The Swiss music chart - the Schweizer Hitparade - will now take music streamed from YouTube into account when compiling Switzerland's most popular songs and albums of the week. The country will be only the eighth nation to begin taking YouTube streams into consideration when putting together the music charts.
Thanks to the inclusion of YouTube streams, the Schweizer Hitparade will now cover 97 percent of the music consumed by people in Switzerland. Since 2014, the charts in Switzerland have already included paid music streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer.
The Swiss Music Label Association (IFPI) and GfK Entertainment are responsible for the Schweizer Hitparade, and have welcomed the new move to include streaming services in the chart. “The addition of YouTube ensures that our music charts are and remain up-to-date, comprehensive and of the highest quality,” Lorenz Haas, director of the IFPI, told Swissinfo.
The Schweizer Hitparade music charts have been running since 1968 and are released every Sunday afternoon. Songs are ranked by the number of times they are purchased (such as through downloads or streaming services) per week.
Free streaming platforms that profit from advertising revenue created around 10 percent of the Swiss music industry’s turnover in 2021. French-speaking Swiss cantons also had their own music singles chart between 2010 and 2020, before being discontinued in November 2020.