The Pop Corporation

In the streaming era, the chart companies have reacted slowly to those who were able to fudge stats and wriggle in the margins to get more plays, or contribute to the data to give them inflated chart positions.

Once upon a time, it was Payola, and now there’s something else going on. Overly long LPs of over 30 tracks were scamming the algorithm, and multiple variants of an album were all ways of increasing listens, which wasn’t necessarily a true version of people’s actual listening habits.

Billboard – the chart organisation over in the States – are looking into this, and bringing rules in to try and shape the chart positions better. We’re going to be picking through this for a while, but the bullet points of interest are thus:

• Any D2C store with three submissions of illegitimate data within a 12-month period may receive a minimum 90-day reporting suspension.

• Physical D2C shipments which fall outside of “established sales trends” will require the reporting store to provide enhanced tracking status along with other info such as geo-location data and if a VPN was used to make the purchase.

• Digital albums sold via an artist, label, or other official web store must now be redeemed in order to be chart eligible. In addition, verification using hCaptcha is now required to prevent bots.

• Only four (4) “digital exclusive versions” will be allowed for the life of an album. Includes deluxe versions.

• “Digital D2C exclusive versions” cannot be put up for sale during the middle of the first week. Either need to be available for pre-order or held for a later week of release.

• Minimum price for all exclusive digital albums has been raised to $7.99.
Minimum price of albums increasing at all retailers:

$7.99 – CD
$7.99 – Cassette
$15.99 – Vinyl

Initially, this is what we can see – the minimum prices stops bigger artists from drastically dropping their prices for a period to ensure an immediate chart run. It looks like it would be bad for consumers and artists, but if it makes customers used to paying a fair price for smaller artists’ work, this might end up being a good thing in the long run.

The ruling that says “Only four (4) “digital D2C exclusive versions” will be allowed for the life of an album. Includes deluxe versions.” is a direct response to the abuse of all the variants released by artists, which effectively sounds like the charts are coming for Taylor Swift and K-Pop artists who release a raft of versions. This is absolutely good for the consumer and, if artists are less concerned with chart positions and making money, then they can continue to release as many variants as they want – it’s just that now, only four of them will count.

The thing with “Digital D2C exclusive versions” not being allowed to be put up for sale during the middle of the first week, feels like a good thing – it means chart positions can’t be influenced during the midweek of a release, and exclusive version will need to be available for pre-order or held for a later week of release.

We’ll look into this further, we’ll see how artists respond, and more importantly, we’ll see if the charts start looking any different.