Billboard's new streaming formula jolts album chart: Guess who benefits?

Billboard's overhaul of its Billboard 200 to incorporate streaming and track downloads instantly jolted the albums chart, to the immediate benefit of several artists including Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande and SAM SMITH. Physical sales and paid downloads of full albums are still part of the formula that now includes Nielsen SoundScan's streaming and digital track sales. Grande's My Everything skyrocketed from No. 39 to No. 7 after topping the charts in August. The revamped chart pushed Smith's In the Lonely Hour from No. 11 to No. 5. [...] This is the 62-year-old album chart's first major evolution since Billboard striked a partnership with SoundScan in 1991 to better reflect physical sales. The addition of streaming and track downloads has been a long time coming, considering Billboard in 2012 started incorporating this SoundScan data for its Hot 100 singles charts. And before that, Billboard had created a Digital Songs chart to rank top-downloaded songs as well as the Social 50 to rank the artists with the most buzz on social networks. - Brian Anthony Hernandez,Mashable [via/web:http://streaming-tv.us]