The biggest news in Australian music press today is the website chartfixer.com, whereby artists or labels can pay for the site’s services to move their songs up the ARIA charts. As ridiculous as this sounds, the reaction from all corners reminds us that chart rigging practices are not unheard of.
Fasterlouder has a good few comments for their coverage of the story. Today/Tonight even has a little vid you can watch here.
Meanwhile, industry writer Ben Butler sums up the financials of Australian major labels in 2009 on the Herald Sun
June 4, 2010 12:13 pm
And another look that’s worth a read from Musicadium: http://blog.musicadium.com/general/chartfixer-the-real-breakdown/2829/
June 4, 2010 1:47 pm
In all honesty, does anyone who loves music care about the ARIA charts at all? I can only think that statisticians and industry folk want to know. It’s all kind of redundant nowadays, don’t you think?
And in any case ARIA determines platinum / gold sales on the sales to retailers, not actual sales to consumers, which is not reflective on the success of a single.