Filed under: Cambio News
Some people aren't very happy with Lady Gaga right now. The pop singer's "Applause" hasn't been met with as much excitement as her other singles and she has now asked fans to...Lady Gaga's new single "Applause" hasn't been met with as much excitement as many of her other hit songs, but it seems that the pop singer is simply unwilling to settle for a less than stellar performance. Mother Monster's practices were called into question when she asked her 40 million Twitter followers to screenshot their purchase and radio requests for her song and then offered them an incentive, saying, "The 2 fans w the most purchase/gift screenshots, radio requests, 'Applause' selfies/video, will fly international to meet me+watch the show!"
The editorial director of Billboard, Bill Werde, was furious when he saw the tweet, writing, "An artist tweeting out and Facebooking a link that enables a fan to hit play and leave their computer is not the spirit of why we chart...I just hate it when anyone tries to game the charts, be it fans or artists. It's not in the spirit of what we do, celebrating success."
After Gaga encouraged fans to watch the video multiple times, Bill chimed in again, saying, "It is fine to self-promote, send links to fans, etc. my objection is to playlisting. It seems some fans are unaware such a link was sent 2. By "playlisting" I mean a link to "watch" the same video 150 times: roughly 9 straight hours of the same vid," he also assured that YouTube has antispam technology and they "will take care of playlisting."
Ultimately, the question comes down to what you consider "gaming the charts." Celebrities promote their stuff on Twitter all the time--so, is there a point where it becomes "gaming" or is it ALL part of the "game"?