This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Artist News Labels & Publishers Releases
Instant grat sales of new Gaga track not chart eligible
By Aly Barchi | Published on Friday 25 October 2013
Lady Gaga’s rather haphazard ‘ARTPOP’ campaign has hit the skids, well, a little bit, with the news that her new single ‘Do What You Want’ has been declared “chart ineligible” in the UK.
First released as a so-called ‘instant grat’ incentive to Little Monsters paying for ‘ARTPOP’ in advance, the song – a collaboration with R Kelly – was later promoted to an official single once it got a positive fan reaction, so that people can also buy the song on its own, rather than getting access to it by pre-buying the new LP, which is out on 11 Nov.
As previously reported, the Official Charts Company changed its rules earlier this year so that individual tracks distributed via an ‘instant-grat’ promotion could still count for the singles chart, even though in theory they have been sold as part of an album package. But the exception can only apply to one track per album.
Gaga already did the instant-grat thing with ‘ARTPOP’ track ‘Applause’, so ‘Do What You Want’ instant-grat tracks can’t count for the UK singles chart. But more than that, because the data provided by download stores doesn’t distinguish between tracks sold as part of an album package and tracks sold as individual singles, the OCC can’t count the latter either.
Which means, the Charts Company has confirmed, sales of ‘Do What You Want’ will only “become eligible to chart once the current chosen promotional period ends and the full album is released on 11 Nov”.
And here is that bit of ineligible Gaga:
