Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran, Royal Blood in three-way battle to top this week’s historic Official Albums Chart

Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran and Royal Blood are in a three-way battle for Number 1 in the first Official Albums Chart to include streams this Sunday, boosted by their appearances on Wednesday night’s BRIT Awards.

The Official Charts Company confirmed a fortnight ago that the chart published this Sunday would be the first to reflect audio streaming of albums from the likes of services such as Spotify, Deezer, Google Play, Napster, O2 Tracks, Xbox Music, Rdio and Rara.

And, going into the weekend, Sam Smith’s In the Lonely Hour and Ed Sheeran's X are in an extremely tight head-to-head to be the first Number 1 in the newly revamped chart.

Based on sales and streams gathered up to midnight yesterday (February 26), Smith and Sheeran are both the biggest-selling and most-streamed albums of the week - overall, In The Lonely Hour is less than 500 chart sales ahead of X, with Smith pipping Sheeran on sales, Sheeran just ahead on streams.

Royal Blood (Number 3) are the band who have seen the biggest surge through the week, with demand for the album growing by more than six times since before the BRIT Awards – chart sales soaring from 2,500 on Wednesday to 15,000 going into the weekend.

Besides performing at Wednesday’s BRIT Awards, all three albums were among the titles nominated in the Mastercard British Album category, alongside Alt-J’s This Is All Yours and George Ezra’s Wanted On Voyage.

Audio streams were successfully added to the UK’s Official Singles Chart in July 2014 and streams are being added to the Official Albums Chart using a similar methodology.

From this week the Official Albums Chart is being ranked by combined chart sales, made up by adding together physical sales, download sales and a streaming factor for each album. This streaming factor is being created by taking the track streams from each album and converting them to albums at a rate of 1000:1 - full details of the methodology can be found here.

Other albums set to enter today's Official Albums Chart Top 10 on Sunday include Chris Brown & Tyga’s Fan Of A Fan The Album (which is currently on course for Number 6), London duo Public Service Broadcasting’s The Race For Space (on course for 8) and Black Star Riders’ second album The Killer Instinct (which is set for Number 10).

US Rapper Big Sean is heading for the highest-charting album of his career with Dark Sky Paradise at 20, German rockers Scorpions are set for 25 with their 20th studio album Return To Forever, and elsewhere, London heavy metal band UFO’s A Conspiracy Of Stars Eagles (33) and Eagles’ Hotel California (36) are also on course to enter this week's Official Albums Chart Top 40.