While browsing the website PeoplePerHour, I came across a listing that absolutely turned my stomach. A fellow by the name of Henry J. is apparently offering a thousand dollars to a freelancer to purchase 300-400 copies of a song on Beatport.
If you aren’t disgusted with this, I’ll tell you why you should be.
Believe it or not, it takes substantially fewer sales than one would expect to chart on Beatport. Depending on which genre the track is submitted under, a few hundred sales has the potential to drive a release into high spots on the chart. Often times these charts are taken as a measure of success and popularity of an artist and charting releases make great portfolio pieces. However, if sales don’t come from organic sources then ultimately they have no legitimacy. This means that artists, their management, and label can quite literally pay their way to the top of the charts.
I’ll be honest, this sort of thing is new to me. I’ve had more than my fair share of experience with ghost production and some of the other less than reputable techniques the industry employs to make things happen. Hell, we’ve even seen a no-name finagle his way to a electronic grammy nomination… But this, this is new.
Before today, I’ve never once heard of an artist employing freelancers to boost a release on the Beatport charts. Think about it, if this Henry J worked for a record label and had the tacit agreement of the artist he would be able to recoup the money used to buy the tracks in the first place, sans Beatport fees. This in essence would allow a record label to claim a legitimacy and bragging rights it had never earned.
Due to the nature of PeoplePerHour it’s nearly impossible to determine the identity of the artist, label, or whoever it is that’s behind this. We’ll do what we can to get to the bottom of this, but for the moment all we can hope is that this is an isolated occurrence. We’ve reached out to Beatport for a statement, but haven’t yet heard back. You can see the PPH posting in question, here.
It’s sickening.
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How is that even possible?? That means you’d need 400 different credit cards, 400 different email accounts, and one hell of an IP changing program.
Brandon is absolutely on spot. I have no idea how someone would actually pull this off. Let alone make any money off the deal, $1000 barely covers the cost of the track 400 times. (Assuming it’s $1.99)
This surprises any of you? Lol not me
Well this is nothing new, It’s known as chart rigging
LOl this sort of thing is not new at all, older labels and artists have been paying to chart themselves since the beginning of beatport. It exists, beatport was unregulated for way too long with employees who needed to make $$. I’m sure it still exists.Payolla does not exist on the internet.
I’m not surprised at all It actually seems blatantly obvious especially since artists under certain labels chart no matter what even if the songs shit
even if it charts people will only buy it if it sounds good
Beatport charts are as legit as any charts possibly can be. In the old days before it was regulated artists could buy a bunch of copies with one account and one credit card but to combat this, beatport only registers 1 sale per IP adress, 1 per account and 1 per credit card. This means that in order to buy 300-400 copies you would need 300-400 credit cards, 300-400 accounts and 300-400 visits to public spaces with there own IP address and public internet such as coffee houses and what not. Being that no one has time to do that, this clown is trying to out source a job which he will have no luck considering for the 1st two weeks of release most tracks on beatport are $2.49 hence for 400 copies purchased it would be a break even mark. This fucking clown just cheapened the look of all of mine and everyones tracks who have charted on beatport by making quality music. FUCK HEAD!!!
OLD news.