Beatport Has Zero-Tolerance For Chart-Boosting

The increasingly-crucial role of digital sales and social media has had an unfathomable impact on the music industry, with an artist’s worth and image now often being hinged upon the number of “likes”, followers, and plays they receive, in addition to music chart rankings.  Beatport, being one of the most established platforms for the purchasing of electronic music, as well as renowned for its highly-regarded chart listings, has undoubtedly seen a fair amount of artists try and abuse the online music distribution system to try and gain recognition through some dishonest means.

Yesterday, they made a rather expressive and cogent blog post to articulate their stance on the issue of chart-boosting, firmly asserting that paying for an increase in sales figures in order to appear more reputable is, in fact, cheating. Furthermore, they stated that when they find a boosted track (which they claim not to be too hard to discern from other tracks), they will uphold their current policy to have it removed immediately from the store, and may even go so far as to immutably ban the artists and labels involved.

Below is an excerpt from the blog post:

“The music business has always been difficult to break into for any artist, regardless of style or genre. For DJs, it’s getting even harder given the increasing competition. Innovations in technology have lowered the barrier to entry for creating dance music, while the press attention on our community means interest is higher. The result is more DJs and producers making more music than ever. More competition makes it harder to get noticed.

We’re flattered that a Beatport chart position can have such a profound impact on a DJ’s career. It’s what drives us to do everything in our power to ensure that the DJs gaining that recognition deserve it. To do so requires constant vigilance, innovation, and communication. Over the past few years, we’ve noticed an increase in services offering to boost a track’s Beatport chart position for a price…In response, we monitor our charts daily, looking for anomalies. We’ve built and continue to improve upon technology to prevent chart-boosting efforts.

As much as this type of thing saddens us, it makes us angry even more. To anyone tempted to use one of these so-called chart-boosting services, we urge you to first consider the cost. Not the monetary cost of what these scams charge, but rather the cost to your career, to your reputation, and the cost to your soul.

If you’re artificially boosting your sales to fake the demand needed to score a favorable chart position, you’re robbing someone else, someone more deserving, of that same spot. You’re doing more than cheating. You’re stealing. You’re lying. You’re taking false credit for something you didn’t earn, and you’re hurting someone else by doing so.

…You might get caught. There’s nothing the music industry hates more than an exposed fraud. Do you really want to chance short-term gain for long-term embarrassment?

Cheating is as destructive a vice as there is. Success won legitimately and organically is far sweeter than taking any shortcut, no matter how tempting, easy or anonymous it may seem at the time. Those trying to cheat are being watched…not only by us, but by the entire community.”

This is definitely a step in the right direction for electronic music, and it is heartening for the dance music community to see such a prominent force in the scene take a stand for artistic integrity.

View the full blog post here.

via EDMCanada

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