No Rock And Roll Fun

CHARTBEATING: Charts have always been a bit unfair - no matter what you do, there's always going to be some sort of bias built in that means some people get ignored (like, when did a bhangra record last make the top 40? - okay, apart from that one) and rules often get redrawn to try and make the listings reflect sales more accurately. Or at least, that's the theory. Over in the US, they've just had an overhaul of the panel which decides the country chart - because there were too many radio stations on it before, and it was costing the labels too much to spread its "promotional activity" so thinly across so many outlets. Not, of course, that this should be viewed as a change being made to make payola less expensive, of course, as that sort of thing is bad and wrong and banned, okay? This is promotional activity, a different thing entirely.

We do suggest that they could save the industry even more cash, by simply allowing the labels to type up a list of what they'd like the chart to look like and sending that in once a week. Then everyone would be happy.