- Spencer Pratt asked fans to buy and stream his wife’s music after the couple’s LA home burned down.
- As a result, Heidi Montag’s 2010 album “Superficial” reached No. 1 on the iTunes chart.
- Pratt said this would help raise money for their family to rebuild, but the feat is mostly symbolic.
Spencer Pratt may have lost almost everything to the Pacific Palisades fire, but he believes his wife’s music career may be what helps them afford to rebuild.
Pratt and his wife, Heidi Montag, are among the dozens of celebrities whose homes burned down in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood. But unlike other victims of the fires, who have opted for GoFundMe campaigns to help get back on their feet, the former stars of “The Hills” have devised a much more publicity-friendly plan.
“Please stream any of @heidimontag music on any platforms it will make a huge difference!” Pratt wrote on TikTok Friday alongside photos of himself standing on the ashes of their home, set to Montag’s song “Look How I’m Doin.”
His campaign triggered a spike in downloads for Montag’s 2010 album, “Superficial,” which rose to No. 1 on iTunes on Saturday.
Both Pratt and Montag shared their reactions to the news, thanking friends and fans for “rallying behind us in this devastating time,” as Montag said in a video on Instagram. But despite the insinuation that more streams will directly result in a significant amount of money for Pratt, Montag, and their family, the couple’s feat is likely more symbolic than productive.
iTunes revolutionized the music industry when it was launched by Apple in 2001, solidifying the shift from physical media to digital downloads. But little more than two decades later, it has been rendered mostly obsolete by the rise of streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music.
Unlike music streamers, which charge users monthly subscription fees for unlimited consumption, iTunes relies on individual payments for each download.
This setup is more lucrative for the artists but proved to be far less popular among fans. In 2019, Apple announced it would discontinue iTunes and remove the app from its newer operating systems. These days, the iTunes Store is still accessible from Apple’s primary Music app, but as its own entity, iTunes only exists for Windows and older Macs.
Very few music fans still use iTunes regularly, which makes its charts less consequential — and easier to manipulate. The daily, ongoing updates are susceptible to fickle fluctuations in download activity.
“Relatively small organized efforts can lead to the most purchased songs drifting far from what’s actually receiving the most attention,” Jonah Krueger reported for Consequence last year.
“Because fewer people are shelling out $1.29 to download their own copy of a song,” Krueger wrote, “it takes proportionally fewer people to sway the numbers and launch whatever song’s being pumped to the top of the charts.”
So why do iTunes achievements still cause chatter? Rich Juzwiak argued in Jezebel that it’s because artists and their most ardent supporters — people like Montag and Pratt — leverage these charts on social media for headlines and bragging rights.
In other words, the iTunes charts are not reliable sources to determine what people are actually listening to on a macro scale. They’re also not likely to make Pratt and Montag rich overnight.
The most reliable source cited by music professionals is Billboard, which ranks albums and songs based on various data points, including iTunes downloads, physical sales, and streaming stats.
Billboard’s charts, like the all-genre Hot 100, are updated weekly — and that’s where Pratt has set his sights.
“We need radio play, I guess not just iTunes, to get No. 1 on Billboard charts, which is the ultimate goal, cause then it’s like, that’s a wrap,” Pratt said in a TikTok video. “Heidi is the biggest superstar in the world, you know? Obviously not Taylor Swift, but it’s like Taylor Swift, Heidi Montag.”
But would it really be a wrap? If Pratt’s goal really is cold, hard cash for his family, probably not. Montag’s songs have not appeared on Spotify or Apple Music’s daily charts as of yet. And even if they did, earning reliable income from streaming alone is infamously difficult even for established artists.
Still, Pratt and Montag’s desire for money has always been matched by their desire to get (and stay) famous. This streaming campaign might not get them too much of the former, but it will ensure the latter.
