The key to music success in 2026: pay for fake people to hype you up |
Following the revelation that Geese and other popular rising acts are using a type of marketing involving networks of fake accounts, arts writer Derek McArthur considers the dreaded implications of the deceptive practice.
Throughout its history, the music industry has been no stranger to deception, having been found over and over to be playing an open-eared public for complete and utter fools. The payola radio scandal of the 1950s, through to recent paid-for placements on popular streaming service playlists, all show how those with money are willing to game the system set out in front of them.
So, excuse me if my initial encounters with NYC indie rockers Geese were given just the tiniest bit of tinfoil hat suspicion. There was something to the group’s rise that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. It only ever grew more frustrating as praise for the group swirled enthusiastically around the internet and then bled into the real life around me.
A young band was very quickly, suddenly, in fact, getting every opportunity thrown their way, packaged up in a clean, precise fashion. The group’s songwriter Cameron Winter was immediately touted as a voice of a generation, repeated until it became truth, culminating in an “extremely sold-out” stripped-back performance at Carnegie Hall (filmed by popular auteur director Paul Thomas Anderson, no less). The rising........