Well, our download week is over, not one of our 40 acts is to be found anywhere in the official chart, so we didn’t do it.
Or did we?
To look at the comments we were getting back from members and artists on the Facebook group and page, you’d think we’d actually won. The messages of thanks from people who’ve worked hard to support our crazily ambitious campaign are amazing to see – thank YOU all for being with us through it, for joining in with choosing the artists and for buying their tracks.
Right back at the beginning we said, “We’ll call a ‘success’ finding some good new music, a ‘win’ getting 2 or more songs in the charts, and anything above that is epic”. We think we can call this time a ‘success’ even if we didn’t get the big prize.
We’re delighted so many people have got the message and discovered artists they love through our project – numerous people have said they bought multiple songs last week that they’re glad to have in their playlist, and that they never would have heard otherwise. That’s the point, and we’re glad so many of you got it.
Things we did manage
We really did storm Amazon’s charts; Gabby Young was top of both their Rock and Folk charts for virtually the whole week (still topping Folk at the time of writing, in fact) and Steven Finn held the same position on their Blues chart.
On the Sunday of our download week we swamped their ‘Highest Risers’ and by the Saturday we had nineteen of the top 100 in ‘Indie & Alternative’ and ten of the top 100 overall.
As well as Gabby’s topping it, we also had positions 2,3,4 & 5 in Folk there.
On iTunes we had up to 4 tracks in the top 100 of their Singer-Songwriter chart through the week.
There might be other charts yet to be published that we popped up in – we couldn’t say this was what we were aiming for – but one of our followers said they felt we aimed for the stars and got the moon, and we’ll take that for the first attempt.
We hope you’ve enjoyed the journey – please stay in touch with the artists; our top 40 remain listed in full here and the whole list of bands who applied is still here. And if you like what you hear, buy their tracks and find out where they’re playing live, and go and support them!
There are a lot of things learned from this and we know we can do some things better. We’d be grateful for your feedback – both if you’ve found music you’ve enjoyed, and if you’d like to offer suggestions for next time – and are already grateful for all the support we’ve received from many quarters down the days, weeks and months, and in the wake of the project’s first end.
Thank you and stay in touch… we hope to be back…
Wes White
founder of Storm the Charts
