A tale of three albums: 1) TRAVIS SCOTT's JACKBOYS label compilation is the #1 album in the US this week, thanks in part to tens of thousands of digital copies of the album bundled with Scott merch including hoodies, duffel bags and mirror dice. 2) The original cast album for the ALANIS MORISSETTE musical JAGGED LITTLE PILL hit #2 on BILLBOARD's cast albums chart in December but missed the main albums chart because the digital copies bundled with Broadway tickets for an extra $2 didn't count for official chart purposes. Mirror dice plus album good. Broadway ticket plus album bad. But starting with next week's chart, which means starting with 3) any album released in 2020, the bundling rules are stricter for everybody. If the merch can't be bought without the bundled album, and if the bundled price isn't at least $3.49 more than the unbundled merch (is that the official value of an album in 2020?), then Billboard/Nielsen won't recognize those sales. In American football, a catch isn't legally a catch until the player who makes the catch makes a "football move," which is weird because a) it implies there are moves that football players can make while playing football on a football field that aren't football moves, and b) no one who follows the game can explain what exactly one is. Henceforth in the music biz, adding $3.49 to the price of a t-shirt and turning it into a t-shirt-and-music bundle, while still offering just the t-shirt at the original price, shall constitute a "music move." Everyone will have the rulebook and everyone will find loopholes in the rulebook and by 2021 or 2022 no one will know what's the rule and what's the loophole, what's the mirror dice and what's the music. Billboard this year is also counting YOUTUBE plays, which cost listeners not a penny, on its album chart for the first time. Mirror dice or Broadway ticket plus free album bad. Free spin on YouTube good. Give me another minute and I could defend all of these choices, but I'm not entirely sure I could explain them. Suggestion for the future: Count all bundles. Or count none. I like simple things... This, from the NEW YORK TIMES' JON CARAMANICA, is a really good explanation of how borrowing, appropriation, homage and overlap are an essential part of music creation, and how the growing wave of music plagiarism cases (note to YELLOWCARD: seriously?) is based on a "complete and willful ignorance of how pop music is actually made." I'm probably a little more sympathetic to some of the plaintiffs than Caramanica is, but on this we agree: "Originality is a con." That would be a helpful jury instruction in any plagiarism case. Right on cue, here's KATY PERRY fighting back... RIP MARK DAVID FISHER and NICK BLAGONA.