briefeule, the owner of Charts Aktuell, gets between 60 and 70 submissions a week now, more on release Fridays. He scrolls through all of them once and decides what’s good enough for the playlist and the release post. For most people who follow Charts Aktuell, that’s exactly why the page works. It doesn’t feel like a news desk. It feels like an opinion.
Over 47,000 people follow the account now, which sees itself as a kind of daily Deutschrap news bulletin. It started a lot less glamorous than that. The first posts were made in a meme generator app, “and they looked pretty ugly, accordingly,” he says about it today. Reels didn’t even exist as a format back then. If he had to start from zero again, he’d go straight for Reels and start testing them immediately to see early on what actually works.
The fact that an Instagram account has turned into an actual job shows most clearly in this: two A&R positions came his way through the page, without him ever applying anywhere. That’s where it gets interesting, because it makes him editorial and industry at the same time. Neutral, by his own admission, was never the plan.
“If you think I’m neutral in any way, you probably didn’t understand the concept of the page. I don’t see myself as a journalist, more like a tastemaker. My standard for myself is to show people good music and inform them about interesting topics around rap, but always with my own opinion.”
Both A&R jobs coming through the page isn’t a conflict of interest to him, more a logical result: “It works both ways, one feeds the other.”
He’s no stranger to labels either. “I’ve already been in contact with pretty much every German label you’d know, and it’s only logical they want their artists placed.” He gets approached constantly, he says, but only posts what actually convinces him: “If it’s not interesting, I just don’t post about it.” Between a signed artist and an independent newcomer who reaches out, he doesn’t make a distinction. “Either I’m into it, or I’m not. It’s really that simple.”
How much of this is control and how much is dependence on Instagram itself, he’s aware of that. The algorithm keeps changing, and he actually thinks that’s a good thing, because it means there’s no single trick to going viral. If the format changed fundamentally, he’d try to adapt as best he could. “That’s worked out reasonably well in the past, at least.”
No surprise where new names tend to land on his radar: TikTok. “It’s the easiest and most present option, but obviously not the only one.” As for whether he checks TikTok, Instagram, or streaming first when looking into a new name, it just comes down to wherever he discovered the newcomer or wherever the newcomer reached out to him. That’s what decides the order.
You’d assume hate comes automatically with that kind of reach. For briefeule it stays fairly limited, and he has an explanation that says a lot about the concept of the page itself: criticism almost always targets the artists featured, not him. For most people, the page stays an abstract thing. Many don’t even realize there’s one person behind it.
“Ninety percent of the criticism and hate I get comes from artists whose music just isn’t good, who can’t handle not getting featured in the release list. I usually find that kind of embarrassing, especially when they post about it publicly in their story.”
Almost as an aside, the number comes up that explains basically everything: 13 hours and 20 minutes of screen time, last week. “Way too much, that’s definitely my biggest addiction. Which is also why I found a way to at least monetize it somewhat.”
For everything Charts Aktuell has become, briefeule sounds most animated talking about what’s next. Just last week he got to curate his own small stage at splash! Festival, shoutout to Lukas Schulze for making that happen, and that’s exactly the direction, more live events, he wants to push much harder next year. He’d also like to do a podcast, if it weren’t for his own take on the format: “There are way too many lame podcasts out there.” Instead, he has an idea for a video format he’s convinced would go properly viral and doesn’t exist in Germany yet, one he’s keeping to himself for now until he’s planned out a hundred percent how and with whom to make it happen.
Until then, it stays what it’s basically been since the meme generator days: keep building reach, so he can afford bigger projects down the line.