ItaliaHit and Classifica Indie: twenty identical emerging-chart positions

Twenty songs out of twenty, in the same twenty positions, with nineteen identical cover-image URLs. That is what I found when I compared the “Top 20 Emergenti” published by ItaliaHit with the first twenty places in the 12 October 2026 Classifica Indie emerging-artists chart, which my companies operate. I did not authorize that selection to be republished. Here is how I reached that finding, what the page reveals about its data flow, and why I am defending the work behind the chart.

The main acquisition took place on 16 October 2026, roughly between 22:33 and 22:39 in Madrid and Italy (UTC+02:00). The figures, URLs and responses below describe that observation, not necessarily what a reader will see today. I have retained the copies used in the comparison.

The central finding: twenty identical positions

The match runs from SorriSo’s “Dillo alla Luna” at number one to Le Arti’s “SE PENSO ALLA GUERRA” at number twenty. All twenty songs occupied exactly the same positions. Nineteen image URLs matched as well. The exception was Gianpiero Grasso’s cover, replaced in ItaliaHit’s JSON by a generic Unsplash image. This does not mean that we own the copyright in every record sleeve: it means that the same files hosted on our domains and CDN were linked.

Movement indicators did not always match. ItaliaHit marked SorriSo as rising while our edition showed no change; Dhutych was marked as rising rather than as a new entry; Gianluca Maria Bambace was shown as unchanged instead of down one place. None of the twenty rows in the observed JSON had is_new set to true. I do not ascribe a motive to those differences: I cannot tell whether they came from an automated transformation, manual editing or mistakes.

The pages compared

These screenshots come from a later check, at around 23:29 on 16 October 2026. They are not the screenshots from the main 22:33–22:39 acquisition. At that later check, ItaliaHit still displayed the same twenty-position sequence. Open each image to inspect it at full size.

How ItaliaHit presents the data

In the public JavaScript on ItaliaHit’s homepage, I found a function named fetchCharts(). The visitor’s browser requests a public API hosted on SPC Music Publishing, reads the JSON and passes it to renderCharts(), which draws the lists. ItaliaHit provides its own visual interface; it does not embed our chart in an iframe. I also found no direct browser request to one of our private chart APIs in the homepage code examined.

Publishing your own JSON does not establish that you calculated your own chart. The emerging-artists block we observed reproduces our first twenty positions. Its public response contains rank, movement, artist, title, cover and a new-entry flag, but no raw airplay events, station list or timestamps from which an independent calculation could be reconstructed. We have not seen the server-side code that prepared this JSON, so we do not know whether the original acquisition involved a manual import, automated reading, an intermediary file or something else.

The page adds a timestamp as ?t= to avoid a stale cached response. That does not prove real-time calculation. We found no polling timer in the script examined. Two responses obtained during the investigation had identical content; that tells us nothing about the update schedule. Our emerging-artists chart is weekly.

Covers requested from our servers

The JSON includes URLs on classificaindie.com, classificaitaliana.com and promoradio.b-cdn.net. When a website displays an image by pointing straight to a file on another domain, the visitor’s browser downloads that file from the other domain. This is called hotlinking. Existing Apache logs on our servers contain requests for those images with an HTTP Referer associated with ItaliaHit or SPC Music Publishing, consistent with the URLs in the JSON.

In the sample from two HTTPS virtual hosts, I counted 358 requests and 679,382,565 response bytes, about 679 MB. That is not 358 people: one visit can request many images. It is not a measure of all traffic either; it excludes our CDN, requests without those Referer values and logs outside the sample. A Referer can be missing or altered, so I consider it alongside the public code and image URLs, not as proof of someone’s identity. We have not measured a cost or performance impact attributable to these requests.

After we protected the images, our logo appeared on their page

I asked my team to restrict the loading of covers hosted on our infrastructure when ItaliaHit requests them. We did not alter their page: the JSON feeding the chart still points to our file URLs, but our infrastructure answers those requests with the Mantovani logo instead of the covers.

In a fresh check of ItaliaHit’s public homepage on 17 October 2026, shortly after midnight in Madrid, its emerging-artists Top 20 still displayed the same twenty songs in the same positions. The browser requested nineteen images from our domains and all nineteen requests were redirected to the Mantovani logo. Only the generic image at number fifteen came from another source. The screenshot below shows what readers saw; this is a separate observation from the material acquired on 16 October.

To me, the image makes a finding already present in the data immediately visible: this chart still requests files from our infrastructure. The 17 October check is separate from the main comparison made the previous day.

What the other sections show

Every cover in the “Top 20 Italia” block used an Apple domain. Compared with the public iTunes Top Songs feed acquired on 16 October, seventeen songs and seventeen cover URLs matched, and the first seven were in the same positions. This is strongly consistent with use of that feed, directly or through an intermediary. We did not observe ItaliaHit’s server connecting to Apple. The iTunes Top Songs feed is also not a chart of the most-streamed songs on Apple Music.

In “Top 20 Airplay radio”, fifteen covers pointed to a Radio Italia domain, and twelve URLs appeared on the public Radio Italia page we compared. I also found mismatched metadata and images: at number fifteen, the artist and title fields for Eugenio Ferrara and “FREED FROM DESIRE” were reversed; in two other entries the image corresponded to a different song on Radio Italia. These observations do not establish the source of every position or show that no other monitoring system exists.

ItaliaHit’s Radio Date page requests another public API on SPC’s domain. Of the fifteen releases examined, twelve used exactly the same cover URLs shown on the public EarOne page. I do not extend that finding to the other three releases or claim to know whether third parties have agreements with one another.

Why I challenge this republication

Our Top 50 emerging-artists chart takes people, infrastructure, checks and investment. My companies pay for the team and systems behind it. Seeing its first twenty entries published elsewhere in exactly the same order, usually with the same cover-image links, is a different matter from ordinary competition. I challenge the republication of that selection without my authorization.

A chart may represent investment in collecting, checking and presenting data. Directive 96/9/EC provides a specific form of database protection where its requirements are met; copyright protection for an original selection or arrangement calls for a separate assessment. I take the unauthorized republication of work funded by my companies seriously. I will ask our lawyers to assess the rights and measures that apply.

In my earlier article comparing music-service websites, I called for transparency. Here I add a row-by-row comparison, cover URLs, the public page code and an aggregate sample of our server logs. I will keep investing in Classifica Indie and services for independent artists. If the operators of the sites mentioned provide verifiable documentation, I can add it without rewriting the historical observations of 16 October.

Artists: check who you are buying from

Do not mistake ItaliaHit or SPC Music Publishing for Classifica Indie or companies in my group. The emerging-artists Top 20 we observed repeated our first twenty positions without my authorization. Presenting a list derived from someone else’s work without making its origin clear can lead customers to believe they are paying for a method or reliability they cannot verify. My objection is not that competitors exist: I am defending work that my companies funded and carried out.

On the public ItaliaHit and SPC Music Publishing pages we examined on 16 October 2026, I could not find readily accessible tax-identification details. For anyone buying music services, I consider that lack of transparency a warning sign that should not be ignored. Before you entrust any provider with money, music or personal data, ask for its legal business name, address, applicable tax or VAT identification, contact details, full price, service terms and the origin of the data it sells. If those answers cannot be verified, postpone the purchase and keep a copy of the offer.

Article 5 of the EU E-Commerce Directive requires service providers within its scope to make identifying information easily, directly and permanently accessible. In Spain, Article 10 of Law 34/2002 also addresses tax identification and prices. Which rules apply depends on where and how each operator is established. The documented chart match and the lack of clarity observed are good reasons to be cautious; legal conclusions require the appropriate professional assessment.

Technical appendix: how I made the comparison

We read public HTML and JavaScript, requested JSON responses and HTTP headers from endpoints accessible without credentials, compared artist, title and full image URLs position by position, and inspected existing Apache logs. We did not access third-party admin panels, databases or PHP code. The public api.php response contained top_big, tv_streaming and emergenti_top, each with twenty entries. Each entry exposed pos, trend, artista, titolo, cover and is_new. The Radio Date page used radio_api.php.

Findings and limits at a glance

All twenty positions and movement indicators

Compared with our edition of 12 October 2026. “No change” means a stable position and “NEW” a new entry on Classifica Indie. ItaliaHit reports direction but not the number of places moved.

Endpoints and HTTP headers

GET https://www.spcmusicpublishing.com/italiahit/api.php?t=<timestamp_ms>
GET https://www.spcmusicpublishing.com/italiahit/radio_api.php?t=<timestamp_ms>
HTTP/2 200
date: Fri, 16 Oct 2026 20:33:47 GMT
server: aruba-proxy
content-type: application/json; charset=UTF-8
access-control-allow-origin: https://italiahit.it
access-control-allow-methods: GET
cache-control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, max-age=0
x-servername: webx.aruba.it
x-aruba-cache: MISS

Access-Control-Allow-Origin lets ItaliaHit’s browser read SPC’s response; it is not authorization from us. Cache headers and the timestamp do not certify real-time recalculation. aruba-proxy identifies infrastructure that responded, not the person responsible for the content.

Domains and the scope of the check

The public WHOIS of Registro .it checked on 16 October listed italiahit.it as created on 15 October 2026 at 20:03:56, with Register S.p.A. as registrar and Silvio Pacicca as registrant and administrative contact. We do not publish personal contact details. The .com RDAP record listed spcmusicpublishing.com as created on 3 December 2025, with Tucows Domains Inc. as registrar and registrant details protected. These records do not identify the author of the code or prove an infringement.

The main comparison records a historical observation from 16 October 2026. Public pages can change, and we have not verified possible third-party agreements or licences. The main image is an editorial illustration; the chart images are screenshots of public pages.

Conclusion

I will continue to support Classifica Indie and defend my team’s work. I have documented the complete match across twenty positions and the use of nineteen image URLs on our infrastructure; I will ask our lawyers to assess the measures available. If the operators of the sites mentioned provide verifiable documentation about the data’s origin or any authorization, I will consider it without changing what was observed on 16 and 17 October.

Public sources consulted

• ItaliaHit homepage and Radio Date.
• SPC chart API and Radio Date API.
• Classifica Indie Emerging, 12 October edition.
• iTunes Top Songs, Radio Italia and EarOne.
• Directive 96/9/EC, Directive 2000/31/EC and Spain’s Law 34/2002, Article 10.