The UK singles chart is about to be changed… and it’s all Ed Sheeran’s fault

Thanks to Ed Sheeran, the official UK singles chart is set for a shake-up...

Days on from closing this year's Glastonbury festival with his Sunday night performance on the Pyramid Stage, it's been revealed that the 26-year-old's dominance of the singles charts earlier this year has prompted the Official Charts Company to change their rules. With the increase in music streaming over the last few years, the chart also reflects how many times a song is listened to as well how many times it has been purchased. As a result, it's possible for one artist to appear multiple times if a new album release proves to be popular. Precisely this happened in the week following the launch of Sheeran's Divide album in March, when 16 of its songs appeared in the first 20 places of the singles list. In response to this, new rules limit the amount of songs that one artist can have in the top 100 at the same time to just three. This isn't the first time of late that the Official Charts Company have made changes. At the end of 2016, the company adjusted the streams-to-sales ratio it uses to calculate chart positions after Drake's One Dance remained at number one for 15 weeks. Prior to the change, it worked on a 100 streams to one sale basis, but was switched to a ratio of 150 streams per sale. According to Sky News, this ratio will be changed again next month with 300 music streams counting as one sale as of July 7.