Instagram influencers are ruining music

I found a new industry plant and did some digging...

After hosting an NYU Tisch x Billboard music program webinar last year, I decided to start my own playlist and grow it with ads. I had initially shared this idea with the attendees of the webinar to help their music and decided "why not do it myself?"

So I updated my most popular playlist at the time, created artwork, and hit my homie Ramsey up to create some ad assets. My playlist grew from 27 followers to over 5,000 followers in just a few months with just $800 in ad spend.

After reaching 1,000 followers, I became eligible to be a selector over at Playlist Push. Artists would submit music for me to consider for my playlist and I would give my honest review and then get compensated a few dollars for it. Even though my ads are off, I still make ~$100/mo off the reviews.

Today, I was checking what songs were submitted to me and I came across the most obvious industry plant ever. And it prompted me to write my most constructive review yet:

I can tell when you’re an industry plant powered by an investor. The song was bad so I pulled up the artist’s Instagram to check out the page.

Oh god, it’s yet another artist with a mask/oversized head. The last person to do this properly was Marshmello - please stop trying. Kind of a red flag but let’s move on.

I decided to keep digging - yep several of the post likes and page followers are from India & Bangladesh… for an artist whose top streams come from Phoenix, Arizona? Red flag. 🚩

Then I started auditing the comments of the posts.

So this “artist” either purchased a cute animal-themed page to launch their career, or just grew that page themself and rebranded to a music page. The account was formed on June 7th, 2020, and was rebranded to a music account on December 15th, 2021. Huge red flag. 🚩🚩

But let’s move on to the other comments. I noticed pages like World_of_Technooo, Techno.Revolution_ and Techno.Terrace leaving comments on his latest release. They each have over 100k followers! Maybe I am just out of touch? Nope.

Remember - this artist’s music is trash. There is no way these three pages posted the song on their profiles 8 times on their own accord - they got paid* for the placement. So that’s another red flag. 🚩🚩🚩 At this point, there have been so many red flags, it’s starting to resemble my ex. But I digress.

I actually reached out to the owner of the pages above to get pricing for paid placements.

So for ~$500, you can launch a record with influencers. That’s actually a bargain!

At the end of the day, this rant isn’t about some asshole artist trying to fake their way into the industry. Artists are manufactured every single day. Olivia Rodrigo is a great mainstream example of this (Here’s every artist she’s been accused of stealing from.)

It’s about these influencers who amass a following and then monetize with no quality control and no regard for the industry whatsoever. They peddle mediocrity for just a few dollars. Artists buy followers & engagements in hopes of launching a career. I am a capitalist at heart and I support getting your bag, but for the love of god do it with some integrity. And please respect the art. There are so many talented artists who have been doing the work for decades. These imposters aren’t here for the art, they’re here for the limelight and the money. They are frauds.

I’m happy to rant about artists using ghost producers to make their hits too. There are so many DJ’s touring off of records they never produced simply because they had a strong social media presence and the bankroll to do this low integrity nonsense.

Honestly thinking about that topic makes me feel like I’m Losing It so I’ll save that rant for another day.