M+E Daily

Billboard is instituting a minimum pricing threshold on its long-running sales charts, casting a frown upon music retailers’ most aggressive promotion tactics as record labels seek to stabilize the value of CDs and digital tracks.

Under the new policy, albums that sell for less than $3.49 during the first four weeks of their release “will not be eligible for inclusion on the Billboard album charts and will not count towards sales data presented by Nielsen SoundScan.” Nor will singles that sell for less than 39 cents during their first three months of release, Billboard states.

The policy goes into effect the week of November 21, enabling the magazine to exclude from its reporting any rock-bottom Black Friday music promotions that may be in the offing.

The changes are chiefly in reaction to of Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” in May, which attracted hundreds of thousands of customers to the online retailer in its relentless fight for market share against Apple’s iTunes. At the time, Billboard allowed “Born This Way” onto its sales charts, noting that neither Lady Gaga’s management nor Interscope, the album’s distributor, played any part in the promotion. (Indeed, Amazon for each copy of “Born This Way” that it nearly gave away, taking a loss in the neighborhood of $7.40 per unit.)

Bill Werde, Billboard’s editorial director, defended the policy change in a note this week, stating that the magazine’s decision followed “much thought and consultation with the industry.”

Werde said that the magazine settled upon $3.50 as its threshold price because it represents half the average wholesale price of an album. The new policy, Werde added, “would not interfere with any regular or semi-regular pricing currently in effect at any of the five biggest retailers — Walmart, Amazon, iTunes, Best Buy and Target.

“Billboard doesn’t want to control the marketplace. We just want to count it,” Werde said. “But free or almost-free albums don’t represent a marketplace.”

However, retailer discounts remain an undeniable music market driver. The current top selling album at Amazon’s MP3 store, Coldplay’s “Mylo Xyloto” (released Oct. 24 by Capitol/EMI), fetches just $4.99, roughly half the album’s price on iTunes.

Meanwhile, only two titles on Amazon’s top 10 chart on Friday sold for prices higher than $7.99: Drake’s “Take Care” (released Nov. 15 by Cash Money/Universal) and Adele’s “21” (released in February by XL Recordings/Columbia).