The Pop Corporation

The charts are a mess, what with billionaire artists scamming everyone with multiple variants and algrothim tricks landing top slots.

There’s very little joy to be found about chart certificates these days, but one small victory is that the Pack Smart Group has managed to convince the powers that be that sales made through Bandcamp will now count with the Official Charts Company for the first time.

Previously, Bandcamp sales were only relevant towards chart rankings in the UK if the buyer also purchased an album digitally.

Now all sales from The Pack Smart Group’s clients can be reported, which is good news for smaller artists who operate in genres like jazz, folk, metal and the rest.

“For years, artists selling physical formats through Bandcamp have known that a large proportion of those sales were effectively invisible when it came to the UK charts,” The Pack Smart Group’s business development director Seánna Holland says.

“That disconnect has been frustrating for artists and their teams, because the fans were there and the purchases were real, but they weren’t always reflected in the charts,” she added.

“Being able to report those sales feels like a really positive step for the independent sector and it ensures that when fans support an artist directly, it genuinely counts.”

This comes after Bandcamp banned AI from its platform, proving that there’s still some distributors and businesses out there who care a jot.

Defending artists rights even further, any impersonating artists with AI is also “strictly prohibited in accordance with our existing policies prohibiting impersonation and intellectual property infringement.”

Bandcamp added: “If you encounter music or audio that appears to be made entirely or with heavy reliance on generative AI, please use our reporting tools to flag the content for review by our team. We reserve the right to remove any music on suspicion of being AI-generated.”