Bum Rush the Charts With SecondCast Today
SecondCast #55 is on the air! Johnny, Lordfly and Torrid are joined by TheDiva Rockin, co-hostess of The-Broad-Cast.com, favorite podcast of oversexed metaversal Jersey girls everywhere, to chat about Twitter, the Second Life Relay For Life, and the international podcasting effort to Bum Rush the Charts, which is going on all day today. This is a coordinated effort by podcasters and listeners to drive a podcast artist to the #1 position in the iTune store “as a demonstration of our reach to Main Street and our purchasing power to Wall Street.” Go buy the song right now — you want to try to buy it while it’s still March 22. [If that link doesn’t work, try this one.] Or if you need more convincing, read on.
From the Bum Rush site:
The track we’ve chosen is “Mine Again” by the band Black Lab. A band that was dropped from not just one, but two major record labels (Geffen and Sony/Epic) and in the process forced them to fight to get their own music back. We picked them because making them number one, even for just one day, will remind the RIAA record labels of what they turned their backs on - and who they ignore at their peril.
What’s more, we’re going to take it a step beyond that. We’ve signed up as an affiliate of the iTunes Music Store, and every commission made on the sale of “Mine Again” will be donated to college scholarships, partly because it’s a worthy cause, but also partly because college students are among the most misunderstood and underestimated groups of people by big media. Black Lab has taken it up another notch - 50% of their earnings are going to be donated to the scholarship fund as well.
Kind of a cool thinget, if you ask me. But if you do want to ask me, just hang on a minute, I’m busy over at the iTunes store buying this thing.
Feeds
Despite my ridiculous and frankly unbalanced level of disdain for the RIAA and similar organisations, I have to say that the day when I buy a song - and encourage others to buy it - because of an internet meme is a long time coming. (Particularly when I think it’s a crap song.)
What, really, is this going to do? Encourage the general perception that the DRM-poisoned nonsense from the iTunes Music Store is a better alternative to CDs? Get a band signed and perpetuate the whole industry process? All this does is say to labels “look, people will buy stuff because of the internet”. It doesn’t “remind the RIAA record labels” of anything at all; they already sign bands based on their internet presence and popularity, A&R people these days are all over the P2P networks and Myspace and all that. The only thing it might do is encourage them to sell on the iTunes Music Store, which is hardly a victory for anyone except Apple.