Beatport Speaks Out Against Chart Riggers

As one of the world's biggest dance music retailers, it was only a matter of time before the Beatport Chart found itself susceptible to the kind of chart rigging shenanigans that have long dogged the industry. Today the site posted a strongly worded statement castigating the rise of online chart fixing services, denouncing them as cheats preying on the desperate and the stupid. 

"We’re flattered that a Beatport chart position can have such a profound impact on a DJ’s career… Over the past few years, we’ve noticed an increase in services offering to boost a track’s Beatport chart position for a price.

…Chart-boosting rarely works. There are some very easy and obvious clues that help us spot the scammers. These scammers talk a good game, but they’re really just preying on the desperation of aspiring DJs in order to line their own pockets. More often than not, the money spent on these scams is just wasted.

When we spot a boosted record or track, we remove it from the store, and we’ll continue to do so. Our next step is to permanently ban the offending artists and labels. And we’re not bluffing.

As much as this type of thing saddens us, it makes us angry even more. To anyone tempted to use one of these so-called chart-boosting services, we urge you to first consider the cost. Not the monetary cost of what these scams charge, but rather the cost to your career, to your reputation, and the cost to your soul."

Read the full statement here

Beatport then go on to point out all the negativity chart rigging creates – largely, stealing someone else's rightful place and spending a shit load of money to do so –  they also claim that if you get caught the industry will hate you. A fair seeming point, maybe, but it's curious that they can only illustrate this 'hate' with a news story about Milli Vanilli's lip synching, breaking news some 25 years ago. Has there been no one since? The implication is that very few big names have been caught scamming- and if they have been caught, the industry – including Beatport –  isn't saying a thing about it. If they really want to expose the cheats then maybe they should publish a blacklist of anyone who has been removed from the store because of flagrant rigging, to truly allow the public to know who's taking the piss. Whilst we're in a situation where major labels have been heavily involved in fake views on youtube, and almost certainly wouldn't balk at rigging Beatport charts, it's unlikely this will happen.