People visit myspace and post, openly or message privately none of us can predict what they will post about.Most will not post at all. Just think it a bit lame trying to count the number of posts on the band Myspace means very little and measures not a lot. Maybe the cahrts should be dictated by this particular benchmark?

Whats with the HMV stuff again? Not throwing mud here but by your maths Midas should have sold well in excess of the 300 available on the day- they did not so your comment does seem strange…apparantly a joke is a rather crass statement and for me undemines your own credibility. I am sure that Midas and Melting Ice are well aware of multiple purchasing rules – that does not mean they can control how many people buy..but again your suggestion does not hold water based on numbers of people at the launch.

Fake fans is an insult to every ones intelligence and to those of us that pay good money to go to their gigs; have you actually seen this band and for instance they response they get…..ask the promoters dont accept my word. Unfounded speculation by you does nothing to add weight to your arguement and actually puts people off from commenting on forums such as this.

Just to be clear I am not saying that the OCC were wrong but on balance I remain to be convinced that all the relevant information was factored in. Your points only serve to convince me and maybe others reading this thread.

Throwing mud anonymously undermines the veracity of your claims. I mean… is this just David Kuczora trying to start a firestorm online by playing both sides?

Lets have some Myspace addys then can we please, “Sophie Smith” “Jane Spealer” etc etc, please come forward.
Except you cant can you?

This whole thing is a fake. Fake sales to try and conjour up fake fans and a management it seems to behind the times that they spent their lifesavings trying to gain a chart position.

There were NO people selling sim cards at gigs and this has been confirmed by several people now.
So thats the first problem.

The HMV instore was apparently a joke with people buying around 5-10 copies of the CD themselves. ( Only 3 per customer count anyway, so this is more blundering )

Through other message boards its become apparent that their management are posting under various names to try and get people talking about this.

So how comes on their Myspace no one has commented for days, or mentioned anything about this for around a week, and even then it was around 20 people, none of which mentioned buying Sim Cards at gigs.

If the OCC didnt step in then they would have been doing a very poor job.

FWIW, I think that if they were indeed breaking a rule then they should have been penalised – but then, only if the OCC was then going to go and unearth all the other cases of rule-bending and slightly naughty things, and punish all people at fault equally. I hate having that feeling that the charts are almost deceiving people on a weekly basis (which I guess they’ve been doing for years and years, thinking about it) but there’s not much anybody can do about it until the practice is stopped worldwide.

Like that’ll ever happen, though…

If students engaged the typically taught structure of separating each vested interest to discuss from their viewpoint, I’d mark them down. The winners would, for a huge chunk of their x-thousand words, talk about this solely from the perspective of the fan. After all, without focus on the ‘consumer’, all endeavours slide.

I contend that charts as a mechanism are essential. I’d like to see music 2.0 pioneers promote new ways of charting. A new level of transparency would be beneficial using an amalgam of stats from myspace plays, ringtone downloads, facebook ilikes. Yet one stark truth remains: without fully accounting for when someone puts their hand in their pocket and trades their hard-earned for a song, any chart credibility is surely shot.

This is not a solely a Midas related thread – and I didn’t mention them – it’s about the charts. However, I don’t think the OCC would have acted in this instance without good reason – knowing how bad it would look for them if they were wrong.

I’m sure this story – particularly the debate about whether trying to have chart success is worth it – will run and run, and just goes to show what turmoil the music business is in.

Think about it, their approach was covered in detail prior to the release date in “Music Week” for me suggests they have been nothing but completely open.

No matter what the approach; everyone is learning as things develop “mistakes” or errors of judgement will be made. But is it right to blame 5 young musicians for this?

The OCC rule makers who should get it right but do themselves get things wrong have to hold their hands up too and not hang the band out to dry. They are not chasing instant success – these guys have been around a few years now.

Given the fact that the Midas approach was well documented and in the public domain its a pitty that the OCC were not more procative in giving their advice; reacting after the event discredits everyone.

I do not think Midas had to cheat to gain attention – with Dont Dance I think the majority of regional and perhaps National stations will be familiar with the name,(see myspace the guys have regional and national pluggers) the frequency of gigs and numbers they can attract to gigs can not be ignored (not many can fill the barfly brum/baracademy brum/little civic wolves/stourbridge rock cafe… in Birmingham) – all of which has been reported; again in the Music Week industry journal and The Times on Line; because venues and promoters critics recognised what Midas are doing.

You can argue that this current situation is helping the band – but my guess is they would rather none of this was happening. Midas are the good guys, just doing their best and until now probably enjoying everyone moment including the hard slog of playing the toilet circuit, travelling up and down the country and so on!

So Stetch your band is trying to do it the right way – whatever that means and good luck to you; remember their is one acid test and thats the quality of your music, no amount of hype can make you sound better. Its the same for Midas and every other band. 10′s of thousands is spent on effective promotion or hyping is that cheating too?

On a slightly controversional note, I could argue that you have very cynically seized a “golden” opportunity to give your own band a plug via this MIDAS related thread – have to question your motives here I am afraid maybe you are not so good after all?

But perhaps jumping to conclusions is something we are all guilty of?

It’s a standard part of selling music. It messes the charts up a bit as all the pre-sales go through on the release date and if there is no ongoing momentum for sales of that band’s track, the track / band will drop straight out of the charts the following week. But so what? Why should we expect a track to sit in the chart for weeks and weeks? That’s the old way.

The new way is for a faster turnaround of music.

What is wrong, however, is trying to manipulate a track into the charts by buying it yourself. It’s always been possible (and has almost certainly happened with CD sales) to buy lots of copies from the right stores to make a dent in the charts.

With the current state of sales and with the purchase of downloads through various channels it is now much easier to fool the charts because a.) less sales are needed to get into the charts (a few hundred and you’ll probably be in there somewhere), b.) it’s cheaper to ‘hype’ than it was (tracks are as little as 77p now) and c.) there are more ways to purchase a track – so it’s easier to hide the buyer’s identity.

Our band is trying to do it the right way – by people actually liking the music and therefore then buying the track. We don’t expect it to happen overnight. It’s a gradual process. We are releasing singles. Each one sells more than the last. We’re not looking for a record deal as we have set up our own label – and we will share any future revenues from all activities. Chart ‘success’ might be nice – but it’s not necessary – except as a public measure of success.

Publicity – however is the key. If people haven’t heard of you – then there’s no way they can get to like the music …

And in view of the publicity gained by ‘cheating’ the charts I’m wondering whether being the ‘good guys’ is the right approach.

Maybe it is more rock’n'roll to cheat …

http://www.Dastards.com

So I’d say, if you’re never going to recoup, and a company is still willing to give you a load of cash up front then why not take advantage of it? The irony is that your initial contract matters a lot if you get past your first 3/4 albums, but it doesn’t matter at all if you only have one hit album!