Luminate/Billboard Revamps Physical Sales Tracking After Howls of Protest from Record Stores

Photo Credit: Jamakassi

Following an outcry of how Luminate gathers physical sales data from record stores, the data analytics body will now work with independent partners to gather that data.The Coalition of Independent Music Stores (CIMS), Alliance of Independent Media Stores (AIMS), and Department of Record Stores (DORS), who work together as Record Store Day, The Music Business Association, and Luminate have announced a new partnership for physical music sales reporting across the independent retail sector in the United States.

The new partnership went into effect on April 19 and will see Luminate collecting independent physical music sales, inclusive of CDs, vinyls, and cassettes, from StreetPulse. StreetPulse is a music industry data provider that receives daily metrics directly from stores. This data will be incorporated into the physical sales data that Luminate is already collecting from other retailers.

Billboard, which receives streaming, sales, and airplay data from Luminate to full its music charts, has also announced a rebrand of its Tastemaker Albums chart to Indie Store Album Sales—to reflect the weekly top-selling titles across independent stores in the United States.“I’d like to thank the coalitions, the retail stores, and Luminate for taking this issue seriously and working together to reach a deal,” adds Music Business Association President, Portia Sabin. “Sometimes it takes a pinch to bring people together, and the industry response to the unweighting of physical data was perhaps necessary to highlight the importance of data to our industry.”

“I’d also like to thank so many people at the labels, distributors, and even individual artists for speaking gout and helping us to reach an agreement, because whenever our industry comes together to achieve a common goal it is inspiring for our future.”

“Luminate is always working towards the goal of providing quality and accurate data to the industry,” says Chris Muratore, Director of Partnerships at Luminate. “We always strive to be a good partner to those across the many sectors of the music and entertainment industries, and we are happy to announce this new partnership in alignment with that mission and our values.”