MUMBAI: For the first time online music streaming will be counted in the Top 40 charts in the UK as announced by Official Charts Company.

The official music charts will now include songs streamed on websites like Spotify, Xbox Music, Sony's Music Unlimited, Deezer and Napster from 6 July onwards.

The weight of the counts will be 100 streams of a track equivalent to one download. The track will have to be played for at least 30 seconds to be counted as one stream.

Music streaming has become quite popular due to anti-piracy measures and the big companies competing to obtain these websites. Official Charts Company CEO, Martin Talbot explained, "Over the last 18 months we've seen a real explosion in the amount of streaming that goes on and it's a rapidly growing market. It's a shift in the way music fans, particularly hardcore music fans, are accessing their music. This singles chart is all about representing and reflecting music popularity and we felt that because of this rapid growth, we had to look to include streaming in our data."

There were a few tracks this month that received more than a hundred million streams in a week in the UK. The highest hits online was received by Bastille's single ‘Pompeii' with 26.6 million streams so far.

The head of music at BBC's Radio 1, the station which broadcasts Top 40 every week, George Ergatoudis said, "We are moving from an era of music purchasing to one dominated by music streaming and it is vital that the Official Singles Chart evolves to reflect this."leased on 18 July.