Precision Tunes - "Payphone"

The UK top ten has a new entry for "Payphone", the new single by Maroon 5. Only it's a copy by Precision Tunes, the M5 version is released tomorrow. Last week, the Precision Tones people issued a copy of Flo Rida's "Whistle" again before the official release, and selling enough to make the lower reaches of the charts and forcing Flo Rida' s label to issue the song on iTunes midweek, which is unheard of really.

So, is this democracy in action, a bunch of opportunists making quick bucks, or the spiritual inheritors of the "Top of the pops" albums legacy, only faster? Are record companies to blame for launching songs onto the media two months before they issue them? After all, Maroon 5 played "Payphone" on "The voice" about 4 weeks ago. Wasn't the industry meant to close the gap between a record hitting the radio and being sold? Is it just more publicity for the artists anyway? And will anything change?

Thoughts please, if you have any.

The forced release has actually happened a few times recently (can't remember what any other ones were right now though); the "Whistle" one was just unique in that they didn't get there in time to stop the cover charting too.

The problem with on-air/on-sale was that with not everyone doing it at the same time, those who did suffered worse chart positions as a result so nearly everyone stopped doing it again. Only a few exceptions like the recent Kylie single, which hasn't exactly done brilliantly in the charts.

lol. i really love when this happens. as far as i can tell this is the highest a karaoke "tribute" cover has reached on an official chart.

it may seem opportunistic, but these imitation recordings exist for a staggering number of popular songs, whether available or not. and if the imitation beats the original to the punch, people will buy it. this happened in the usa with kid rock's "all summer long" -- the real thing wasn't digitally available because kid rock wasn't selling his music digitally, so the song was charting based only on its airplay points (and still did quite well, as it reached #23 on the hot 100 and #3 on the airplay component chart). amusingly, a karaoke version by the "hit masters" benefited tremendously from kid rock's album not being available digitally, as it hung around the top 10 on itunes for quite some time. this version of the song actually outpeaked the real version on the hot 100 (#19). of course, this didn't matter a lot to kid rock, as his retail album sales skyrocketed since people wouldn't be able to cherrypick "all summer long".

(another karaoke version by "the rock heroes" also charted highly on the hot 100 -- #29. it was the better version, if you want my opinion.)

estelle's album shine was pulled from the itunes store shortly after this whole thing happened, as i suppose the label wanted the album's sales to pick up in the same way kid rock's had, but it failed. even after 3 weeks, people didn't buy the album much more than they had been before, and they quickly put the album back onto itunes to allow "american boy" to perform as it had been (it was en route to the top 10 right before they pulled it). the song jumped from 53 to 9 (its peak) the week it was put back on. i believe a karaoke version of "american boy" had started climbing during the time the song was gone, but i can't find what the "artist" was called. clearly i should have downloaded it. in any case it didn't do as well as the "all summer long" covers.

i suppose one thing a lot of the recent ones are doing is often naming the "artist" a lyric so that the version will be likely to come up when people who don't know the actual title of the song search for it. hence the flo rida "whistle" cover being released by the artist "can you blow my". obviously that particular one did even better because the real song hadn't come out yet, but it applies to songs that are properly available as well. there are versions of "call me maybe" by artists "here's my number so" and "here's my number" -- i've seen these poking around #100 on the usa itunes chart (while the real "call me maybe" has been at the top).

apparently the hit masters also struck back this year, with a version of "call me maybe" reaching #72 in the uk!

ah! an old billboard chart beat column reveals that the karaoke version of "american boy" that charted was by the studio all-stars: it reached #85.