Music blog aggregator Hype Machine (no relation) has blacklisted more than 40 artists after discovering that they or their representatives had tried to manipulate it's "Popular" song ranking page.
"We found several artists and blogs creating fake accounts on the site and favoriting their tracks to get higher visibility in the charts," Hype Machine editors wrote on their blog. "Because we’ve only recently switched to a chart based on the number of favorites, their efforts were not fruitful, however. We’ve locked the accounts we detected as fraudulent and suspended tracking blogs we’ve detected contributing to this."
Hype Machine has taken steps to make chart manipulation and named the offenders.
A full list of artists named by Hype Machine for abuse:
607
Alexander Technique / Princess Superstar
Audiofun
Big Dope P
Burns
Caroline Reese
Death to the Throne
Decimals
Destructo
Disco Ruido
Emil & Friends
Flapsandwich
fragglerock
Foulhouse
Gareth Pearson
Girl Problems
Hot Knives
John Roman
Kid Legit
Kids at the Bar
La Zebra
Master Shortie
Meech
Messkid
Mustard Pimp
Religion
Richie Jamz
Sikki Kidz
Sonic Truth
Star Guitar
Streetlab
Super Milkmen
The Constellations
The Grenade
The Knocks
The Muscle Club
The Pragmatic
The Vanish
Three Fingers
VIKING
Weekend Warriors
