IвЂ™d argue that tennis has a far smaller problem than music, because the basic mechanisms are the same (player holding a racket, on a court, with a net in the middle, 5 sets, etc.) In music, there really isnвЂ™t a common measurement anymore. So how do you compare Ivan Lendl or Boris Becker to Roger Federer, given such great changes in a such a short period of time? LetвЂ™s take tennis: rackets are made out of graphite not wood (or some other advanced material), players are better conditioned with better technologies, and taller, even the tennis balls and courts are better.

Those streams will count towards the RIAAвЂ™s new streaming certification calculations, in which 1.5 billion total on-demand streams are required for Platinum status (5.6 x 13 tracks = 72.8 million, with single song streams added on top).ДЄlmost every industry experiences issues when it comes to counting success, especially as technology changes.

вЂњThe same sort of scenario played out in 2013 with Jay ZвЂ™s вЂMagna Carta Holy GrailвЂ™ album,В which was givenВ away to Samsung users.вЂќД«ack to the present imbroglio, TIDAL is now pointing to 5.6 million streams of the full album on its service, though only a fraction of those will be counted in the first week (which was recently changed to Friday by global recording industry IFPI). вЂњFree or giveaway albums are not eligible forВ inclusion on BillboardвЂ™s album charts and do not count toward sales tracked by Nielsen SoundScan (which supplies data for BillboardвЂ™s sales-driven charts),вЂќ Billboard decreed. That includes Lady Gaga, whose Amazon-subsidized, $1 вЂBorn This WayвЂ™ albums were flatly refused for chart consideration and U2, whose album Songs of Innocence was distributed to more than 500 million iTunes accounts as part of a massive pre-purchase by Apple (none of which were counted).Д«illboard (along with Nielsen) flatly declared such creative sales as irrelevant following the U2 dust-up. There are other cases in which Billboard has refused to count massive album sales totals because of special deals or positioning. Shortly thereafter, Jay Z called Billboard вЂirrelevantвЂ™ and вЂthreatenedвЂ™ for refusing to recognize the copies, while essentially playing God over what gets counted. Billboard made the same refusal back in 2013 with none other than Jay Z, who pre-sold one million sales of вЂMagna Carta Holy GrailвЂ™ to Samsung as part of a similar promotion. Similarly, Billboard refuses to count sales made through promotional or special deals, which drastically impacted RihannaвЂ™s chart positions (see above). Yet somehow, the Nielsen refused to recognize those sales, despite the presence of anВ actual buyer (Samsung) and seller (Rihanna and her label), which is what the game is all about. Those were real sales from one party to another, and probably explains the RIAA certification. That means that TIDAL only had a small window to rack up (and report) first week sales.Д«UTвЂ¦ as part of its special exclusive promotion, Samsung pre-purchased more than a million copies of the album, which is exactly the number required for a Platinum release. TIDAL has claimed sales of 484,833 album downloads, though it only received its exclusive after SamsungвЂ™s exclusive, which ended Thursday.Д®nter yet another complication, which is that the official music industry sales week now starts on Friday, instead of Tuesday.

Enter TIDAL, the Jay Z-owned streaming service that experienced a huge usage spike after offering an ANTI exclusive. Sounds like Nielsen was busy counting old-school CDs, which Rihanna fans apparently donвЂ™t care about.

Rihanna full album 2013