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DID ONE LADY GAGA TROLL PROVE THAT THE BILLBOARD CHART IS BROKEN? DID ONE LADY GAGA TROLL PROVE THAT THE BILLBOARD CHART IS BROKEN?
On November 17, 2013, “Sabrina O’Connor” posted a story on Examiner.com that claimed Lady Gaga’s Interscope label had spent $25 million on the promotion of ARTPOP—the most since Michael Jackson’sInvincible—resulting in redundancies at the label. Within days this number had been treated like a limp-sock in a public-school dormitory; passed around by anyone desperate enough to use it. Business Week, Vulture, and MSN all ran stories leading with the click-baiting $25 million loss and the figure has since been floated elsewhere; contributing to analysis and reviews of Gaga’s strongly unanimous fail of a record. The problem—Sabrina O’Connor doesn’t exist. Gaga has since denied the $25 million figure, and many sites—despite adding a small-print “according to Examiner.com” correction—still have their lead-story online.
Examiner.com, a website that has a network of “100,000 contributors”, had been taking submissions from O’Connor and another writer called Angela Cheng – who some have speculated are the same person. Cheng, who once wrote that the “top reason to dislike Madonna” was because she “helped encourage the spread of aids”, had, alongside O’Connor, published a tonne of Gaga takedowns on Examiner.com. Here’s a screenshot.
Perez Hilton, notorious Gaga hater, is also a fan.
It could just be the work of a crazed Madonna stan except, on January 1, 2014, Cheng published another piece claiming that Bill Werde, former Editorial Director at Billboard.com, was to be fired from the company—a week later he was gone. The details may have been incorrect—he wasn’t fired—but the “scoop” gave slight credibility to Cheng’s previous claims. Was Cheng not just an internet troll with spare time, but a credible, albeit very biased, source of information operating under a false identity? When Buzzfeed contacted Werde to discuss the story, he took matters into his own hands and embarked upon a super-slewing investigation.
In a Tumblr post published last week, Werde states that he was aware of both Cheng and O’Connor because they would mention him in their stories "with ungrounded and wholly untrue accusations that somehow Billboard or [Werde] was receiving favor from Gaga's camp to better represent her or her chart positions." In the post, Werde details how he reached out to friends at AEG—the touring-company (who are putting onGaga’s shows) and also parent company of Examiner—citing defamation and libel: “AEG said they’d have someone look into the matter, and very shortly thereafter—and very much to AEG’s and the Examiner’s credit—the stories disappeared from the site. At some time after that, ‘Cheng’ appeared to stop contributing to Examiner.com.” The author pages of Cheng and O’Connor have since been deleted, prompting Cheng to set up her own website, Pop Music Gadfly. In a post dated April 1, Cheng personally tackled Werde over his investigation into her identity – he’d found that Cheng’s profile picture is from a non-associated Flickr account and the college and publications listed on her Examiner author-page had no record of her attendance. “I have made it quite clear that in order to avoid death threats from music stans and music industry executives (who are as bad as the mafia), I had to take on this identity. However, that shouldn’t matter. I work in the industry and know the truth. I write the truth.” She continued: “If I was just some troll blogger, why would Werde make phone calls to universities I supposedly attended? Why would he attempt to get me and others who write negative stuff about Gaga fired? Why would he contact his friends at Buzzfeed and Gawker in order to discredit my stories? Have you ever heard of someone who held such a high position at a music industry trade publication try to discredit articles—even if they were written by supposed trolls? It seems that Bill Werde, with possibly the direction of Team Gaga, has a goal to put the blame of ARTFLOP’s failure on some unknown writers, rather than admitting it is a bad album and people are sick of Lady Gaga.” “I can say that Bill Werde knows who I am.”
WHY WAS ANGELA CHENG, AN ANONYMOUS BLOGGER, INTERESTED IN THE EDITORIAL DIRECTOR AT BILLBOARD?Cheng states that she contacted Werde on several occasions to respond to one question: “How did the song “Dope” by Lady Gaga chart in the top ten when the song was never played on the radio and barely sold on iTunes?” The song charted at Number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100. By comparison, it charted in the UK at Number 126. It wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest that Lady Gaga has more American fans than British; the population of the United States is mother-trucking twelve-wheeler compared to the UK’s tiny Morris Minor. Yet Cheng claims that she has another answer: “A video clip of “Dope” was used as an advertisement before several thousand YouTube videos. Even though viewers didn’t solely intend to view the clip of “Dope,” Billboard, under Werde’s leadership, still counted the views towards their charts.” Billboard incorporated st...00 in 2013. Google, y’know the guys that run YouTube, state that a view of a skippable ad will increment the YouTube view count only when the ad has been...completely. This would seem to only back up Cheng’s claim if the pre-roll advertisements were, essentially, a full length music video watched in entirety—metrics upon which Billboard, in simplicity, run the Hot 100. Yet it’s worth nothing that a Billboard article published in February 2013 states that the streaming data would also take “user-generated clips that utilise authorised audio” into account. We contacted Cheng, since she’s the one throwing around accusations, to find out more. It wasn’t especially hard, an email address is listed on her site. Yet it’s worth noting here that a.) considering how shady she’s been about her identity we can only take her word that it’s her replying to us via email, and b.) no one else has interviewed her up to this point. Noisey: When did Gaga become the main source of Angela Cheng's hate? And why?
On Aug 13, 2013, Gaga asked her fans to buy multiple copies of the song. This is a bit shitty, but it’s a practice lots of other big pop artists have used, and their careers haven’t ended. What other artists are you unhappy with? What needs to change? This a practice that Lady Gaga has also employed. In 2011, Born This Way was sold on Amazon for a cut-price of 99 cents. Although Billboard changed their rules to state that any album sold below $3.49 during the first four-weeks would not be eligible for the chart, it didn’t stop Lady Gaga from smashing first week sales records. I am a huge Beyonce fan, but believe she is being protected by the media and industry as well. For example, let's talk about her Super Bowl performance. Everybody I talked to thought the performance was awful. Most of the people on Twitter said it was awful. But did you find even ONE review stating it was awful? Of course not. When Beyonce takes off her clothes, she is empowering women. When Miley Cyrus does the same, she's a slut. There is definitely a double standard here and I think the music industry (who works hand-in-hand with the media) is responsible for this. The main thing that needs to be changed is that artists, as well as their record labels, NEED to be called out on this. So many writers are afraid of losing their jobs because the magazine or website they work for relies on their relationship with record labels. Billboard, which is supposed to be an objective magazine, needs to stop being a fanzine. They need to base their charts on the actual popularity of music rather than being hand-fed bullshit from record labels. On your blog you state - "A video clip of 'Dope' was used as an advertisement before several thousand YouTube videos. Even though viewers didn’t solely intend to view the clip of 'Dope' Billboard, under Werde’s leadership, still counted the views towards their charts." - can you expand? What sort of pre-roll was played? “Do What U Want” reached Number 13 in the Billboard Hot 100. "Dope” didn't receive any airplay; it was never officially released as a single. Somebody from Billboard posted on the ATRL forums that video views for the YouTube Awards performance of "Dope" went through the roof and that's how it became a top ten hit with little sales and no airplay. But others I talked to say that is absolutely bull. I did a lot of research on this. An article posted on Billboard.com says that “Dope” generated 8.2 million first-week streams; 95% of which stemmed from YouTube views of the live video of Gaga performing "Dope" at the YouTube Music Awards on Nov. 3, not the song or official music video. The “Chart Overview” for Lady Gaga on Billboard.com states that “Dope” only stayed in the charts for two weeks.
The week before "Dope" made its strange chart debut, the performance of the song was seen as an advertisement before thousands of other YouTube videos. For example, if you wanted to watch a video of an interview with Jimmy Fallon, the performance of "Dope," advertising the YouTube Awards, played before the clip. In other words, people never intended to watch Lady Gaga's performance. This is completely misleading and is how the song, despite being one hardly anybody knows of, became a top ten hit. The week after the advertisements, the song tumbled down the charts. I think Billboard no longer allows these advertisements to influence the chart position of a song. But it's a little too late and I am not the only one questioning their integrity.
This is a screenshot showing the statistical view-count of Lady Gaga’s “Dope” from the YouTube Music Awards. The views since a small-period in November, 2013 (when the song charted) are virtually non-existent. There are also the two official version of "Dope", an audio track (currently at 3m views) and the official video (currently at 2m views). These are both dwarfed by the 15m views for the live performance, all of which took place in a single week. Let’s compare this to popular Lady Gaga song, “Bad Romance”.
The view counts are vastly different. “Bad Romance”, despite being released four years ago, continues to clock up hundreds of thousand of plays on a daily basis. Thanks Angela. SO, WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
We don’t know what interests Bill Werde may or may not have outside of his work at Billboard, but Cheng does raise a good point, if awkwardly. All YouTube streams now count toward the Billboard Chart and it is possible for a skippable pre-roll advert to add to the viewcount of a video, potentially affecting its position on the chart. It’s like the iPhone 5S of payola. Is it a bad thing that Gaga only charted because a live video of her playing at the YouTube Awards was watched loads of times? It depends on circumstance. If the views from a pre-roll advert of Lady Gaga’s YouTube Awards performance were included, the pre-roll would need to be watched in entirety to count as a view. Lady Gaga’s performance of “Dope” had a similar spike in views as YouTube Awards performances by artists like MIA and Eminem. The difference is that Eminem released “Rap God” a month before his performance, so had already achieved a high chart position whereas Gaga released “Dope” the day after the YouTube Awards, increasing the stream’s bounty. Chart position remains a sign of an artist’s power. It increases their live fees, their ability to get on TV and the size of their marketing budget. Of course, there's nothing wrong with Youtube promoting the performance and ot’s up to them how they wants to count views, but Billboard needs to be discerning in judging what views count towards a chart position. The covert nature of this story means that it is possible Angela Chen has a series of personal motives for rubbishing the name of Gaga and Billboard, with evidence that feels, at best, incomplete. It’s also possible she’s just trying to expose corruption in the music industry and is having her name dragged through the dirt because of it. From the language both But irrespective of political mud-slinging, troll-sabotage, accusations and the like, this story is important because of the larger picture that it has generated - the Billboard chart is still broken. Ryan Bassil is on Twitter — @RyanBassil --- http://noisey.vice.com/blog/is-the-billboard-chart-broken-or-is-one-internet-troll-trying-to-sabotage-lady-gaga-dope-2014 | |
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wow... Change it one more time.. | |
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I read this in my head with the deep announcer voice and that conspiracy theory music that we often hear on those illuminati videos. . Sounds reasonable. Find a tiny hole and exploit the fuck out of it like Americans do. Thats how industry works. Cheng is the Edward Snowden of Gagagate and her real name is Troy Carter | |
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Lil monsters need to go out and play in the sunshine. The Most Important Thing In Life Is Sincerity....Once You Can Fake That, You Can Fake Anything. |
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Some people need a new hobby. Getting out of the house and going for a walk is a start. Pistols sounded like "Fuck off," wheras The Clash sounded like "Fuck Off, but here's why.."- Thedigitialgardener
All music is shit music and no music is real- gunsnhalen Datdonkeydick- Asherfierce Gary Hunts Album Isn't That Good- Soulalive | |
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Prince did summin loosely similar...the musicology giveaway/purchase w/o choice. In my best billy impersonation... THIS IS A BIDNESS MUTHAFUCKA..  | |
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If any label is spending 25 million dollars on one album for a novelty act, then the music industry is getting exactly what it deserves. "It's not nice to fuck with K.B.! All you haters will see!" - Kitbradley
"The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing." - Socrates | |
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First things first: Why would any record label in their right mind spend $25 million to promote a project by ANY artist in this day and age? Let alone someone like Lady Gaga? I don't feel sorry for anybody involved in this fiasco! | |
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BobGeorge909 said: Prince did summin loosely similar...the musicology giveaway/purchase w/o choice. In my best billy impersonation... THIS IS A BIDNESS MUTHAFUCKA.. --But Prince had no way of knowing if Billboard would count the cd on the chart. | |
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"Dope" appeared as a week-or-two blip on the Billboard chart, just as the live awards show performance appeared on Youtube. It disappeared just as fast as people stopped watching the video. | |
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Like hell!
It also possible for YouTube to be fixed the same way the Jukebox Network/The Box used to be fixed back in the early 1990's. | |
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Even if one video on YouTube received 100 million+ views, it doesn't mean it's one view per one individual (if that makes any sense....). Remember, one individual could have watch THE same video at least 5 to 10 times a week at least.
I'm not sayin' I'm buyin' all that either. But see, G.U.Y., a proper video was released, radio statios started 2 play the song even be4 it was officially added. There was a campaign between LM 2 make the video beat tme Miley Cyrus record of more views in the first day of realease. It was announced and promoted and even so the song only made it 2 #76 in the hot 100, before falling off that tally the next week. It doesn't make much sense that such an no-popular song would cause that impact only with views of a live presentation...just sayin.. | |
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Gaga simply lost it, she can't just have the same impact she had back in 2009, that was when she was real big, and everybody knew of her weird image. She's now old news, which is good; she doesn't have to pretend things now and she can enjoy the luxury and freedom while working on new music. She's talented. | |
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The album kind of sucked...just let it go. Simply it wasn't that good. Many of the albums tracks were mediocre and the singles are even run of the mill... Straight Jacket Funk Affair
Album plays and love for vinyl records. | |
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laurarichardson said: BobGeorge909 said: Prince did summin loosely similar...the musicology giveaway/purchase w/o choice. In my best billy impersonation... THIS IS A BIDNESS MUTHAFUCKA.. --But Prince had no way of knowing if Billboard would count the cd on the chart. Prince in Newsweek interview: See, if I sell 400,000 tickets to my shows, that would make me No. 1 on the charts before I even release a CD into record stores," he says That info was available on 4/4. Musicology released on 4/20. What did/didn't Prince know? | |
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GREAT read- thanks for posting BoyGeorge909! | |
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You would think so, but it has been proven that many artists have hired services to "promote" their videos, sometimes without knowing how that is going to work. Within days they have a million youtube hits but those hits have all been generated by people in Indonesia listening to the song a hundred times in one night.
The bands who paid for "promotion" are then shocked to find that they have a million views but only two people came to their concert, and the local media laughed at them and pointed them out as trying to scam the system. The band is standing there going, "hey, we were told we could promote our music on this service so we paid them fifty bucks thinking it would help. We don't want this either!"
You can't really promote your gigs to a bunch of people in Indonesia who are working for pennies an hour.
Now that's one scam I have heard perpetrated on young indie bands trying to honestly promote their stuff. I can only imagine if major label dollars or charts were involved, how many hackers would be trying to game the system.
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Good counterpoint. I have to admit the graph that shows a sharp spike in views at the beginning and a sharp drop thinks Indonesian promo could have been at work.
[img:$uid]http://assets.noisey.com/content-images/contentimage/29017/Screen-Shot-2014-04-08-at-13-43-57.jpg[/img:$uid] | |
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WisdomNLove said: GREAT read- thanks for posting BoyGeorge909! BOBGeorge909... | |
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the fact that Billboard even counts Youtube hits an views and streams of records as actual sales, thats officially when i said goodbye to even caring about the chart. Though i stopped caring a long time ago, this is totally a bogus way to track shit. How is someone listening to an album online a fucking sale, if you want to run a "streaming videos or 30 second amazon samples chart" go for it, but taking a certain amount of hits and counting it as a sale is as valid as a Baseball record set in the steroid era. Billboard really has lost its "worthiness" at this point or even relevance, they need to adjust their thinking to the way things sell now, they should be tracking things like music sold off an artists label, all they have to do is bring in an auditor, its not difficult.
As for the label spending 25 million on promo, doesnt shock me cause it comes out of her at some point, Im sure her deal is not structured well at this point, and alot of the money she makes is going to the label, kind of like a TLC type thing, 56 cents an album. "We went where our music was appreciated, and that was everywhere but the USA, we knew we had fans, but there is only so much of the world you can play at once" Magne F | |
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"Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything." --Plato
https://youtu.be/CVwv9LZMah0 | |
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my mistake #80sbaby | |
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Let me educate you. When he first annouced he was going to do the give away Billboard had not decided if they were going to count the giveaways as sales. A little while after the tour got going Billboard decide to count the giveaways as sales since the giveaways were included in the ticket price however, later Billboard decided they would not count giveaways as sales anymore. So since the decision was made by Billboard after P was already on the road his comments on 4/4 were wishful thinking on his part. He had no guarentee that Billboard would count the giveaways as sales on 4/4. At that point in his carreer he probaly just wanted to get the CD distrubuted without solely relaying on retail or Sony to do work.
All of this information was in the media at the time and I am surprised at how many people on this board act like the Musicology tour never happend. If he wants to do something like this again he can do it in a minute and have the same results. He will just not get the chart numbers this time but people will get the CD in their hands. [Edited 4/16/14 6:43am] | |
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Thank goodness someone has enought sense to know that people watching a video on YOUTUBE and sometimes being paid to do so has nothing to do with the popularity of a band or artist. More importanlty it does not translate into sales. | |
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laurarichardson said:
Let me educate you. When he first annouced he was going to do the give away Billboard had not decided if they were going to count the giveaways as sales. A little while after the tour got going Billboard decide to count the giveaways as sales since the giveaways were included in the ticket price however, later Billboard decided they would not count giveaways as sales anymore. So since the decision was made by Billboard after P was already on the road his comments on 4/4 were wishful thinking on his part. He had no guarentee that Billboard would count the giveaways as sales on 4/4. At that point in his carreer he probaly just wanted to get the CD distrubuted without solely relaying on retail or Sony to do work.
All of this information was in the media at the time and I am surprised at how many people on this board act like the Musicology tour never happend. If he wants to do something like this again he can do it in a minute and have the same results. He will just not get the chart numbers this time but people will get the CD in their hands. [Edited 4/16/14 6:43am] Thanx for the miseducation Lauryn....but... I distinctly remember they DID count the ticketed CDs as sales and did for the life of the CD as it was Grandfathered. This method wouldn't wouldn't work for further releases. I'm under the distinct impression this is the truth. If u want to 'educate me'...prove it and don't just flap your gums.. I'm sure his lawyer, londell, read the rules and the gameple seemed to be catered to the....not a hope and a prayer. T [Edited 4/16/14 9:09am] | |
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yes this was all said on the TODAY show during an interview for the tour and album, or some other talk show either way the Host of the show even said "they changed the rule, but you have been grandfathered in" Prince just shrugged with a grin like "ok there they go again changing things". Thing is Prince found the loophole and used it, till they caught on to it, they changed the rule but they could not just discount him at that point or even stop the counting since he was out. Besides that the album despite giveaways SOLD over a million of "hard" copies to customers. Which to him at that time was his biggest album in a decade saleswise. After "emancipation" which sold about 700-800,000 (i dont count each disc like they certify with), then the disaster of "RAVE" which barely sold 500,000 though i dont think it really did, he was really underground after that, from 1999 till Musicology everything was on his label and though "rainbow children" selling 130,000 on the surface may look like a bomb, it was his label totally using Best Buys label "Redline" to distribute for him, with no videos, no single, no promo just a small tour, he moved albums. "We went where our music was appreciated, and that was everywhere but the USA, we knew we had fans, but there is only so much of the world you can play at once" Magne F | |
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"distinctly remember they DID count the ticketed CDs as sales and did for the life of the CD as it was Grandfathered. This method wouldn't wouldn't work for further releases. "
Learn to fucking read. The counted the ticked CDs a few weeks after the tour started. When Prince decided to do the giveaway which was many months before the tour started Billboard did not count giveways, mailorder or free CDs you get at McDonalds (or some other retail outlet) as sales. P had no way of knowing if they would count them or not. It did not matter in the end because it sold a million without the give away. | |
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laurarichardson said:
"distinctly remember they DID count the ticketed CDs as sales and did for the life of the CD as it was Grandfathered. This method wouldn't wouldn't work for further releases. "
Learn to fucking read. The counted the ticked CDs a few weeks after the tour started. When Prince decided to do the giveaway which was many months before the tour started Billboard did not count giveways, mailorder or free CDs you get at McDonalds (or some other retail outlet) as sales. P had no way of knowing if they would count them or not. It did not matter in the end because it sold a million without the give away. Well where would one " fucking read" this. I'm not "fucking" illiterate . I don't know a document that says what ure saying. Otherwise im going by what I "fucking" remember. Princes attorney is "fucking" illeterate? He's not able to read the rules that billboard had as to what constitutes a "fucking" sale. U propose that this was a happy "fucking" accident rather than something that was "fucking" planned? Soundscan policy change after Musicology, Prince immune from new rules!
From the LA Times 6/2/04 - you must register to read story online... A sales chart change of heart - Prince's distribution of CDs at his concerts sparks new policies by Billboard, Nielsen. By Randy Lewis, Times Staff Writer Should Prince's new "Musicology" go down in the pop annals as "The Asterisk Album"? It has earned one on a couple of fronts — first for the sales boost the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame musician got by distributing a copy of his latest CD to everyone attending his current concert tour, and second for prompting Billboard magazine this week to change its sales chart policy because of that marketing strategy. "Musicology" is Prince's hottest album in years, partially because Nielsen SoundScan, whose figures are used by Billboard to determine chart position, has counted as "sales" the more than 150,000 copies given to fans who have attended his concert tour since the album was released. Prince's tour organizers have maintained that they factored the price of a CD into ticket prices, which have ranged from $49.50 to $75 in most markets, but some in the music industry argued that counting those CDs as sales did not accurately reflect consumer interest in the CD alone. Still, Nielsen agreed to include all CDs distributed at concerts since the album's April 20 release as part of its "Musicology" sales total. Of the 633,000 copies reported sold by Nielsen, approximately 25% were distributed at the shows, Billboard has reported. With other musicians vowing to follow Prince's lead, Billboard has revised its policies regarding concert ticket/CD packages, and Nielsen has gone along with the change. To have CDs distributed at concerts counted as sales, musicians will now be required to offer fans different ticket prices, one including the album and one not. "While there were some label executives who did give a green light to the original policy in regard to the Prince album, a number said they would like the policy better if it included a provision where concertgoers could opt in or opt out of buying the album," Billboard charts director Geoff Mayfield said Tuesday. Prince's album will be exempt from the new policy, meaning all additional CDs distributed at his concerts will continue to be counted as sales. "That arrangement was already in place, so we're not going change midstream," Mayfield said. Will Billboard charts actually put an asterisk next to "Musicology" because its weekly sales total has benefited from the marketing strategy? "No," Mayfield says. "We're not into making Roger Maris feel small." It was a marketing strategy... It was "fucking" planned Billboard didn't decide to count them...they had to cuz there were rules...that they changed after this predicament that they didn't like occurred. Can u "fucking" read. The giveaways had been happening for several week and were counted as sales when the album was released to retail. Not arbitrarily. [Edited 4/18/14 11:43am] | |
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To be honest, I cried horror at Prince's concert+CD trick at the time. But at least he was selling something, where these days we are accounting for anytime someone looks at something. | |
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