NOT GONNA WORK

Billboard Isn’t Happy With Lady Gaga’s Desperate Attempts To Reach #1

Lady-Gaga-Artpop-Promo-2-620x350We definitely missed Lady Gaga during her yearlong absence from Twitter, but now that the singer is back online promoting the release of ARTPOP, it seems like the only thing she’s tweeting is controversy.

The 27-year-old caused a stir last week by taking the riff between her and old pal Perez Hilton to new heights, accusing him of “stalking” her in a now-deleted tweet.

Since then, her ethics as an artist have been questioned by Billboard Editorial Director Bill Werde, who isn’t impressed by her pandering for video views and attempting to “game the charts” in a ruse to improve her new single’s chart performance.

The controversy is due in part to a new policy Billboard has adopted, under which they’ll now consider music video views on Vevo equal to the purchase of a song on iTunes. The policy was designed to combat clout loss due to piracy, but it’s made it easier for popular artists to easily push themselves higher up the Billboard charts.

Gaga was quick to discover the loophole, asking fans to purchase multiple copies of the new single and watch her new video on a continuous loop so she could enjoy an extended stay on the Billboard charts.

Not cool, says Werde. He describes the practice as “playlisting”, or creating a “link to ‘watch’ the same video 150 times: roughly 9 straight hours of the same vid.” He says it’s essentially tacky, and is “not in the spirit of what we do, celebrating success”:

Here’s a thought: Why not just make a really great song to begin with? It’s working for Katy Perry.

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