By Matt Vaughan

We are pleased to share in the announcement that an agreement is in place between @billboard and the independent record shops of America.

READ THE OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE HERE

Four months ago, indie record stores were purged from Billboard reporting. Soon, the Billboard Top 200 was looking ridiculous and albums that were indie store best sellers weren’t charting. Artists such as Brittany Howard, Kid Cudi, @killermike, @greenday, @idlesband and so many more were getting shafted. New artists weren’t being acknowledged. The real messengers, musicians, and MCs were shut out. Indie record labels suffered. Half of what was selling, wasn’t being being reported. This was chart manipulation. The data was no longer reliable, it wasn’t accurate. The only reporters were Wal-Mart, Target, Amazon, and any big box retailer out there selling music. Artists were being excluded!

Music was being sanitized. This was censorship.

We feared that this would affect our culture. We saw a country that would soon appear as a milquetoast, robotic, saccharine society. With @billboard and its data partner Luminate owned by the same company, we saw a media corporation now owning the charts. Our @easystreetguy stated last month, “The Billboard charts have been corrupted, and with that so has the lifestyle that goes along with it. We cannot let our music lovers get programmed to purchase what a media conglomerate is directing us to buy or not to buy. We can’t buy into the trends they formulate and we cannot allow our youth and society to get tricked into becoming a consumer of a bastardized culture and lifestyle.” 

We compared this to the Hollywood Blacklist, the radio payola scandals, and the PMRC of the 80’s.

Cooler heads prevailed. Thank u Chris Muratore for stepping in raising the sails, Andrea @cimsmusic @itispatriley, @nabilayers, Portia @musicbizassoc , @billysezvinyl #IndustryShakedown, John Weston/Streetpulse and everyone for sharing in the discussion.

Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, who served as the Record Store Day 2019 Ambassador, stated, “We truly love …the [independent] shops. They’ve always meant the world to us. When it gets to this time when you can help out the community and the community record stores, it’s a no-brainer.” Upon hearing that indie retail and Luminate had reached an agreement, Pearl Jam’s official statement was: “For nearly as long as we’ve been a band, there’d been a system that worked. We’re just honored to play a part… so that our beloved record stores can again have a real seat at the table.”

Now, let’s go sell some records, let’s go break some bands!

Matt Vaughan is the owner of Easy Street Records in the West Seattle Junction