Record Store Day, HITS, StreetPulse launch Indie Retail Sales Chart in response to Billboard, Luminate controversy

The new Indie Retail Top 50 has launched in response to changes in how Luminate gathers and calculates physical music sales at independent record stores.

This joint effort by Record Store Day, HITS Magazine, and music sales tracker StreetPulse comes just days after controversial changes by data provider Luminate in how the Billboard Independent Sales Chart is calculated.

Luminate had calculated the chart using a sampling of record stores and then applied an algorithm to extrapolate what the sales might have been from all existing stores combined. Now, Luminate has ditched the calculations and will only count sales directly reported by 5% of the 1400 record stores in the U.S. and Canada.

A coalition of record stores and the Vinyl Record Manufacturing Association (VRMA) estimates that the shift will reduce the perceived market size of vinyl by at least 40%.

The new Indie Retail Top 50 will calculate sales from more than 200, or about 15% of all record stores, with more added weekly.

 “Luminate’s new reporting, with such a small percentage of indie retailers onboard, is an inaccurate representation of the strength of the record pressing industry, with the potential to have a negative ripple effect on pressing plants and the vinyl supply chain,” said VRMA President and Chief Creative Officer of Hand Drawn Pressing’s Dustin Blocker. “We commend StreetPulse,  Record Store Day, and HITS  for being proactive in developing this alternative chart as a more accurate reflection of vinyl’s popularity.”

Bruce Houghton is the Founder and Editor of Hypebot, a Senior Advisor at Bandsintown, President of the Skyline Artists Agency, and a Berklee College Of Music professor.

See the full Indie Retail Top 50 here.