I have removed all songs from the Australian TV show "The Voice" from my site in protest of the highly damaging effect that they are having on the ARIA charts. I refuse to promote music that exploits the charts so severely in the pursuit of money, votes and TV ratings. I feel disgusted about the amount of money that I've spent to buy these "Voice" songs in the past.
I have been dismayed about the effect that this show has been having on our charts for some time now, so to witness an all-Voice Top 5 in this week's ARIA Top 100 Singles chart has been the last straw, so to speak. 29 of this week's Top 100 are Voice-related, with 18 of them in the Top 50 alone! A total of 59 songs from The Voice contestants have entered the Top 100 in the last 10 weeks.
Welcome to my site! It lists every song that has ever entered the official Top 100 Singles Chart in Australia since 1950. Over 82% of those songs have streaming audio which can be played as individual tracks or via one of the site's many jukeboxes/playlists. Being able to hear the songs can be helpful for people who don't always know the name of songs that they like or have heard. I created this site to help people reconnect with songs that they've liked from the past and to discover many more! |
AMR/ARIA Top Singles of the Year Lists (The 100 Best Selling Singles of the Year)
My Top Singles of the Year Lists (Includes Singles That Have Never Charted Here)
Every AMR/ARIA Charting Single Lists (With an Average of 431 Singles Per Year)
Triple J Hottest 100 Lists (The All Time Lists Can Be Found in the Next Section)
Decade Lists, All Time Lists, Triple J Hottest 100 Lists, Weeklies & Other Lists
While it might be a pointless protest, I applaude your decision. The Voice has manipulated the charts horribly. And it is easy to see that allowing voting via iTunes sales has seriously flawed the ARIA Chart for weeks, when you see how fast most of the songs are dropping on iTunes now that voting and the show are finished. I look forward to next week's chart knowing most of The Voice songs will crash. I don't mind if Karise gets to #1 with what should have been her debut single and with her album, but The Voice has made a mockery of the ARIA Charts and all those other Voice songs deserve the fall they are about to experience.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the support Soulfan. I agree with everything that you've said. I've been seething about the situation for weeks now. Karise's debut single will be included in this week's entries when I do the site update, as it is a release from an actual recording artist and not just a TV show contestant (or karaoke shit for that matter. lol).
ReplyDeleteThere will be mixed emotions next week when Karise will almost certainly break another Australian charts record by having the largest drop from the #1 position ever. Her #1 is also highly unlikely to sell enough to make the End of Year chart, which would be the first ever #1 to not make one. lol. I dunno whether to laugh (about such Voice fail) or cry (for what it says about our beloved charts).
I am thinking the same about the drop from #1 Grant. It could quite possible be a new record. And even if it doesn't happen, I reckon the ARIA Chart might witness more huge drops for more songs than it has ever seen before. I reckon apart from Karise's songs and Sarah's original song, every other Voice song is likely to fall out of the ARIA Top 100 altogether, even Darren's original which debuted at #9. I wonder if the massacre which may be about to unfold will be reported as diligently and enthusiastically by the press as they have The Voice's takeover of the charts. Probably not. The Voice seems to be everybody's darling right now. They will probably just glaze it over with reports of Karise's getting a #1 album with only three days of sales, as is likely to be the case.
ReplyDeleteI have no problems with Karise. I think she is a great talent. I just have very serious problems with Universal, Channel 9 and iTunes manipulating the charts by using the bait of voting to increase sales. And also The Voice releasing every song from the show to count in the charts in the first place. That has never happened with other talent shows in the past, and I sure hope X Factor doesn't get the same idea. And I really hope those multiple sales allowed during the voting period were not counted for the ARIA Charts. It's against their rules of course to allow multiple purchases to count, but ARIA have bent their own rules before today.
The current record for the biggest drop from the #1 position is the 1997 single "My Heart Will Go On" by Celine Dion, which fell from #1 to #24. Its drop wasn't due to a sudden loss in popularity like Karise's #1, but rather the single being deleted in an attempt to make people buy the album that it was from, which was the "Titanic" movie soundtrack.
ReplyDeleteCuriously, the single was re-released a month later (the record company's gamble presumably didn't pay off) and it returned to the Top 10 for another 8 weeks, peaking at #3, thus proving its undying popularity at the time.
And it spent four weeks at #1 before its drop didn't it? Thanks for that information Grant. I wondered why a song which spent a decent time at #1 dropped so quickly. It really looks now as if Karise might break that record even with sales from the album version added, and is not likely to replace herself with her winner's single, unless it sold a truckload of physical copies. I really don't see that happening as people (apart from dye hard fans)would be more likely to buy the album than the single in the shops.
ReplyDeleteI am really interested in seeing how the media treats this Voice collapse. I have come across articles from early 2004 where they made quite a fuss about Guy Sebastian's debut single and album dropping quickly out of the top ten after spending 3 and 4 weeks at #1. Considering how much they sold in those first few weeks the drop was not unexpected, but the press played it up as a failure. What is happening with Karise's songs and even more so the other contestant's songs is just ridiculous and surely unprecedented. It should be given attention by the press, as much as The Voice chart performance has been given attention for weeks. But I doubt it will be.
Yep. Four weeks at #1 for Celine. They probably made so much money from the Voice performance downloads that they aren't overly fussed about her debut single (relatively) flopping. I hope the media launch a scathing attack on the show and make them re-think their marketing strategy. Previously they have reported on the show's domination of the charts and how much of a cash cow it's been but haven't been critical of it.
ReplyDeleteWell 13 of the 16 Voice songs have dropped out of the Top 50, including Karise's #1 from last week. So she does hold the record for the biggest drop now. And I would bet quite a few of the songs from the other contestants and a few of hers might have actually dropped out of the top 100, so perhaps a few more biggest drop records happened as well this week.
ReplyDeleteAnd apart from Sarah's new single, the other finalist's real debut singles are not going too well on iTunes since they were released yesterday. It seems Universal did no favours for the contestants when they allowed this buying frenzy during the show. The post sales boom usually experienced after a talent show seem to be totally lacking, at least for singles. I've always thought most people bought the debut singles of talent show contestants basically as a souvenir and also to say "well done", which went a long way towards the big sales some of them achieved. It seems The Voice viewers may feel they already bought their souvenirs prior to the end of the show. Karise should do well with her album, but the show seems to have deprived her and the other contestants of big selling debut singles.
It would be rather fitting if Reece and Johnny Ruffo came in front of them all next week, and perhaps throw in Timomatic as well. At least the shows they came from didn't pollute and manipulate the ARIA Charts.
This is what happened to all the Voice songs that were in the ARIA Top 100 Singles chart last week...
ReplyDeleteTW - LW - TI - HP
054 - 01 - 02 - 01 - Karise Eden - Stay With Me Baby
038 - 02 - 03 - 02 - Karise Eden - Hallelujah
Out - 03 - 01 - 03 - Karise Eden - I Was Your Girl
037 - 04 - 02 - 04 - Sarah De Bono - Beautiful
005 - 05 - 02 - 05 - Karise Eden - You Won't Let Me
Out - 08 - 01 - 08 - Darren Percival - Damage Down
Out - 11 - 06 - 09 - Karise Eden - Nothing's Real But Love
Out - 15 - 04 - 14 - Karise Eden - Landslide
Out - 17 - 01 - 17 - Darren Pervical - For Once in My Life
Out - 21 - 07 - 21 - Karise Eden - It's a Man's World
Out - 31 - 01 - 31 - Rachael Leahcar - Shooting Star
Out - 34 - 01 - 34 - Rachael Leahcar - Smile
Out - 36 - 05 - 36 - Karise Eden - Back to Black
078 - 37 - 04 - 06 - Darren Percival - I Believe
Out - 43 - 02 - 30 - Sarah De Bono - Here's Where I Stand
Out - 50 - 01 - 50 - Sarah De Bono - If I Didn't Love You
Out - 52 - 02 - 36 - Darren Percival - A Song for You
Out - 56 - 05 - 12 - Darren Percival - Wherever I Lay My Hat
Out - 64 - 02 - 43 - Rachael Leahcar - Nights in White Satin
Out - 66 - 03 - 24 - Sarah De Bono - How Will I Know
Out - 70 - 05 - 13 - Sarah De Bono - Listen
Out - 77 - 03 - 16 - Diana Rouvas - I Can't Make You Love Me
Out - 79 - 04 - 64 - Darren Percival - Shower the People
Out - 89 - 05 - 18 - Rachael Leahcar - La Vie En Rose
Out - 93 - 05 - 22 - Diana Rouvas - Love on Top
Out - 100- 01- 100- Darren Percival - Jealous Guy
TW: This week in the chart
LW: Last week in the chart
TI: Time in the chart (weeks)
HP: Highest position reached in the chart
So of the 26 Voice songs that were in the Top 100 last week, only 5 of them made the Top 100 this week. Karise (as expected) breaks the record for the biggest drop from the #1 position by landing at #54 this week. As for her debut single, it holds its #5 position, largely due to physical single sales, as it suffered a similar drop in sales on iTunes as the other Voice songs did.
I never expected quite the carnage that happened. I thought it would be big, but not this big. Does ARIA really want this sort of thing happening every year. It makes a mockery of the charts, and if they had any sense they would ban songs that carry votes for talent show contestants from entering the charts. It is pointless, and while the show can boast of all the chart achievements, those achievements look very hollow indeed when the crash occurs a week later. The only winner is the record company. I really don't think Karise got anything out of this, except a very manipulated chart record which was followed by several chart records she, Universal and The Voice certainly wouldn't enjoy or want to boast about. Let people buy the performance songs if they like, but no votes should be attached to those purchases if they are to be counted on the ARIA Chart. I am pretty sure the songs would not have done so much damage to the charts without that voting. Otherwise they would have held much more strongly after the show finished.
ReplyDeleteI've reinstated all performances from the TV shows The Voice & The X Factor. These days, the ARIA charts are regularly flooded with album tracks so I no longer see the point of excluding those performances - even though there are a whopping 268 of them.
ReplyDelete