So Madonna won the battle for first place on the Hot 100 by a nifty 150,000 units, which would be a lot more impressive if she wasn't forcing sales on innocent people like me who just wanted a ticket to see her at Yankee Stadium and instead found themselves with a complete useless "Clean" version of the album.She added the sales to the legitimate ones and stole first.
A first? Hardly. Tom Petty and Bon Jovi have both perofmred the same maneuver to great effect.
And Lady Gaga cracked the million units sold threshfold, by letting Amazon sell Born This Way for $3 a pop.
I wrote a post recently wondering what the hell Guns N Roses Greatest hits was doing in the UK Charts… Now, I'll tell you. Google Music were selling it for a quarter.
Playing the charts isn't a new concept. In include in the 1970s, record label drones would buy up singles the day of release and push an album on to the top ten, from there the band would appear on Top Of The Pops and get some instance fame.
But the US has been too large to lend itself to the concept. Untill Michael Jackson, in an attempt to maintain his position as the King of Pop, sold his return to the charts single (think it was from the Victory album for a dolla a holla) and entered the charts at number. In those all too innocent times, people sneered that if a single costs the price of a cup of coffee, what does it mean to top the Billboard 200?
Good question?
Since chart tampering is ridiculously easy, perhaps Billboard needs to update the rules. For instance, disallow bundling unless there is an option to buy or not the new album with the ticket to a show. Also, perhaps sales needs to be moved from units sold to dollars generated.