change means in practice: Under the revised calculation, Billboard said it would take 33.3% fewer ad-supported on-demand song streams than an album, and 20% fewer paid/subscription song streams than an album, to equal one album unit. In short, it will take fewer streams than before for an album to climb the charts. This is a win for streaming in general, but not necessarily for YouTube.
Here’s why. Currently, the formula used by Billboard defines an album unit (the standard metric for chart ranking) as an album sale. It counts 10 individual songs from an album as a unit of album consumption as well.
On the streaming side, it currently says that one album unit equals 3,750 ad-supported streams — like YouTube’s — or 1,250 official paid/subscription audio and video streams.
After the changes, these figures will be adjusted, so it will take 2,500 ad-supported streams or 1,000 paid/subscription streams to count as one album unit. This means that paid streams count 2.5 times more than ad-supported streams. While that’s less than the current 3:1 ratio, it’s still not what YouTube would prefer to see here. The company basically does what companies do in failed negotiations like this: it takes its ball and goes home.
Of course, if you don’t work with Billboard, YouTube music data won’t count toward chart rankings, which could lead to labels and artists deprioritizing publishing their music on YouTube. This is not a good long-term strategy for YouTube as a major player in the music streaming era. That’s why this move should be seen as the negotiating tactic that it is.
“We are committed to achieving fair representation on the charts and hope we can work with Billboard to return to theirs,” YouTube’s statement concluded.
