Before we get to the Uncharted round-up, some housekeeping: Last week, several Uncharted Territory readers asked about whether artists can rank on Uncharted by using programs or bots to drive up their MySpace Music song play or friend counts. If artists do this, the inflated numbers obviously don't reflect the artist's true popularity or online fan engagement. Therefore, the Billboard charts department carefully reviews every artist who ranks on Uncharted, and uses a variety of checks and cross-references to validate an artist's data on MySpace Music or any other platform. If an artist's online presence and fan engagement across platforms suggests that data has been artificially inflated, the artist does not qualify for that week's chart.
Now, onto the kudos.
New to Uncharted this week with over 13,000 new Last.fm song plays is the "glam noir" act IAMX. The solo project of Chris Corner, former frontman of UK band the Sneaker Pimps, released its newest album, Volatile Times, last week, and is currently on tour in Europe.