The iTunes Chart Is Easily Manipulated. This Week Proves It Should Be Ignored
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The post The iTunes Chart Is Easily Manipulated. This Week Proves It Should Be Ignored appeared first on Consequence.
Earlier this week, as pointed out by several social media users, the iTunes singles chart looked particularly spicy. At one point in time, the top five songs on the platform were as follows:
Charts Top 5 atual do iTunes USA pic.twitter.com/aylJnyoEfb
— FÃ DE BRITNEY SPEARS (@michaelkgh987) January 30, 2024
Because the iTunes charts update daily, the order has continued to shift, but at time of writing, each of these song have remained within the top six, save for Spears’ 2011 deep cut, which has fallen to number 16. In the words of TikTok user holdensmith962, “This is probably the messiest top five in iTunes history.” More on the the spiderweb of intersecting dramas, lawsuits, and politics that connect these tunes shortly, but first, compare iTunes’ top hits to Spotify’s as of January 30th:
Spotify Top 100 — USA on January 30th, 2024
It doesn’t take a keen eye to notice the differences: Spotify’s got no Ben Shapiro or Tom MacDonald rapping about so-called “FACTS,” no Britney Spears, no Justin Timberlake (which, some might argue, is deserved), and a much lower showing for Nicki Minaj. Megan Thee Stallion stands as the lone consistency, as songs that have been in the top 10 for weeks or even months (“Stick Season,” “I Remember Everything,” “Lovin On Me,” “Never Lose Me,” etc.) occupy most of the remaining slots.
So, why the discrepancy? Is there some great conspiracy that wields power over the iTunes charts? Well, actually, kinda. While there’s no secret, singular cabal conspiring to force you to hear the “wet-ass P-word” guy rap, the current landscape of music consumption has left iTunes as a platform open to manipulation. Relatively small organized efforts can lead to the most purchased songs drifting far from what’s actually receiving the most attention.
Such coordinated chart manipulation isn’t exactly a new concept. The coveted “Christmas No. 1” in Britain, a yearly campaign to top the charts on Christmas Day, has long been the target of gamification in the name of grassroots movements, political statements, and, of course, general trolling. A part-time DJ rallied rock fans on Facebook to bestow Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name” with the title in 2009 as a rebellion against Simon Cowell’s reign over pop music, and from 2018 through 2022, English YouTuber LadBaby utilized his existing audience to skyrocket silly song parodies to the top spot, raising money for charity along the way.
As digital music sales have continued to give way to streaming platforms like Apple’s own Apple Music, digital marketplaces like iTunes have become particularly susceptible to such tactics. Because fewer people are shelling out $1.29 to download their own copy of a song, it takes proportionally fewer people to sway the numbers and launch whatever song’s being pumped to the top of the charts.
Enter stan culture and contemporary politics. Passionate fans and political actors alike have discovered just how easy it is to get their song to the top. With little more than some loose organization, fervent posting, and a couple of bucks per person, just about any tune can become a best-seller. To foreshadow this week’s drama, that’s exactly what Britney Spears fans, Megan Thee Stallion fans, Nicki Minaj fans, and Ben Shapiro fans are all doing simultaneously as January 2024 comes to a close.
Take Oklahoma emo band Ben Quad, who, in a half-joking reaction to speculation that Oliver Anthony’s grassroots success was more astroturfed, managed to get “You’re Part of It” on the iTunes Charts months after it’s initial release. Through online support and a unified goal, the song ultimately cracked the top five of the rock chart, putting them alongside Guns ‘n’ Roses, and even snuck into the top 100 for all genres.
“It’s wild to think how a joke snowballed into something much bigger,” the band wrote in an Instagram post. “We did this campaign with the goal to expose how easy it is to for these funders to orchestrate fake ‘grassroots’ movements. At the end of it all, we think we also showed how powerful a real word of mouth campaign is.”
Such a feat reveals both how easy it is to influence the iTunes charts and how nuanced the ethics of doing so can be. Sure, I joked earlier that these sorts of efforts are akin to a conspiracy, but there’s nothing inherently wrong or dishonest about fans supporting their favorite artist, even in a coordinated manner. Zoomed out, it’s not all that different from the sales war between Oasis’ “Roll with It” and Blur’s “Country House” or Kanye’s Graduation and 50 Cent’s Curtis.
At the same time, this type of success on iTunes can lead to synthetic narratives with little connection to what people are actually listening to. “FACTS” might have hit number one on iTunes’ USA charts, but it would feel silly to consider it “the biggest song on Earth,” despite what Tom MacDonald might claim on Twitter.
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Which leads us to the five fateful songs that have been floating around the top of iTunes this week: “FACTS,” “Big Foot,” “HISS,” “Selfish,” and… uh, well, also “Selfish.” As mentioned, many of these tunes have fanbases specifically vying after the “No. 1 on iTunes” crown, and it’s proven to be a compounding issue.
The emergence of Britney Spears’ “Selfish” came in direct response to Justin Timberlake’s new single, as Timberlake and Spears’ personal history (outlined in detail in her recent memoir) led some Britney fans to take issue with Timberlake’s comeback. Of course, this sparked some retaliation from Timberlake’s most dedicated base, however smaller it may be.
Then, there’s “HISS,” “Big Foot,” and — unfortunately — “FACTS.” Megan Thee Stallion’s hit arrived as a cut-throat takedown of those who stood against her in the wake of the Tory Lanez shooting. Of those in the crossfire was none other than Nicki Minaj, who quickly hit back with “Big Foot.” Though Minaj denied that “Big Foot” is a diss track, her Twitter activity seems to suggest otherwise, as she directly references Megan Thee Stallion several times. The feud eventually lead to iTunes as a metric for who might be “winning” the beef.
To the delight of Tom MacDonald and Ben Shapiro, “FACTS” somehow weaseled its way into the Nicki-Megan tiff. Thanks to Shapiro’s namedropping of Minaj in his “verse,” and Minaj’s inexplicable support of the track, the anti-woke tune’s relevancy has been extended beyond the initial Daily Wire push.
So, as a recap of the forces at play, there’s Nicki v. Megan, Shapiro (and Nicki??) v. Wokeness, and Spears v. Timberlake — all of which are compounding stan armies’ interest in running up the numbers.
It’s a little silly, no? Of course, the front-facing side of music industry is already built around smoke and mirrors, but being at the top of iTunes means less and less. “FACTS,” in particular, sparked much discourse surrounding it’s apparent success, but with the only citation being iTunes (again, the song does not appear on Spotify’s charts, nor those of Apple Music), how much water does that “success” really hold?
All of which is to say, it’s hard not to look at the iTunes charts as a relatively attainable marketing ploy — a stat that sounds more impressive than it really is. It’s similar to how so many new television series all claim to be the “number one comedy in America,” or how The Daily Wire is marketing their transphobic new movie Lady Ballers as “the #1 streaming movie in America.” For as much as The Daily Wire preaches backing up arguments with facts and logic, there’s little fact or logic behind their latest claim, as the film is exclusively available via The Daily Wire’s subscription service, a minuscule proportion of America’s audience.
At this point, calling a song “the biggest song in the world” because it did well on the iTunes Charts is like calling Lady Ballers a home-video classic. It’s not illegal, it’s not provably a lie, but consumers might be better off ignoring it altogether.
Either way, the fact remains: whether it’s an intentionally misleading marketing campaign or merely fans doing their best to prop up their favorite artist, iTunes is the go-to battlefield for meaningless battles. It’s a whole lot of smoke for quite a small fire.
The iTunes Chart Is Easily Manipulated. This Week Proves It Should Be Ignored
Jonah Krueger
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