Chart attack

Bum Rush the Charts hopes to make an indie music band top-sellers on iTunes. (Bum Rush the Charts)

For the past several weeks, a group of bloggers and podcasters have been urging their readers and listeners to participate in a grassroots campaign called Bum Rush the Charts. The directive is simple: on March 22, anyone who wants to stick it to the major record labels is being asked to purchase a copy of the song Mine Again, by the independent band Black Lab, at the iTunes Store. If enough people do so, it will send Mine Again to the tippity-top of the iTunes singles charts.

“Taking an artist like Black Lab and making them No. 1 on the [iTunes] charts would be making a statement,” says podcaster Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff, the linchpin for Bum Rush the Charts, on the phone from Los Angeles. “It would be like giving the music industry the finger.”

Black Lab, the most obvious beneficiaries of this drive, are a San Francisco alt-rock combo whose songs have appeared in TV shows (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Shield) and film (Varsity Blues, Blade: Trinity). Nemcoff denies any favouritism in picking the band’s song — he says it was their story that moved him. Formed in 1995, Black Lab was signed to two major labels, Geffen and Sony/Epic, and dropped from both. In the latter case, the band members went to court when Sony/Epic, who decided not to release the band’s album, refused to return their master tapes. Mine Again, the track at the centre of this crusade, is a driving, self-consciously brooding bit of arena rock — U2 without the melodic grandeur.

“I knew that people would suspect that this is some kind of marketing scheme for the band,” says Nemcoff. “I wanted people to know that this is not about the band, this is about podcasting and making a difference.”

According to recent statistics, U.S. album sales fell by five per cent in 2006 — having already fallen seven per cent from ’05 to ’06. Since ’05, worldwide digital music sales have shot up 82 per cent to around $2 billion US. The iTunes Store now operates in 22 countries, and accounts for about 80 per cent of legal music downloads worldwide. The Bum Rush the Charts manifesto claims the stunt is “going to strike fear into the hearts of the music industry.”

The claim is a little indulgent. Industry representatives I spoke to seemed less fearful than nonplussed. Don Hogarth, a spokesman for the Canadian Recording Industry Association, points out that MP3 sales only make up about 10 per cent of overall music sales. As such, he says, the “digital market is still a secondary concern” to record labels.

Rob Brooks, vice-president of marketing at EMI Music Canada, acknowledges iTunes’s burgeoning clout, but says it presents a limited picture. “The iTunes chart, which changes daily, is visible to the public. However, it is only visible to those that frequent the iTunes store, and it reflects only what is happening in the iTunes world,” says Brooks. “The real chart that labels look at is Soundscan, as it represents the entire [music-buying] market.” (Nielsen Soundscan culls sales data from traditional stores and online retailers in the U.S. and Canada.)

More than anything, Bum Rush the Charts is the latest salvo in the clash between independent artists and the major labels. A musician himself (his credits include the score to CBS’s coverage of the 1994 Winter Olympics), Nemcoff says he’s fed up with the major labels’ “stranglehold on distribution and promotion” and their “long history of screwing over the people who give them their product — the artists.”

Paul Durham, left, and Andy Ellis of the band Black Lab. (Paul Durham)

But music is only half the story. More generally, he chafes at how a few companies dictate cultural content. Nemcoff is the host of Pacific Coast Hellway, a profanity-laden daily podcast that takes swipes at celebrity culture and media conglomerates. (One of the show’s taglines is, “Hey, big media, get ready for the cock-punching you deserve!”) On Feb. 8, Nemcoff mused on air that if the podcasting community had the will, it could make an independent artist No. 1 on iTunes. The idea crystallized two days later, when Nemcoff met sci-fi author Ray Bradbury. The two got to chatting after Bradbury — a notorious Luddite who doesn’t even own a computer — hosted a small reading in Los Angeles.

“I told him there’s this thing where people can create programming, video, write in blogs, create stories on the internet, and with the click of a mouse, they can publish that to the entire world,” Nemcoff recalls. “And he looked up at me with his soft, grandfatherly eyes, and he said, ‘[The material] can’t be very good.’”

Nemcoff was astonished — after all, he makes his living on the web. “It occurred to me, as I was driving home, that I couldn’t be mad at Ray Bradbury for dissing new media. Because he’s had tremendous success in old media.” The comment nonetheless lingered with Nemcoff, who believes that the record industry, like Bradbury, takes a blinkered view of new media.

Like a lot of web commentators, Nemcoff contends that the major labels were late in adapting to digital media, and feels the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which represents the major labels (Universal, Sony/BMG, Warner et al.), channels more of its resources into prosecuting illegal downloaders than developing new business models. Jonathan Lamy, a spokesman for the RIAA, counters that record companies are “transforming how they do business and putting their catalogues of music online in a variety of ways and enforcing their rights where appropriate. It’s not an either-or proposition.”

Because independent artists don’t enjoy the distribution channels or marketing power of major labels, iTunes has become something of a leveller. Anyone can post a song on iTunes, provided they have a company name, a tax ID and the right software. Furthermore, there is no labelling of artists as “major label” or “independent,” a distinction that can prejudice some listeners. (My calls to iTunes were unreturned.)

The organizers of Bum Rush the Charts are doing more than exercising their middle fingers. Each sale of Mine Again will benefit not only Black Lab but a future college student. Anyone who supports iTunes can open what’s called an “affiliate account.” An affiliate puts a link on his site to a specific iTunes song or album, and every time someone clicks through to purchase that song or album, the affiliate receives a five per cent commission. A single track on iTunes costs 99 cents. In the case of Bum Rush the Charts, every sale of Mine Again will put five cents in the Student Loan Network account. What challenging the RIAA has to do with sending a kid to college seems tenuous until you talk to Christopher Penn, the Boston-based host of The Financial Aid Podcast.

“As far as college students go, they’re one of the most misunderstood and most underestimated demographics by the entertainment industry,” says Penn, another key player in Bum Rush the Charts. “Whenever you read about ratings and media buys, the 18-24 demographic is always touted as highly desirable, yet the recording industry spends hours and dollars trying to sue the same demographic.”

Bum Rush the Charts is a noble gambit. But in terms of bending the record industry’s ear, it’s dubious whether making a middling track like Mine Again No. 1 on iTunes is more or less subversive than the genuine online groundswell that launched the careers of unknowns like Britain’s Lily Allen and the Arctic Monkeys. On one podcast, Nemcoff asserted that making Black Lab No. 1 on iTunes was a way of saying, “F--- you, music industry, you dropped a hit act.” It’s a snappy refrain; it’s also a glib one. Should Mine Again indeed go to No. 1 on March 22, it won’t be the result of popular taste — the hope of every pop act — but because a group of consumer activists willed it. And when it comes to art, quality should be the only determiner of greatness.

Andre Mayer writes about the arts for CBC.ca.

CBC does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of external sites - links will open in new window.