making those gig sales count towards soundscan, OCC, chart-track

Hi Guys,

I just wanted to start a discussion about making gig sales of albums/singles/eps count towards weekly soundscan/occ/chart track sales figures.

Especially for album launch type gigs, where it's standard to sell a lot of albums as the audience leaves the venue. In-stores can be a practical workaround, but, invariably it's a short set and you're at the behest of the retailer with what you can/can't do.

For small labels and independent bands, it is important to make every sale count. Not paramount, but, it is worthwhile, I think, to try and make every sale count towards the weekly charts.

One (clunky) idea for smaller bands and gigs was to take as many sales online, at the gig. Instead of cash. In other words, use a mobile/laptop that has internet access, instead of taking cash to take the payment.

e.g. fan comes up to the merch. desk after the gig. Instead of them giving you cash, they quickly type in their paypal address and (quickly) process the order online on the Drupal site, then you give them the album. ditto for credit cards.

That's a little clunky and might be impractical at some gigs, but, the new mobile paypal (where people can sms a paypal payment) , which is coming to europe soon, is more practical to do something like that.

Obviously, for the whole thing to work, your online payment partner must be reporting to neilsen, the OCC, chart track and others. but I notice that this is beginning to be more common now as payment providers are getting more competitive.

Anyone else have any ideas on "making sales count" like that using Drupal at gigs?

For larger venues, where they have the barcode scanner and PDQ credit card processor on-site, it's obviously not a problem, but, for smaller labels and bands who might expect to do a decent wedge of sales at a medium-to-small venue I think it would be useful to tease out some solution.

Dub