If you’re a music lover who enjoys tracking numbers and stuff and things of favorite artists when frolicking through the inundated world of the industry, the Billboard 200 chart may be the next frontier for more accurate sales representation. Yesterday Billboard, the go-to for all things numbers and charts related, announced it would be updating its seemingly archaic system to include on-demand streaming and digital track sales, measured by Nielsen Entertainment.

If you’re a music lover who enjoys tracking numbers and stuff and things of favorite artists when frolicking through the inundated world of the industry, the Billboard 200 chart may be the next frontier for more accurate sales representation. Yesterday Billboard, the go-to for all things numbers and charts related, announced it would be updating its seemingly archaic system to include on-demand streaming and digital track sales, measured by Nielsen Entertainment.

Welcome to 2014, Billboard, we’ve all been waiting for you here …

It’s one of the largest tweaks the music authority has made since May of 1991 when Billboard began using Nielsen’s point-of-sale SoundScan data to measure album sales. Remember those times? It’s when Sam Goody, Virgin Megastores and Blockbuster Music were still an actual thing and scraping off hangnails riffling through CD racks was considered collateral damage.

"Adding streaming information makes the chart a better representation of music consumption activity," says Silvio Pietroluongo, VP of charts and data development on Billboard.com . "While an extremely valuable measurement, album sales would mostly capture the initial impulse only, without indicating the depth of consumption thereafter. Someone could listen to the album just once, or listen to one track or a number of tracks 100 times. We are now able to incorporate those plays as part of an album consumption ranking throughout one's possession of an album, extending beyond the initial purchase or listen."

It’s just one step the industry has been forced to take since it began falling apart due to the predictable digital takeover.

"Including streaming information is the next step in the evolution of the industry's accurate measurement of music consumption," adds Jim Urie, president/CEO of Universal Music Distribution. "Streaming is the fastest growing configuration we now have and having it included in Billboard's chart is a welcome improvement."

The update uses recently inducted standards for digital and streaming data. 10 digital track sales from one album or 1,500 song streams from the same album will now equal 1 album sold. Numbers from all major on-demand subscription services will be tallied, including Beats Music, Google Play, Xbox Music and Spotify (and we’re assuming eventually Soundcloud with its recent move to become a subscription based service).

No word yet on whether Billboard executives know it’s almost a decade-and-a-half into the new century or not, but … baby-steps.