Wud Records: December 2024 top ten published at SoundCloud

The December 2024 Chart

The top ten tracks for December 2024 from Wud Records have been published in a new compilation at SoundCloud.

However… In much the same way as nearly all social media platforms become ever more strangled under ever tighter controls, so too does the data from streaming services seem more comprised than in the past. However, we believe that, aside from the lateness of the stats coming from some of our distribution services, the quality of the data has improved recently.

We shall elaborate further with regard to each platform where our music is represented.

Bandcamp Is the Best Platform for Artists

If you are not yet a member of Bandcamp, we strongly suggest you sign up. Do it now! It’s free to join. :)

For any independent artist or label wanting to sell music or merch, there is no better place on the web to do so. If you don’t believe us, check out any search engine to see what other artists have to say about what the best site is for independent artists and labels. Bandcamp are simply Numero Uno. Finito!

Consider also this. There is always a danger that streaming services might remove music or artists from their platform (e.g. the recent dispute between Universal Music Group and TikTok), or the platform may even cease to exist altogether. Remember VitaminIC, MySpace, FriendsReunited?

When you subscribe to a music streaming platform, you don’t actually *own* any of the music. You’re just renting a bit of bandwidth on their distribution service, and most of the rent revenue you are paying for it goes to big corporations rather than the artists you love. It’s a terrible business model, both for artists and fans alike.

To avoid having the soundtracks to your life erased, we strongly recommend buying physical media and downloads so you can listen to your favourite songs whenever you wish. You know it makes sense!

Whilst several music platforms offer music downloads, they all charge a lot more and take a much bigger percentage of that higher price then Bandcamp does.

This means that you pay more, the band receives less, and a big greedy corporation takes a big old chunk of the money you paid to support the artist all for itself, just because it can. It’s a lose-lose situation, unless you happen to be a big greedy corporation who can rip people off however the fancy takes them.

Buying music from Bandcamp will cost you less and support the artist more. About 80% to 85% of what you spend at Bandcamp goes directly to the artist or their label, and is paid daily.

So it’s always a good idea to download from Bandcamp whenever possible, as they are the best site for supporting artists.

You can even pay more than the asking price for music on Bandcamp if you wish to add a little extra support for the artist. Again, this goes to the artists themselves, not some greedy anonymous megacorporation who only care for money, not the music you love.

There is also a rather fabulous Community feature at Bandcamp, and you can join ours by clicking here.

We believe that the stats we see from Bandcamp are perfectly accurate. Yay!

HearThis

We are considering moving all of our SoundCloud music to HearThis because we rather like the platform, even though it is less than 5% of the size of SoundCloud. Their MD has promised us *personally* that his company will not ride roughshod over its userbase without any warning at all in attempts to cut costs, and that is rather appealing.

More news on this will follow in the future.

We’ve had plenty of issues and arguments with SoundCloud over many years, such as our disabled messaging for allegedly ‘spamming’ other artists there, who we dared try to inform about being included in a Musical Discoveries compilation. It would have probably been fine if we’d supported a bunch of major hiphop stars, as that is what SC loves best, instead of the multitude of curious and largely undiscovered wonders we try to support.

Much of our material at HearThis consists of either Archive tracks or oddities. Streams there are not particularly significant at present, although we do include them in the final analysis.

SoundCloud

A few months ago, SoundCloud decided, in their seemingly infinite wisdom, to downgrade their excellent ‘Stats’ for premium users (such as ourselves) to something that was so completely and unbelievably dreadful it was unfit for purpose. They call it ‘Insights’, and they are surprisingly uninsightful, despite the profoundly misleading nomenclature.

Somebody at the company thought it would be a good idea to take a system that worked spectacularly well in real time, and replace it with another that is riddled with inconsistancies and errors. One can even observe the data changing right before one’s eyes! Even some of the most basic functions, such as choosing particular date ranges, no longer works properly. Which idiot thought this was a good idea? In our organisation such sabotage wouild mean instant dismissal. “Put your keys on the table and close the door behind you.”

Whilst we still do not fully trust the information we get from SoundCloud, there has been a significant improvement in data quality recently. Perhaps one day the new ‘Insights’ system will even be as good as their ‘Stats’ system was before they fiddled with it, but we shall have to wait and see.

Shitify

The data from the Wud Records Snotify for Artists pages covers everybody at that platform on our label. We also use the Snortify data from our distributors CD Baby and Soundrop.

Truth be told, we dislike spotify rather intensely right now. Not only are they tardy regarding supplying their stats, they have also implemented their most hideously egregious policy so far from 1st January 2024.

Spotify have chosen to take all of the revenue generated by any track having under 1000 streams and redistribute that revenue to the people who have the most streams, such as drake, kanye, taylor and so on.

Read about it here: https://blog.discmakers.com/2023/11/spotify-royalty-theft/

This isn’t just theft, it’s an absolute disgrace. Whoever thought this up should be ashamed of themselves and publicly rogered with a wire brush. Size four.

As such, we are considering boycotting spotify entirely. More news on this to come soon.

Should our music achieve more than 1000 streams per track, which is highly likely over the course of a whole year, that means we are in effect stealing somebody else’s royalties when we are paid.

Just because a creative person achieves under 1000 streams for a song doesn’t mean we have the right to take their royalties. They probably worked just as hard as we did to make and release their music. They are no less deserving of their royalties than anybody else.

The whole thing is mucky and bad and makes us feel dirty for being paid not just our own royalties, but those of people who were unable to make the cut. This is just so wrong. It’s a proper mess.

Not only that, two of our songs have had “excessive” plays. This excess has resulted in punitive measures, which we are still protesting. It seems ridiculous, but that is what has happened.

One such song, Future Sadness Past from Dark Company‘s Signmaker album, has been removed from spotify completely. In order to punish us for having our song played “excessively”, the rest of the Signmaker album has also been removed from spotify.

The other missing track is Welcome to the Family by Flicker, from At Least 1000 Words. This track seems to have been hidden from the public.

Our distributors have so far been unable to help regarding these issues.

As such, we are considering abandoning spotify entirely in the very near future. They are, after all, extremely shabby corporate scumbags, and have treated our label, and every other independent artist, with absolute contempt. Perhaps because we have spoken out against their egregious policies. Repeatedly.

Deezer, Tidal, YouTube, Amazon, Apple Music, etc.

We are now using data from our distributors for streams on platforms such as YouTube, Deezer and so on when reckoning the monthly charts. Unfortunately the data arrives several days late, so we only use it to extrapolate general trends.

The data for these services filters through to us via our distributors, although we are not very trusting of it. At best we can get a general feel of what is going on across all of the streaming services this way.

In Conclusion…

Previously the algorithm we used gave greatest weight to downloads and reposts, then likes and comments (active engagement) over plays (passive engagement).

If somebody actually pays to download something, they must have liked it! Our artists and ourselves are always very grateful to our supporters in this respect. It genuinely helps keep the fires burning and the wheels turning.

When somebody reposts a track, that gives it the opportunity to be heard by a potential new fan. This is always a tremendous help for creative souls. It enables that track to be discovered and enjoyed by the community of the person doing the sharing, which can generate new fans.

A ‘like’ is nice, but reposts actually helps the artist reach a bigger audience. You create the chance for that to happen. Recommending a song costs you nothing at all and can be a massive help for an independent artist. Why not do it now?

How Did We Calculate The December 2024 Chart?

The latest system is based upon some of the general tendencies and trends that have occured over the last calender month, as well as specifics where they are available. These have been amalgamated together to make the new Top Ten. Thank goodness for the Statistics module at university!

We have combined the stats from the general trends and tendencies from all of the services mentioned above. Each platform is represented and results from each are weighted and added together. Archive tracks and bonus tracks are ignored. The feedback from people who clearly didn’t listen to the music is now rendered insignificant.

Only you, the listener, can influence our January 2025 chart. So if there is a song you particularly like, keep playing it! Leave a comment, repost it, share it to your social media feeds! Download it from our Bandcamp! Add it to a playlist! It absolutely can make a difference.

Thanks For All Your Help!

Massive thanks go out to everybody who helped to support all of us during December 2024 by listening to, commenting on and reposting our bands’ tracks on SoundCloud, Bandcamp and elsewhere.

All the wonderful fans of our bands who supported us with downloads from Bandcamp are especially appreciated. You genuinely help us keep the fires burning and collectively we thank you for that most graciously. May you be blessed by the gods of rock n roll! :)

We would also like to say a special thank you to all the splendid people on Twitter and BlueSky who have been enjoying and reposting our tracks to their followers. All the support and positive feedback has been incredibly heartwarming for us all. It makes our endeavours here feel worthwhile.

Thank you very much to everyone who bought items from our merch store. Anyone who shares a photo of themselves with their Wud item on social media will receive an extra goody from ourselves once we have seen it and shared the photo on to our community as well.

If you buy something cool from the Flicker merch store, or the Dark Company merch store, we shall also send you an extra goody if you show us a photo of yourself (or friend, or environment) on social media with the item you purchased.

Last and by no means least, we would like to say thank you very much to all of the splendid people who have been buying us coffees at BuyMeACoffee. It’s very kind of you to help us out. All of these things absolutely contribute to ourselves being able to keep going, and spend more time making beautiful music for you to enjoy. It is truly appreciated very much indeed.

Who’s In The December 2024 Top Ten?

Dark Company

Congratulations to Dark Company! They’ve had a very good month indeed across all of the platforms we use, ending with them achieving three songs in our newest monthly chart, and all of those in the top four.

Straight in at number one is a new entry from Dark Company. Now, The Light is a powerful and bombastic slab of britpop, or hard rock, which smashes the listener in the face from the very first second. It has something of a hint of those two Manchester Gallagher brothers, on one of the best days they ever had.

Zak’s massive wall of guitar is loud sonic blast of pure joy, with the highlights illuminated by Maxx’s lazer precision bass. The chorus is an earworm you’ll be singing along with straight away and Sven’s drums are refined brutality at its best.

Now, The Light is in G major. The overdubbed guitar solo is highly effective and proves that sometimes the simplest things can work the best. There is a gratuitous Cmaj7 chord to listen out for, as well as one of the “bucket list” 7th chords that is always fun to squeeze into a song somewhere. The one you might spot here is a D7, the others being a G7 and a B7.

Down a single place from last month‘s number one to this month‘s number two is the next Dark Company song. This is a rather wonderful and catchy song called Decide to Ride, which may end up on the FUBAR CD as it is not especially rocky.

Decide to Ride is an earworm that you may find yourself singing after you’ve heard the chorus. The bouncy piano and subtley complex bass parts are an absolute delight. Josh plays a bit of what he calls “rhythm trumpet”, as well as wringing a few silvery notes through the mute at the end.

A for Acronym is a triple album that cosists of three separate parts. SNAFU is a loosely ‘rock’ colllection of songs, VSF is a loosely ‘reggae’ collection of songs, and FUBAR is a collection of songs that don’t quite belong in either of the other two categories.

More A for Acronym songs will be released soon. There is also a new page among Dark Company’s pages at this website for the A for Acronym: SNAFU album, which you can visit by clicking here.

A re-entry at number four is Dark Company‘s awesome alternative / hard / psychedelic rock and funk song Dancing In The Dark. The version you can hear is still work-in-progress. The last time this song charted was nearly two years ago, in January 2023.

Pete wrote the lyrics in 1989 and the song was originally performed by Alien Heat. In Dancing In The Dark, Pete describes his memories of going nightclubbing in the West End of London after being revved up by his good friend Billy.

Pete was not actually terribly keen on the song and would always refer to it as “Farting in the Park”.

Back in the days of Alien Heat, Dancing In The Dark included Graham’s drum solo. This was when everyone in the band would roll a cigarette (or something a little more flavoursome) while he performed it, hopefully having the deed done and the object lit in time to carry on with the song at the drum solo’s conclusion.

Alien Heat

The extraordinary band known as Alien Heat return to our charts for the first time since July 2023. Alien Heat, the band that subsequently spawned Dark Company, achieved two top ten songs, to finish 2024 in what was an excellent month for our legacy quintet.

Jigsaw is the first track on their Red Rug Demo. The Red Rug Demo was both Pete’s and Graham’s very first time in a professional commercial recording studio. When Pete was recording his vocal parts, George sat with him, encouraging and cueing him in, although he managed to start rather late at one point during the recording of Jigsaw.

If the reel onto which the Red Rug Demo was recorded still exists, all of the sounds that were not included in the mix would make a hilarious comedy of hoorays and one-two-three-four-go moments. There was a lot of giggling and myrth during the recording of Pete’s vocal parts.

Jigsaw was actually the warm-up track for the session and was recorded twice. Both versions were, to the second, exactly the same length. This knowledge of their song and the band’s skill in performing it impressed Jake Klosin, the engineer at Red Rug Studios, very much.

A brand new entry at number five is Badass Boogie by Alien Heat. The studio version is somewhat more refined that its bonkers and genius live version, as found on Alien Heat‘s Essential live compilation album.

Badass Boogie is a deceptively clever and crazy song. Dark Company attempted to replicate it, but nobody was able to to match Marc’s amazing virtuoso slap bass shredding. Badass Boogie has a bouncy, funky verse part in E, a heavy dirty funk chorus in F#m, a drum ‘n’ bass section played by two humans, and an insane guitar solo. It truly is a fabulously fun song.

The Bastard Sons of Dennis

The Bastard Sons of Dennis enjoyed a good month on the chart in December 2024, claiming three of the ten possible positions. All three songs come from their fabulous Cosy Lube Turtle album of Blue Oyster Cult covers.

Since the studio upgrade early last year, we have been working on improving the sound quality of everything we released in the last few years. Fans of our gruesome twosome can expect some exciting news regarding this album fairly soon. We are waiting on just a single file before making a big announcement.

A progtastic full-band mini-album by the dynamic duo is also in the early stages of finalisation.

Sadly we tend to feel that further recordings of their many remaining Blue Oyster Cult covers seems an unlikely prospect. This is mostly due to “discommunication, disorganisation and general untogetherness”, as the legend who is Paul Bateman once said of them when they were in Rough Terrain.

Then Came the Last Days of May stays where it was last month, at number six. This beautiful song tells a true story of how three university friends of Blue Öyster Cult’s guitarist, Donald ‘Buck Dharma’ Roeser, were brutally murdered in a drug deal that went horribly and tragically wrong. The version by our dynamic duo adds a twist to the versions heard on Blue Öyster Cult’s eponymous studio album and the live On Your Feet Or On Your Knees album from 1975.

Derek would sing “Now and then a duck” instead of “truck”, which caused fans of the duo to bring toy ducks with them along to live performances. Chuck’s solo is largely based on the live On Your Feet Or On Your Knees version, and his little whistle at the end (which didn’t always come out quite right in a live show) came from the character Tom Good in the uk tv sitcom The Good Life.

Before the Kiss a Redcap is a climber from number nine to number seven, and the second Cosy Lube Turtle song on the new chart. It is the song that The Bastard Sons of Dennis performed live the most frequently. It would often pique the curiosity and lure unsuspecting bar patrons to where the live music was being performed so they could see for themselves what was going on. It was a very popular and fun live song, and quite often a set opener.

Before the Kiss a Redcap is the story of some events that took place at Conry’s Bar, on The Turnpike in New York. It is the fifth song on the eponymously titled Blue Öyster Cult album, released in 1972. Its lyrics were allegedly inspired by a real event witnessed by Sandy Pearlman, in which a biker offered him a barbiturate to be taken via a kiss.

This month‘s number eight song is also a non-mover. Astronomy is a profoundly beautiful and haunting creation. It was composed by the Bouchard brothers, Joe and Albert, and Sandy Pearlman. It is the final track of Blue Öyster Cult’s 1974 Secret Treaties album, and an absolute masterpiece of progressive rock composition.

The version of Astronomy by The Bastard Sons of Dennis is more produced than their live performances. They would often end a show with Astronomy, introducing it as a song that was famously covered by Metallica. “We wrote it, of course; ahem, cough…” Chuck would quip.

Pok the Bard

We have started to release Pok‘s Anthology album’s tracks to SoundCloud (as mentioned in this News post) and doing so has made a big impact. Pok has claimed many of the top spots recently, and now one on our new chart.

Continuing its gradual slide from number one in September 2024, Pok’s newest release, Don’t Let It Pass You By is at number nine.

This is such a wonderful cheerful song with a strong positive message. It can bring a smile to the lips of the glummest and most grumpulated miseryguts you know. It would probably help if they like rock music, especially of the hard, classic, blues, country or psychedelic varieties.

Don’t Let It Pass You By may start with a gentle introduction in A major, but then it really kicks in hard when the song proper begins and the key changes to E major. There is plenty of Ibanez Roadstar guitar goodness across the mix, as well as some organ and synth, not to mention the tastiest rhythm section on the planet right now in Maxx and Sven to invigorate your dancing shoes.

Don’t Let It Pass You By is a very historic song, going right back to the early days of Laughing Sun in 1985.

We are very pleased with the latest version of Don’t Let It Pass You By by Pok. There is so much to love about this we recommend you just listen to it yourself, which you can do by clicking here.

Alchemeon

The Winged Man by Alchemeon is back on our charts for the first time since September 2021. It re-enters at number ten and is a splendid piece of classic rock that tells the legend of Icarus. This song has a strong upbeat energy and is in the key of A major.

This particular performance of The Winged Man features its new, experimental, and rather grandiose ending, that the band attempted for the very first time and were just about able to pull off. The earlier version of The Winged Man, on Alchemeon‘s Winter collection, does not have this ending.

* None of our other acts made it onto the December 2024 chart. *

Listening Options

If you would like to go to SoundCloud to hear the top ten songs from Wud Records in December 2024, as played, liked, commented upon and reposted by listeners, please click here.

If you prefer to listen right here at the Wud Records website, you will find that it is the new default music player. You will find it on all non band-specific pages at the site, including our Links collection and homepage.

The December 2024 chart has its very own dedicated page among the charts pages of this website. You can listen to the new compilation on its page by clicking here.

Each of the previous charts also has its own page in the charts section of this website. If you would like to see all our old charts, or for any previous month you are especially interested in, all of them can be accessed easily by clicking here.