Judging by the comments over at Digg too many people viewed this as a marketing ploy and others were just apathetic in general. The digital landscape that our society crafts in the next decade may well dictate both the source and quality of the information and entertainment choices we have access to for the next century and beyond. If the people don't rise up to demand an open and diverse internet the Government and corportations will collude to control what ideas we are exposed to and ensure our societal system becomes a plutocracy.

I have "Mine", do you? Only $1, but look how many won't raise a finger and part with the cost of a single soda to make a statement.

Perhaps a minor problem here was the album art. While I found no problem with it, you could've had three additional downloads, had it been more appropriate, from my parents and younger sister. I have no problem with it personally, but if you needed all the support possible, you could've chosen an album with less risque album art work.

I downloaded a copy today, and I hope that this song gets in the top ten on iTunes! Good luck!


P.S. I found out about Bum Rush the Charts from Adam Curry :)

Sadly I find that most people don't care. They are happy to be fed corporate crap (in all forms from food to music!) and wax on about Britney Spears shaving her head. I'm very saddened by these results and I think it speaks very loudly about the state of things in general. Apathy reigns. I'll never bow to it, but most are just fine with it...

I'd be really interested in what the overall sales numbers are actually. Just to see how many people cared.

There are those who bitch about the world, and a much smaller group that changes it. Stick with the team that makes the invisible (your dreams) visible.

Hey folks. Don't get too blue here. First, I'll be posting more updates and numbers as they come in - sales numbers, clickthrough, funnel, etc. so stay tuned for that.

Second, even if we didn't top the charts, we did do something funny - we hit a LOT of charts around the world at the same time, which is really kind of neat when you think about it.

Third, we managed to crack the charts in a lot of markets with literally almost no budget. That's pretty decent ROI.

Fourth, even if we only sold 5,000 tracks, that's 5,000 x 45 cents = $2,250 PLUS the SLN $1,000. That's a year of community college for someone.

i'm really glad i participated. for black lab to make 35 in australia is awesome and i hope my promo on the DSC helped.

The way I see it, podcasters and their listeners will only grow in numbers, so the next time something like this comes around we'll be more than ready to unite the masses.

This is a victory in my book.

I rushed, and my Bum is much better for it! To all those who don't get, you don't get it, and won't get , which is a real shame.

I think we did make a statement. It will be interesting to see what the press will be on this in the next few weeks. Hey...even it causes someone to google the word "podcast", that is an accomplishment in itself.

Why, when you were attempting to get as much support possible, would you choose an album that had such graphic artwork on it.

I understand not everybody has a problem with pictures of naked women masturbating, but I am also positive there are those who do.

It seems if you wanted to really make a statement you would have chosen something more universally appealing, rather than something particularly appalling.

Perhaps this is why corporations succeed and the Indy movement fails.

I hope it made a difference.

When are we Bum Rushing next?

I nominate Jonathan Coulton as the BRTC2 artist.
And he's not naked on the album cover. He's actually OVER dressed....

I made history today.

Benjamin,

That's a fair criticism. Unfortunately, the song and album had already been chosen by the founders before I signed onto the project. I noted this in the following post:

http://www.financialaidpodcast.com/2007/03/22/i...

I vote for declaring our independence by Bum Rushing again on July the 4th of this year and Kevin's suggestion of Jonathan Coulton sounds like a good one "Code Monkey" anyone? Coulton is well know and loved online so why not. If it's decided to do a BRTC2 we now have more foot soldiers to spread the word. Let's get it in the indy papers, call talk shows, get it on TWIT, get it on MySpace. We have more time to educate people and do it even better. I just discovered this plan on Monday thanks to a non-musical podcast I listen to. There's no reason 100,000 copies can't be sold if the organization is there...

I agree with Chris. We can definitely make this a huge follow up event. And great work to all those that helped to make the first one a great start!

I agree about the artwork. It was completely inapropriate for a project such as this. Song was ok, but the marketing campaign was pretty poor. First off, the myspace page and this page had no preview of the song. Second if this is supposed to be a movement by bloggers and new media against the old, it needs a much broader coalition. I mean let's get Geekbrief, Twit involved along with some old school media. Good first start, but next one should be a lot bigger. This type of project would lend itself well to "indie scholarship song of the month" in that habit builds momentum.

I bumrushed...but, I'm totally bummed by the level of Apathy I saw on digg.com.

A few observations...the album art...yep, with hindsight a better choice could have been made (she's masturbating? I never noticed).

The reason...so many people seemed to see this as anti RIAA or anti DRM which (i don't think) it supposed to be.

To many people saw it as a Black Lab Marketing effort

An incredible amount of people thought it was a scam (The same ones that beleive all the conspiracies I guess).

I for one am surprised that the song only seemed to start getting podplay the day before Bumrush day...was that a good idea?

Whatever, I still think this was a small piece of history made on the 22nd, I have my iTunes account and I'm in again for the next one..."Code Monkey" sounds like a good idea to me!

Oh, and to everyone in Sweden and the Netherlands who bought and made the top 10 - YOU ROCK!

I wouldn't be too downhearted about the result. Getting the song into 2 national top 10's is pretty impressive (although I have to say I'm surprised about some of the other songs showing up LOL). And the comments at Digg are interesting. Sure, lots of peeps screamed "this is a scam", or "how is buying DRM'd music sticking it to the man?" But look at the votes they were getting. When I last looked, the positive comments were all being voted up and the negative ones buried. Surely that shows the feeling of the majority?

I definitely think it was a success and is worth doing again sometime. And I have a cunning plan. When I flicked through the different chart genres it is obvious that many tracks have been strangely described. You have "Take That" showing up in the "rock" chart. In fact many of the overall top 10 are so called "rock" songs. On the other hand, the top 10 Country songs in the UK are made up mostly of Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash songs that came out 30 years ago.

So NEXT time - we can go all the way to the top - we just have to choose a country song. It's simple!

Well done for the effort everyone :) (Especially the Dutch and the Swedes!!!)

Jack.

I hate to be the realist here, because i'm gonna get flamed and flamed badly...but lets face facts. After all the hype of the past three weeks, and particularly that bit about "we have the power to make an indie band #1 on the ITunes chart", although i'm proud of the effort and glad I participated, in my own view BRTC can be considered nothing less than a total disaster.

The apathy of the internet fans to what we were trying to accomplish made it clear to me early on yesterday that we were going to be the laughing stock of the industry at the end of the day. And that apathy plays right into the hands of the RIAA. They can now point to podcasters with confidence and say "See? Not even their own buddies on the internet takes them seriously, so why should we?"

Sorry gents and gentettes, but by doing anything less than we promised in the publicity, I have to conclude we have done nothing but hurt our own cause. Now the question is going to be "Can podcasters bounce back from the debacle of BRTC?"

That will be up to the press coverage of the event. So far, it looks good. I know I sure hope we can bounce back...stay tuned, folks....only time will tell...

Japan is not listed, but is as follows:
Rock Genre: 67
Overall: n/a

I hope you don't get flamed TC - I just don't agree with the pessimism. Sure we said “we have the power to make an indie band #1 on the ITunes chart” but there are many factors we had no control over, but I think we've learned some valuable lessons.

For one thing, I have no idea how the chart is compiled. Surely it doesn't reset to zero every time the clock passes midnight? It might get reset every Sunday night, in which case having the event on a Monday next time might work better. Does anyone actually know what timescale the chart covers? I'd be interested to know.

And like I said above - if we picked a different genre we might see different results. Then there was some comment on the artwork, which seems to have put some others off. But the fact that it made any impact at all is pretty amazing as far as I'm concerned. It's like anything - you learn from it what you can and move forward.

Remember the story of Edison? (copied from About.com)

"Creators of good luck don't see a mistake as a failure. Instead, a mistake is an opportunity for learning. Thomas Edison is the classic example. More than 1,000 attempts to invent the first long-lasting electric light bulb led to bulbs that only stayed lit for a few minutes. One of Edison's colleagues asked him, "Mr. Edison, don't you feel you are a failure?" Lacking any sense of vanity, he answered, "Not at all. Now, I definitely know more than a thousand ways how NOT to make a light bulb." He then went on to perfect it.

Getting the song into 2 national top 10's might be like inventing a bulb that only stays lit for a few minutes - but it's a pretty good start isn't it?

I think it would be a terrible shame if the podcasting and blogging community saw this as the end of the road and then got into an internal fight along the lines of "I told you there was no such thing as a podcasting community". Thousands of people made a statement yesterday. And remember this - podcasting and even blogging is still in its infancy. Just because we've been listening to podcasts for a couple of years doesn't mean it's mainstream. But the audience grows every week, and every week those people tell their friends and it grows some more. I work in IT and have LOADS of geeky friends who have never even listened to a podcast - it's early days. Do this again in 3 months or 6 months with a few tweaks and we'll see better results.

I feel like Pollyanna LOL

Cheers,

Jack.

Here is the deal.... BRTC was a HUGE success!! It was never about reaching #1... it was about flexing the muscle of the podcasting community. Think about it - our little experiment got coverage in Billboard, the BBC, the Washington Post, and dozens of other sources. We have shown that we ARE the face of new media. We have shown that we are an emerging force in the landscape and more importantly, we have shed some light on the distribution model of the recording industry. We have shown that we are perfectly capable of choosing our own music and that artists no longer need to sell their souls (ie their masters) to a label.

We done good people... we done real good!

Umm... well, actually, it WAS about reaching #1. As an experiment, it was successful in that we achieved a lot of mindshare and learned some valuable lessons and tools for the next major campaign, which is great. However, we did say at the outset that we wanted to hit #1. Hopefully, we'll see an update in the iTunes charts around 11 AM ET today.

So I did not bum rush the charts and saved my $1 because I don't like the song. I don't listen to the radio. I gave up on the media a long time ago. The music that I like is out there and I do the work and go find it and buy it. I buy the music I like and support the musicians that make it. I am not sure what Bum Rush the Charts is trying to prove. Is the goal to show some record company that there is at least one band out there that has been kicked to the side that should have been promoted? I don't care what record companies think of podcasting. I do what I want and listen to what I want. I am not concerned how main stream media views this form of distribution.

Seeded at Newsvine. http://solfan68.newsvine.com/_news/2007/03/23/6...

Don't be discouraged ny the numbers. I'm not. Porsche is perfectly happy with their 2% market share. They have no desire for the 911 to be the #1 most units sold car.

There are many people out there that probably share the idea behind this movement, but have no idea what a podcast is yet. Give the masses time and fret not meanwhile... :-)

Good point Ricky - as I said above, this medium is still in its infancy (please insert your own joke about infantile behaviour). Making a bold claim about getting to #1 is one thing, but let's face it, if we'd have hit #3 we'd have been dancing in the streets.

I think a goal that has been overlooked is that one of the early drivers behind the project was to see whether the podcasting "community" existed at all and, if it did, could it be mobilised? I think both points have been proved.

Cheers,

Jack.