A few weeks back, the Billboard 200 announced that they would be making the biggest change in their 23-year history. Instead of calculating album sales solely by physical and digital albums purchased, they revealed that they’d now be incorporating streaming and single downloads into the calculations as well.

For every 1500 streams (on providers like Spotify, Beats Music, Google Play and more,) the artist will be credited as getting one full album sale, as well as for every 10 singles purchased. They will not change the current charts for specific genres just yet, however, and will also keep a separate chart called Top Album Sales, where they will continue to calculate sales in the traditional manor.

Marisa Mendez

This week is the first week the chart debuted, and it put Taylor Swift’s latest album back at number one, thanks to an additional 58,000 sales from the new methodology. What would have been 281k units for 1989 is now 339k for the week!

As far as hip-hop and R&B goes, Rick Ross, Eminem and Beyoncé all had good weeks as well. Em’s new SHADY XV compilation debuted at number 3 on the Billboard 200 this week, with 148k sold – 10k of which come from the new method. Rick Ross came in at number 6 with 79k sold of Hood Billionaire, (5k from the new method,) and the EP of Beyoncé’s “bonus material” (only) from her new box set sits at number 8 with 71k sold, 28k of which are from the new method.

From my deductions, it seems like this isn’t helping our hip-hop artists too much yet, as it is the pop and R&B genres. Hopefully this changes with time! Check out the full top 10 below.

1. Taylor Swift – 1989 339k
2. Pentatonix – That’s Christmas To Me 227k
3. Eminem & Shady Records – Shady XV 148k
4. One Direction – Four 125k
5. Sam Smith – In The Lonely Hour 123k
6. Rick Ross – Hood Billionaire 79k
7. Ariana Grande – My Everything 72k
8. Beyonce – Beyonce: More Only EP 71k
9. Frozen [Soundtrack] 71k
10. Maroon 5 – V 32k

Source: Billboard