Streaming Q&A with R1's head of music George Ergatoudis

On 6 July, for the first time ever, streaming will be counted towards the UK's Official Singles Chart.

It is being seen as one of the biggest changes to the Top 40 since downloads were included back in 2005.

Will it permanently change the face of the Official Singles Chart as we know it? Will unknown artists potentially break into the top 10?

We spoke to George Ergatoudis, Head of Music for BBC Radio 1 and Radio 1Xtra.

Why do you think streaming is going to be part of the chart now?

Streaming's gradually grown over the last couple of years.

Meanwhile, digital downloads had been growing up until about nine months ago and looking at the data, they started to go into decline.

I think there is a real correlation there, that streaming is starting to grow and it's starting to eat into download sales.

So we've had week on week, for the last nine months, a decline in the amount of digital music being purchased.

How do you think this is going to change the shape of the chart?

There is going to be an effect.

It's not hugely significant because at the end of the day we're looking at huge volumes to get into the top 40, huge numbers of people listening to a song or huge numbers of people deciding to download it each week, actually those two are very closely connected.

There's only ever so many truly memorable, powerful hit records in the market at any point in time that the huge mass market scale people are interested in.

So actually the differences are there but they are relatively slight.

And do you think those differences have already been made since downloads entered the charts and now we've got the whole history of music available?

I think that is actually the biggest issue out there at the moment, everybody has got access to so much music, how do you get to know what you like?

Take a snapshot of what records at any moment in time people are enjoying listening to, it could be because it was on an advert or a film like Frozen or it could be because it is heavily supported on radio.

Culturally there is still a huge import to the chart, as a kind of very simple measure of the most popular records in the market at any point in time, and that's a powerful play in terms of discovery as much as anything.

Is it powerful in terms of you and your team, if a song that you previously thought wasn't particularly popular or you hadn't liked does massively well in the charts, does that help it get airplay eventually on Radio 1 or 1Xtra?

We've got a pretty good awareness of what is going on in the market but there's no doubt we do keep a close eye.

There's certain tracks occasionally and certain artists where we've decided we'll wait a little longer on it, see how it goes before we commit to putting them on the playlist.

When you can see that they are doing really well in streaming or they are doing really well in the sales chart, then of course that can be an important bit of information to say there's quite a large number of people who are enjoying it, we should look at that again.

So do you think streaming is going to have a massive impact on the charts?

No, I think it's really important that if we are talking about an accurate reflection of what people are listening to or are consuming in 2014 we need to include streaming alongside sales.

But in terms of the dramatic effect or change it will have, no, because actually the top 40 as a snapshot of a moment in time works and it's very similar in both the streaming space and in the singles purchasing space.

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