Record sales charts are often HIGHLY unreliable. They were all but worthless for many years.
Remember how, in the mid-80s, the sales charts finally included Wal-MArt for the first time? All of a sudden, Garth Brooks had the #1 album in America. MOST of us in the big cities immediately responded, “Garth WHO???” We’d never heard of him.
By basing sales figures on a few record chains without considering where MOST Americans really shop, Billboard had been way off all along, completely underestimating the popularity of country music.
It does happen. NothingMan described in his post how “Kryptonite” was a regional hit before it went national.
An example from the Atlanta area in the recent past is Sean Mullins’s “Rockabye”. The local station started playing it, the listeners started requesting it, it became hot locally, and then Mullins got a big record deal and went to Hollywood to make a video.
This course of events seems like the exception rather than the rule, these days. It seems more and more like hit acts aren’t rising to the top on merit so much as they are being foisted on the public by the big labels
By the way, it’s interesting that “Kryptonite” broke onto the charts in this way. I was just thinking earlier that this was the best new song I had heard on the radio in some time.
Seems like we get better music when it comes from the bottom up, rather than from the top down.
Thanks again to NothingMan for the interesting info. Hey NothingMan, just out of curiosity, what is your station’s format? Do y’all ever play music from unsigned acts, or seek out and promote local talent?