Rihanna’s “Umbrella” and Fergie’s “Glamorous” indeed were hits on their own and they did sell as you say over 2 million copies… it’s sad though that they have to have this stigma of “repressed downloads” attached to them. Rihanna has another song moving up the charts called “Take A Bow” - it’s #15 currently… sadly, it’s not available for download yet. Apparently they’re going to repress it until late May. I actually like the song quite a bit, but as a form of protest I WILL NOT BUY IT when it becomes available for download. This practice of buying Hot 100 #1’s needs to stop, or Billboard needs to make their sales chart a rolling 5 week sales average so that every song gets a fair shake.

After she divorced Tommy Mottola, they started repressing her singles and selling them for way less than the competition (ex. Honey, My All, Heartbreaker, Thank God I Found You and Loverboy - which fortunately stalled at #2). There was also some scam with Through The Rain where commercials counted as spins or something, but fortunately it didn’t work. Despite massive airplay for We Belong Together it also had a chart scam with free downloads giving it an extra 1-2 weeks at #1. Don’t Forget About Us and Touch My Body were both repressed for weeks and then sales dropped like a bomb after the first week.

[quote]Mariah is not the only one to do this. Rihanna did it with Umbrella. And Fergie did this with Glamorous, which her label made it unavailable for download for close to 7 weeks. Are these not true #1s either?[quote]

Those songs both sold over 2 million copies. I bet Touch My Body won’t reach those sales.

I don’t think you understand the whole payola process and how it works. When a song starts slowing down in airplay at pop radio to the point where it’s looking like it’s going to stall in the teens on the chart and then the call-out scores come in and tell the stations that their listeners aren’t liking the song, 99% of the time, that song is going to peak in airplay in week 6 or 7, and then start falling down the chart. TMB has scored in the bottom quarter of the call-out chart it’s ENTIRE run and has been amongst the bottom 3 songs 4 of 6 weeks!!! As you can see by the last two weeks, the numbers are getting WORSE!

Week 1: 3.20 ( 28 out of 30 )
Week 2: 3.38 ( 24 )
Week 3: 3.38 ( 23 )
Week 4: 3.25 ( 28 )
Week 5: 3.08 ( 29 )
Week 6: 3.06 ( 28 )

The one true thing you do say her is that radio stations don’t rely just on call-out numbers. They are a tool and when used properly, they help a station get higher ratings, which leads to higher ad rates, and of course more revenue. Ratings = money. And call-out is the single most important thing the PD’s use to make decisions on songs. When you go against what your call-out scores are saying, you risk losing listeners. Sometimes PD’s do go with their gut instincts, and some do have a real feel for their audience. Truth be told though that even the best PD’s aren’t infallible and their gut will lead them wrong sometimes.

Call-out scores are the single most non-biased way of finding out what is popular and what is not popular. The numbers can’t be rigged, and that’s the beauty of it.

The downloads were suppressed for 42 days with TMB, so the reality is that the song is only selling more now because people couldn’t buy it when it first came out as with most songs. Also, when an artist has a fanbase as big as Mariah, they’re going to buy anything that is put out no matter what the quality. I liken this to Gwen Stefani’s song “Wind It Up” or Britney Spears’ “Gimme More.” The fanbases bought these songs like crazy when they first came out just because of the artist and both were flops on the radio. Like with Mariah, both Gwen and Britney have huge fanbases, unlike her, they didn’t get the payola help from her label to get her song into the top 10 pop airplay… By definition, the larger the fanbase, the more possible sales you’re going to have.