Interesting. A friend excitedly posted about his #1 chart position on a site called N1M and though I’ve gotten emails from them I’d never really looked into it. I clicked through and was like “ha, way to go!” and then out of curiosity googled the company.
Instantly you’ve got a lot of artists complaining about it, fairly typical of any streaming site, but then reading further – specifically claiming about false charts and fake fan mail… bot followers… etc… fooling artists into thinking they’re getting views on the platform, tempting them into buying the premium service (buy into this thing that seems to be going well!). A label talking about putting multiple artists on the platform only to realize they were getting the same compliments from different fans, obviously cut and paste from the same template… etc.
I’d already clicked on the artist’s link and saw the chart. I liked that I didn’t recognize any of the artists… I could be introduced to lots of new stuff! Out of curiosity I went to N1M directly (rather than from the artist’s excited post) and looked up the chart, and there he is holding at #1! Huzzah.
Unfortunately, I’m a suspicious bastard.
On a hunch I did the same thing in an incognito browser and his position, alas was lost. Very clever, N1M – to use the same cookie and linking technology that allows our ads and things to follow us around to ALSO make sure an artist is seeing a chart (and sending fans a chart) that tells them exactly what they want to hear…
Ugh. I’m constantly amazed at the lengths to which people and corporations go to rip off the Lovers, the Dreamers and me. People prey on your hopes. I hate it.