Indie music has long carried an aura of authenticity: artists outside the major-label system, rising on talent and word of mouth. That image suffered a blow when it emerged that the buzz behind several indie acts and singer-songwriters — names like Geese, Sombr, Jane Remover and Mk.gee — had been at least partly manufactured through deliberate social‑media and streaming manipulation.
The controversy deepened after a Billboard interview with Andrew Spelman and Jesse Coren, leaders of the U.S. marketing firm Chaotic Good Projects, who described how they “kick‑start” songs. Their approach, as they explained it, is to post huge volumes from many accounts to create the impression that a track is trending. That simulated momentum then increases engagement with the artists’ own posts. They detailed an automated system that runs thousands of accounts across large numbers of devices to amplify a song’s visibility.
The campaign doesn’t stop at generating fake buzz. According to Spelman and Coren, once an artist gets mainstream exposure — for example, a high‑profile TV performance — the next phase is to flood social feeds with praise for that performance. Those repeated posts aim to shape public perception and make other users view the moment as a genuine cultural event.
This kind of manipulation extends beyond social platforms. On a podcast called The Manager’s Playbook, A&R veteran Chris Anokute — who’s worked with Rihanna, Katy Perry and Selena Gomez — acknowledged that labels sometimes pay promotion companies to inflate streaming numbers. “They call it marketing, but … I’m calling it cheating,” he said, describing the buying of streams, chart manipulation and paid plays as deliberate distortions of what listeners actually chose.
Although the techniques are new, the motive isn’t. The music industry has a long history of bending exposure and sales figures to favor certain acts:
– In the late 1950s the U.S. payola scandal revealed DJs and broadcasters accepting money and gifts in exchange for airplay, deceiving listeners who assumed playlists reflected popular demand.
– In the 1970s executives at Casablanca Records admitted using influence and bribes to push their artists up the Billboard charts, because radio play and retailer stocking decisions often followed chart placement.
– In the 1990s labels sometimes bribed store employees to scan CDs repeatedly or organized street teams to buy copies to inflate sales figures.
– Television appearances also swayed charts: performing on hugely watched shows could virtually guarantee a high-charting single in some markets, prompting many international acts to seek those slots.
– In 2005, Sony BMG and Warner Music Group paid multimillion‑dollar settlements tied to payola allegations involving radio DJs.
– More recently, a 2019 claim by an anonymous hacker known as “Kai” alleged he boosted German rap stars’ Spotify counts by hacking hundreds of thousands of accounts and streaming songs continuously — a charge denied by the label named in a documentary.
After the publicity around Chaotic Good Projects’ interview, the firm removed descriptions of its methods from its website. That step suggests that public disclosure of these tactics can be bad for business, even if the tactics themselves persist.
The pattern is clear: the tools have changed — from bribed DJs to automated bot farms and paid streams — but the goal remains the same: manufacture visibility and convert it into industry success. For fans who prize indie artists’ authenticity, and for anyone trying to judge a song’s real cultural impact, these revelations raise uncomfortable questions about where popularity now comes from and what counts as earned success.
This article was adapted from reporting originally published in German.