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Cheating: The Costs and the Consequences
By The Beatport Team

The music business has always been difficult to break into for any artist, regardless of style or genre. For DJs, it’s getting even harder given the increasing competition. Innovations in technology have lowered the barrier to entry for creating dance music, while the press attention on our community means interest is higher. The result is more DJs and producers making more music than ever. More competition makes it harder to get noticed.

The history of the music industry is filled with scam artists who claim to offer shortcuts to success. Payola, MySpace bots, fake “likes,” phantom “plays,” paid “followers.” Like every other digital platform, Beatport has seen its share of fraud—artists and labels who try to boost their sales chart position as a way to generate attention and gain “We’re No. 1” bragging rights.

We’re flattered that a Beatport chart position can have such a profound impact on a DJ’s career. It’s what drives us to do everything in our power to ensure that the DJs gaining that recognition deserve it. To do so requires constant vigilance, innovation, and communication. Over the past few years, we’ve noticed an increase in services offering to boost a track’s Beatport chart position for a price.

In response, we monitor our charts daily, looking for anomalies. We’ve built and continue to improve upon technology to prevent chart-boosting efforts. We’re not saying we’ve succeeded or will succeed every time, but we’re getting better at it every day.

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.

First, if you’re artificially boosting your sales to fake the demand needed to score a favorable chart position, you’re robbing someone else, someone more deserving, of that same spot. You’re doing more than cheating. You’re stealing. You’re lying. You’re taking false credit for something you didn’t earn, and you’re hurting someone else by doing so.

Second, 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.

Third, you might get caught. There’s nothing the music industry hates more than an exposed fraud. Do you really want to chance short-term gain for long-term embarrassment?

Cheating is as destructive a vice as there is. Success won legitimately and organically is far sweeter than taking any shortcut, no matter how tempting, easy or anonymous it may seem at the time. Those trying to cheat are being watched…not only by us, but by the entire community.

Source: http://news.beatport.com/blog/2014/05/14/cheating-the-costs-and-the-consequences/

Totally agreed with Beatport, but strange, they won money with the cheats of producers, because they buy and buy the song so that's good for them... But they have choosen the best option

Success is a journey, not a destination.

Cheating this way should be frowned upon just as much as athletes who take performance-enhancing steroids because it denies someone else their moment of glory that they've worked for all their lives.

While it is widely understood that the EDM industry can be hard to get to, cheating is never the answer.

Growing up, my parents hammered into me to always do the right thing and that hard work always has its rewards. That said, it would serve artists better if they put in the hard work and enjoy the lengthy fruits of their labour instead of cheating and enjoying a brief moment only to be exposed in the end.

Originally posted by mikel09

Totally agreed with Beatport, but strange, they won money with the cheats of producers, because they buy and buy the song so that's good for them... But they have choosen the best option

It's not only about money and indirectly, at the end, it will cost them money. If the majority of the people start to believe that those top 10s are all a big scam, it directly effects the image of Beatport. They won't be taken serious anymore.

You know what I find funny though?

Beatport says all this stuff about people screwing up their top 10 lists and paying to have tracks bought to get their top spots. They want to stop this from happening as they don't find it fair to the artists.

However, if you come up to Beatport with a $4000 check in hand ( I have verified this is how much it costs) they will slap your track on the front page in the big revolving "Exclusive" section for the world to see and click on and buy. They even tell everyone it is one of these tracks by putting "sponsored" in fine print on the lower right hand corner of the album artwork.

So if you are a new artist that has there track floundering around and not doing to well, you pay a company, lets say $1500 to get you up in the list so its in the top ten, and you finally start to get some real notice and now more people are buying your track and knowing your name... this is highly frowned upon.

However, if you have the money to throw around and give it to beatport (for example; Aiden Jude ) They will plaster your track all over the page so its direct in front of every single visitors eyes and if you go far enough they will write an news article about you stating how great you are as an upcoming (ghost produced) producer.

So basically it boils down to this, if you pay one of these services it is bad and has an negative effect on the community and you will be banned if they catch you. If you elect to pay more to Beatport them selves, they will make sure you are noticed and not just by one genre.

It feels very double standard-ish. If they truly cared for equal chances among DJs and artists then they would not take sponsored money form rich parents or labels to "officially" bump them up and give them a higher chance of being noticed and bought.

I understand what you mean Tom, but I think it's different. It's just advertising, like we have here as well. Doesn't mean we're not independent. The difference on Beatport is, they can advertise, but people still need to like the music to buy it. It's different than being in the top 10 while nobody likes it, but the producer bought 10 copies.

I guess I see the top 10 and the front page both advertising of sorts. you see songs in front of you and you are bound more to listen to them and buy them instead of going through the new list and listening to each and every song there is.

Lets face it, if its on the front page or top 10, people are way more likely to buy it. If it is Trance or Big Room, if its right there, you will click and listen and there are going to be people who will prefer either one.

Sadly a lot of new artists music is not found easily any more like it used to be. People don't go hunting through the stacks to find the gems. They hear what is on the main page and if they don't like it, they say there is nothing good any more and move on. (Think about how many times we have had to tell others here to take your time to look and that there are still great tracks out there)

It really all comes down to money. That is the state of it right now. Most of the big tracks have been played on one of the big name radio shows or podcasts, which labels push money to to have them played, which then have people go and buy them, (which then ranks them higher on the top ten which enables more to buy them...and so on) or they spend thousands of their own to artificially put them on the front page which garners clicks to listens and more buys, which then has a much higher chance of placing that song on the top 10... in theory doing the exact same thing as buying buys... just being done in a different way.

I feel bad for the artists who just scraped by with purchasing the equipment to put that track together and finally found a bit of an off label who was willing enough to listen to the track and put it out for sale. He has no chance of fighting against the big labels and people who have money falling out of their arses as they all buy their way into the top somehow. In this sense, we probably just skim past so much new good music its a shame.

Thats why I said to really be fair to the artists, like they claim they are trying to be, they would toss top 10s for purchases and let people discover the music on their own the way it used to be. Let the DJs post their top tens still, then some have a baseline to go off of but then can search and find great new stuff and give everyone a chance.

I very rarely see new artists not tied to a massive label in those top 10s and it is a shame as there really is so much more out there to be had.

I think I am just stuck in the past and enjoyed it way more before the electronic music scene became so money oriented like pop music is.

You have a good point there. Completely agree!