Artist Danny Cole, known for previous public stunts like covering the Hollywood sign's O with a giant cow, has launched 'Everybody's Album,' a project aiming to hack the Billboard 200 chart. The plan involves recruiting 100,000 people to each record one second of audio, paying them with a Shopify gift card that can only be used to pre-order the album, thereby exploiting chart metrics. With help from influencer Anthony Po, who has millions of followers, they have already secured 80,000 participants.
This project matters because it challenges the dominance of major record labels on cultural scoreboards like Billboard, using collective participation as a form of disruptive art. Cole frames the work as a guerrilla art piece that questions true consumption patterns and creativity metrics, while also blurring the lines between art, stunt, and social media spectacle. It raises questions about what constitutes art in the digital age and how artists can leverage internet culture to critique institutional power.