Don’t blame Music Week because Midas clearly attempted to fake their own popularity and got caught. The excuses given by the manager are terrible and every industry message board I’ve been on has ripped them to shreds.

The OCC does not accuse Midas of attempting to hype the charts, but instead states their decision was made on the basis that they had “no sight of the original transaction.”

You can’t make this shit up!

Hmmm….

Amusingly we’ll have to take your word for that as they keep they articles behind a paywall. And while I don’t want to turn into a conspiracy arse, whose side do you think Music Week are going to take on a given issue? They’re all about the status quo, surely.

The chart rules are always changing and they always move to change them to close these loopholes.

According to Music Week magazine they have tried to wheel out the lawyers and make a big media song and dance about it but noone’s biting as this kind of thing happens all the time.

It’s just a bit sad that they’re going around blaming everyone’s scapegoat “the big record labels” but it’s not as if they’re interested.

Still, the story was broken by Adrian Goldberg at The Stirrer and he’s been known to write for The Mail so something might happen there.

That’s a good point you make about this stuff going more public that it used to. I think that’s a knock-on effect of the music industry becoming more a level playing field where people like Andrew and myself, who have no vested interests in keeping things closed off, are able and willing to report these details.

I had a quick search of NME.com and couldn’t find anything about Midas. Now they might not consider it newsworthy and they have every right not to report the situation but I doubt they’d be too happy about laying into an organisation that’s run by their main advertisers. I’d be happy to be proved wrong on this of course.