Billboard Reporting Updates 2024

Billboard has introduced 4 changes that apply to how music sales are reported to the charts starting January 16th, 2024.

If you're currently reporting physical or digital albums through Single, you will be impacted. For details about what rules are changing, please read on.

1. New Chart Format

Fan Packs (new merch + physical album combo) will now be eligible for reporting through Single starting January 16th, 2024.

For details on how to apply, see this article here.

2. Physical Order Status Must be "Shipped"

Previously, marking an order as "Fulfilled" in Shopify caused that sale to be reported.

Going forward, the order status for all physical music sales - standalone albums & Fan Packs - need to explicitly show “In Transit” or “Delivered” in the Shopify orders tab in the “Delivery Status” column.

There is no way in the Shopify Admin (or API) to assign these statuses manually. The only way for orders to be updated is by being physically scanned by the courier. This will require you to schedule a pickup by your preferred courier, or drop them off to be scanned at a post or courier office. More information on pickups and shipping statuses can be found on the Shopify help center HERE.

3. Adjusted Reporting Windows

A few changes are coming to when sales can be fulfilled to fans:

Pre-orders & Early Shipments: Fulfilled albums will now report the day after the date of shipment regardless of the album release date entered in Single. If the order is shipped ahead of Luminate’s physical reporting window (Tuesday - Monday) then the sale will not be counted.

4. Enhanced Bulk Order Filtering

Previously, we enforced the following sales caps per individual customer each week:

1 digital album sale
4 physical album sales

How we defined a unique "fan" was based solely on their email address.

Beginning in 2024, Single will incorporate additional criteria to more accurately identify potential bulk purchases from the same person:

Email address
IP address
Shipping address
Billing address

If multiple orders contain matching values for the above data points, they will now be considered part of the same bulk sale. This means the weekly per-customer limits will apply collectively to any duplicate orders flagged across those four identifiers.

Resubmission Pricing

Billboard will also be holding Single more accountable when ineligible sales make it into our reports. In order to ensure accuracy of our reports and maintain our status as a reporting partner, we’re implementing a new rule regarding ineligible sales:

For report resubmissions due to user error, the first resubmission will be free of charge. Subsequent resubmissions will incur a graduated fee: $250 for the second resubmission, and $500 for each resubmission thereafter.