There’s a special name for music that isn’t produced by major labels and that can’t be easily tied into one genre: “indie,” short for independent. Indie bands have a reputation for being authentic and non-commercial. Fans believe that their favorite bands have achieved success only through their great music and hard work. That’s why many were surprised to learn that the hype surrounding indie bands like Geez, as well as singer-songwriters like Sombre, Jane Remover, and MKG, was, at least in part, fabricated by social media manipulation.
A kick start for the band
The uproar began with an interview in Billboard magazine with Andrew Spellman and Jesse Coren, heads of the American marketing company Chaotic Good Projects, which represents Geese and Sombre.
In this, both of them talked openly about how they help the hit songs of the artists to go viral. “A big part of what we’re doing is posting enough posts with enough impressions to get an idea of whether the song is trending or moving,” explains Spellman.
Once this happens, artists see more engagement on their posts as well.
The company uses an automated promotion system that runs countless social media accounts on thousands of iPhones to make a song a hit. The duo see this “trend simulation” as a kind of kick-start for their clients, whose songs might not have become famous otherwise.
For example, if an artist really gets some attention and is successful in making an appearance on a show like Saturday Night Live, the next phase of promoting the artist begins. Spellman adds, “The second SNL drops at midnight, you should post a hundred times saying it was the best performance of the year.” This then has a positive impact on the perception of other, real users. He emphasizes, “I think it’s really important to control the narrative.”
‘I’m calling it cheating’
But it doesn’t stop at social media – streaming figures on Spotify are also being manipulated. On the podcast “The Manager’s Playbook,” US A&R and music manager Chris Enochute — who has worked with big-name stars like Rihanna, Katy Perry and Selena Gomez — provided a clear explanation. Music labels may hire promotion companies to ensure that a song gets thousands of additional hits.
“Everyone in the record business (…) has seen their company betrayed,” says Enochute. “I can tell you I cheated. (…) They call it marketing, but (…) I’m calling it fraud. You’re manipulating streams, you’re manipulating charts, you’re manipulating data, you’re paying to play. (…) That’s cheating.”
70 years of manipulated charts
While the means of manipulation may be new, the principle itself is as old as the music business itself, as Enochute points out. Managers and record companies have always found ways to promote their artists through ethically questionable, sometimes even illegal, means.
- Late 1950s: The “Payola Scandal” erupts in the US. To boost sales figures, radio DJs and broadcast heads received cash or gifts to give certain songs more rotation. In turn, this artificially increased the popularity of the music. Since radio broadcasters did not declare the payments as advertisements, audiences were defrauded. The word “payola” is a blend of the word “pay” and the gramophone model “Victrola”. This practice was outlawed in the US in 1960 as a form of unfair competition.
- In the 1970s, record companies such as Casablanca Records heavily influenced the position of their albums and singles in the charts. Larry Harris, the label’s vice president at the time, bribed the editor of Billboard magazine, which was responsible for the US charts, to push the artists from Casablanca to the top. Since major department store chains would only stock records that were on the Billboard charts at the time, this move had a huge impact on record sales at the time. In his memoir, Harris recounted that it was only through his efforts that four of the rock band Kiss’ albums simultaneously charted on the Billboard charts in 1977.
- In the 1990s, record companies sometimes manipulated sales figures by bribing store employees to scan CD barcodes outside opening hours. Labels would also send out “street teams” to buy stacks of CDs.
- Although it may not technically have been cheating, a surefire way to manipulate the European charts was the extremely popular German TV show “Wetten,das…?” Whoever sings their new hit on the show is almost certain to be in the top 10 on the German charts – continental Europe’s biggest market – by next week. This was enough inspiration to make almost all major American artists from Michael Jackson to Cher, Madonna, Backstreet Boys, Justin Timberlake, REM and many others move across the pond.
- In 2005, music industry giants Sony BMG and Warner Music Group paid $10 million and $5 million (€8.6 million and €4.3 million, respectively) to New York DJs to settle court cases over payola bribes.
- In 2019, an anonymous hacker named “Kai” admitted to helping German rap stars conquer the charts in a YouTube documentary by “Y-Kollektiv” – a network of journalists for German public broadcasters. Their method reportedly involved hacking the Spotify accounts of 150,000 to 250,000 German users. He would log them in and ask them to “listen to the song without stopping”. The longer they listen, the higher the number of hits, the better the chart ranking – and the more money there is for it. The label mentioned in the documentary, Groove Attack, has vehemently denied the allegations.
Chaotic Good Projects has now removed all material about their work from their website. It seems it just wasn’t good for business to talk publicly about its methods.
This article was originally written in German.