Fans– especially those of Mariah Carey — know how to game iTunes.
They did a few years ago when they pushed her failed album, “Glitter,” to number 1.
Now, apparently, they’re doing it again with Mariah’s new single, “Dangerous.”
After not charting at all on Friday morning after midnight, “Dangerous” is number 1 on iTunes.
How’s it happening? Through an organized effort. Just type ‘mariah sales’ or ‘mariah lambs’ — lambs being the fans — in the Twitter X search bar and up comes dozens of posts describing the fans’ plan. They were sure that if 1,600 downloads occurred, they’d hit number 1. Apparently they were correct.
The fans were not so attentive, however, on YouTube. The lyric video for “Dangerous” has attracted just 470,000 views. Released at the same time, Sabrina Carpenter’s Doobie Brothers inflected “Manchild” has had 5.8 million views.
Can the coordinated campaign be sustained? On Spotify, so far, the same hasn’t happened for streaming “Dangerous.” It would actually seem easier to manipulate streaming since it only requires playing the song over and over by tapping the telephone.
These are like the same people who drive “All I Want for Christmas” to number 1 for a week or two at Christmas.
At the same as Mariah’s fans are playing games, someone is doing the same with 90s boyband The Backstreet Boys. Literally overnight, the Boys’ 1999 “Millennium” album has shot to number 1 on the iTunes album chart. Six of its tracks have risen simultaneously to numbers 10, 11, 12, and so on, on the same on the singles chart. Again, no sign of any of it on streaming.
Gaming iTunes is not news. K Pop bands do it all the time. Again, out of nowhere, a BTS member’s album rises to number 1 overnight. The singles chart is stuffed with tracks from the album. This only lasts a few days at most, and no one you know has ever heard any of it.
So stay tuned. We’ll see how long this can go on for. One day’s sales won’t make any of this stuff number 1 for a week. And it’s a problem Apple doesn’t care about. As long as someone is paying to download the record, that’s fine with them.
