The modern marketer needs to be multifaceted, with one foot planted in art and the other in science. The daily responsibilities of a marketer are not conveniently divided into quantitative and creative tasks and marketers that truly excel in today’s environment are those that can shift effortlessly between these two mindsets. Marketers need to become part artists and part scientist. Salesforce has put together the infographic below to help highlight the tremendous assets marketers can bring to the table if they are able to find a balance between the two.

Click on the image to see a larger version:

The author, Matt Wesson, is a Marketing Content Specialist at Pardot.

In fact, the reaction went beyond disagreement, with people in many quarters behaving as if someone offered up the music industry version of Jonathan Swift‘s “A Modest Proposal“.

The rest of the industry didn’t agree.

There was much weeping, gnashing of teeth and spewing of vitriol across Facebook, the Twitterverse and Blogosphere that a major music supervisor would dare suggest to rights holders they pay for the placement and promotion of music.

Certainly, on its surface, “Pay to Place” is a pretty bold (and to some, chilling) idea.

But is the premise even valid?

For the vast majority of cases (but not all), I would say no.

Let me explain.

1. Original scores, works and compositions for placement.

In the case where original music is scored for a TV show, film, video game or ad, it’s extremely unlikely that any creator or rights holder would pay the company that commissioned the work to use it. That just flies in the face of business logic and is not going to happen with any creator worth their salt – now or in the future.

2. The vast majority of traditional placement of existing works.

And, in the case of a traditional placement of an already existing work, the vast majority of shows/films/video games or ads just don’t have the reach or audience heft to even suggest that paying them would lead to any demonstrable, subsequent lift in sales in other revenue channels for the rights holder.

3. Evergreen artists and Hitmakers

Then, there are the artists/catalogues with massive followings that don’t need sync as a promotional tool. Artists like AC/DC, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bee Gees, Led Zeppelin, Chic, Lady Gaga, Bob Marley, Journey, Justin Bieber, Lil Wayne, Beyonce, Nirvana … none of these creators/rights holders need sync to promote their music. The bottom line – no one’s getting that shit for free – if they get it at all.

4. Sync is one of many components in a creative project…

Sync is not radio.

There’s a central creative element in the development of a TV show, film, video game or ad, of which the music is one of many considerations dictated by the director, producer or client as much or more so than by the music supervisor.

And this is really significant – if you’re directing/producing a $500K ad, a $1MM per episode TV show or a $25MM film, as a director, you’re not going to give a shit about some piddly placement payday from a label or publisher if the music doesn’t work creatively within the project. You’ll gladly pay for what you need.

So who’s left?

Well, there are a few people, and this is where the proposition makes sense.

From a basic business and promotional point of view, a label or publisher paying for placement, when the opportunity is right, is no different than Aston Martin providing free cars and paying some cash to EON Productions and Sony to get into the next Bond film.

There’s no logical reason why a label or publisher shouldn’t pay for placement if and only if the placement is within a property that has a proven ability to provide lift in terms of exposure, audience and sales – and it works on a creative level.

If you look at it in this context, paying for placement makes total sense. With that said, the properties that can actually deliver the audience, context and exposure to warrant getting paid from a label or publisher for placement are an extremely rarified breed.

And, they’ll probably end up doing deals with labels and publishers where there’s some sort of payment for placement at some point.

As for the rest, it’s all tempest in a teapot – the vast majority of music supervisors will keep paying for placement, labels, publishers and creators will still realize revenue from placement, and the sync firmament will remain in its place.

Attend the Sync Summit NY for more discussion, networking and deal making in music licensing – syncsummit.com.

These music-streaming sites are gaining traction as the way to listen to music as the services are often offered for free. No longer necessary to pay per song or pay for a full album, playlists and favorite songs are at your fingertips as long as the site has licensing rights to that artist.

As these music-streaming sites provide legally licensed music, the industry generally embraces this latest incarnation of disseminating music; however, with every change comes the question of how this impacts the music industry as well as its artists. The relatively meager amount of money earned by artists as royalties has drawn concern about this model.

How the streaming sites are able to offer music for free

Most music streaming services are able to offer the quantity and quality of music for free through advertising, paid subscriptions and keeping royalties low.

While basics and availability of the artist are the same, regardless of type of subscriber, free users may have their playback interrupted with sponsored messaging or banner ads appearing on the site. Premium options usually have fewer, or no, ads and greater versatility in usage – like being able to take your music with you – but it comes with a small fee.

Besides generating revenue from advertising and subscriptions, most music streaming sites keep the royalties very low. This allows them to offer a library of music from a diverse range of artists for free to consumers. But what does this mean for individual artists who may rely on royalties as an income?

State of royalties

Artists’ record royalties have traditionally been a percentage of a sale price. For example, for a 99-cent iTunes download, the majority of the sale goes to retailer or website, with a fraction of the purchase price trickling to the record company, producer, songwriter and performer, often netting the artist as little as 7 to 10 cents.

Image courtesy of kongsky / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

With the new method of streaming music; however, the already meager-seeming cents to the dollar reduces to even less. Music streaming sites, such as Spotify and Pandora, pay fractions of a cent to record companies and publishers. An even smaller fraction goes to the artists; however, these payments accrue for each time the song is listened to, unlike the one-time sale of a song on iTunes or Amazon.

Whether or not these micropayments add up to anything substantial remains to be seen. Big pop stars can net millions from their hit songs. Even at $0.06 cents a viewing, if a song is listened to 1.2 billion times, as was the case with Psy‘s viral video “Gangnam Style” on YouTube, the artist can earn $8 million dollars from the streaming site.

Unfortunately, the average artist may make as little as sixteen hundred dollars over a period of 6 months, despite having a song that played over a million times during that time period.

Is free music sustainable?

Would this ability to access songs and albums at no cost cut into the sales of CDs and downloads, or potentially replace this form of music ownership? For artists that rely on royalties for a living, this becomes a genuine concern as many artists are unable to survive on the current state of royalties.

Some experts in the industry believe that as more people jump on the music streaming bandwagon, royalty rates will climb as well. Music streaming sites that benefit artists are already growing to meet the demands of consumers, songwriters and performers. When we look more closely with every change in the music industry, when a new format was introduced, royalty rates started off low. As the new format became mainstream and demand increased, the royalties increased. Is that how the music industry will survive this latest change? Or, is this new system unsustainable, and other changes, like how royalties are structured have to happen.

The streaming music revolution may be making music more accessible to people worldwide, but keeping musicians in their bread and butter is important too. How the music industry will be whether this latest change in format remains to be seen.

Marcela De Vivo is a freelance writer with a background in online marketing. As a music lover she loves covering music industry issues, and examining the challenges faced by the industry in an increasingly digital, open source world.

Bands and musicians who want to communicate their shows across the USA can choose from a listing of 160+ cities to facilitate effective and transparent communication. Account creation procedures are omitted giving a quick and easy platform to view, reply or post events.

We Want Shows

The site design is very minimal, keeping the essentials right at the front welcoming the visitor with an interactive map of the USA and the listings of the states and cities that can avail this service. The tag line is – “Connect with other bands and trade shows“. The how it works explanation is in a comic book style 4 part drawing, detailing the steps – create, confirm email, wait and get replies. Posting or replying to a post involves filling a web form and a capcha, providing only your email address for confirmation.

A con that comes to mind is that while bots won’t be breaking the capchas so soon, the potential for such an open forum to be abused with redundant posts might be a hitch in the process of providing an easy user experience. However, that’s being a little too paranoid.

Looks like an app with a good potential, what do you think?

It’s hard to beat personally talking to each fan, and the new music industry affords us the incredible luxury of establishing direct connections with anyone. But, how do we connect with them in the first place, or even let them know of our existence? There’s a lot of music out there, with more flooding the market each day. People are generally quick to like new things, but there’s so many new things it’s easy to get overwhelmed.

Why not give them an extra reason to check out our music, and media a good reason to write about us? Musicians are the purveyors of cool, and the digital age allows for the building of experiences. Here’s an idea to bring the Cool to town, get media exposure, and talk to everyone about our music.

Niche Tours

Do you have lots of interests that don’t have anything to do with music? I do, and on a bad day, I beat myself up over this. “Oh Josh, you’ve gotta focus, man!” I tell myself. I have a lot less of those lately, though, as I’ve discovered a way to harness random interests and hobbies into service of my career goals. Borrowing from physics, I call it my “unification theory.”

Trains

Photo credit: Noah Urban/Mazuzu.com

To quote the kid from the ASDF movies on YouTube, I like trains. I mean, a lot. I’ve alarmed total strangers by breaking off a conversation, and almost running them over to get outside and watch a freight at a railroad crossing. (Hey, it was a stupid conversation, anyway.)

Recently, I decided to combine my love for the rails with music, and I toured by train on the Josh Urban Interactive Rail Tour. Touring by train was fun, and it added an unusual element that piqued people’s interest – it was an extra reason for them to listen to my music, and went beyond a traditional show or concert.

Talk

Another thing I enjoy is conversing with people. I’m glad of this genuine like of it, because it also seems to be very helpful in building a network of friends, fans, and industry contacts. I added the interactive element of the tour by stating the fact that “everyone has a story”, and invited everyone to join me in the telling of theirs. I “opened my social media stage” by creating the hashtag #JURT (Josh Urban Rail Tour), and asked people to post their stories, images, and words back to it, where it would be seen by my other friends and fans. It created an inclusive, democratic, and conversational atmosphere – everyone went on tour, and everyone was part of the experience! At the end of the project, I gathered all the Instagram photos tagged with the #JURT label, and created a collage of our view of the world during our tour.

Ask yourself – What am I passionate about? What motivates me? What inspires me? What do I do for fun when I’m not playing music? What do I really care about?

Realizing that your other interests can compliment your music instead of competing with it can be an exciting revelation, indeed! Use them to create an unique experience for your next tour.

Perhaps you’re concerned about global warming, and wish that alternative energy sources would catch on. Why not plan a tour that each concert is powered by wind or solar power?

Maybe sports are your thing. Book a tour of sports venues (it can be as informal as street performance or as high-profile as playing the national anthem before each game in each city.) Imagine the media possibilities, crossover appeal, etc. But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Excuses, Excuses

As I mentioned, I will talk to anyone and everyone – I just need a reason to strike up a conversation. Wearing an unusual pair of shoes, a goofy hat, or my personal favorite, my Superman shirt, has lead to great talks. It seems that music is similar. People are willing to listen, but again, they like reasons. I found it was much easier to talk to people about the project of the tour and asking them their story than just randomly saying “Hey, I have a new CD!” Of course, the conversation lead to that, but by embarking on an unusual project (a train/social media tour), yet with a universal theme (everyone has a story), it let me talk to anyone and everyone about what I was doing. And speaking of great people to talk to, this brings me to…

Media

The media’s job is to provide the public with stories that resonate. News of our latest album or concert might be rather insignificant for the average reader in another city. Again, our job is to make our music accessible and interesting for them (this lets us convert them into rabid fans!) Simply stating that a product is available, or that it’s good, won’t necessarily catch a random person’s eye, and in turn, a reporter might not be interested in covering it. So – we have to make it interesting. The niche tour ideas outlined above go beyond music, and create an interesting story. Imagine how a reporter’s eyes would light up upon reading this press release:

XYZ Band releases “Disco Stew – a tribute to the 1970′s”, tours by vintage car, wears only vintage clothes, and invites fans to participate in an afro and mullet contest before show at the classic car night. 50% of vinyl album sales will be donated to the local cancer center.”

Talk about a photo op! This is a “groovy” thing – and a reason for people to sit up, pay attention, and ultimately, become your fans. (Bonus points if you can create an experience that spotlights the audience members, and brings them center-stage, assuming they’re willing.)

Ask yourself when crafting your pitch to the media: Why would their readership care about this? They’re writing for people to read, so give them some unusual, interesting, and catchy content to write about.

Bring the cool to town, and create an experience for everyone!

Wrapping up

Niche tours are a fun, creative way to bring your music to new markets. I’m fascinated at the potential for crossover appeal, reaching people in markets that are seemingly unrelated. Humans are a colorful, eclectic species. Use that trait to your advantage, and harness all of your interests to create something truly unique. The entire tour can be an artistic statement, and a great business move, to boot! When it’s all over, and people are asking you how you came up with the idea, you can lean back, wink knowingly, and say “I like trains.”

An invitation

Speaking of tours, I’ll be embarking on another niche tour, and I’d like to invite you along. I’ll be traveling by train again on The Search for Good Tour – finding those who rock the world, and playing in children’s hospitals, cancer centers, veteran’s homes, street corners, and other places that don’t have a lot of music. There’s a lot of bad stuff on the news, so I’m out to find the good in the world. I’m inviting everyone to join me over social media, tagging their findings of people, sights, and sounds that rock the world back to the #JURT hashtag. I’m releasing an album in conjunction with the tour, inspired by the last one. Since “everyone goes on tour”, the album will be a download card in the form of a tour lanyard that says “All Access” on the front, with the code on the back. The tour kicks off May 24th, 2013. I hope you can join me in finding the good in the world! All aboard!

Photo credit: Noah Urban/Mazuzu.com

Josh Urban is a one-man music show from Washington, DC. Playing a mix of blues, rock, and pop, Urban engages his audiences from streets to stages with his stories, singing, guitar and energetic personality.

Use the hashtag #JURT, or connect at www.JoshUrban.com, Twitter @dontjoshme, Facebook.com/OfficialJosh, Instagram @JoshUrban, Google+ gplus.to/joshurban, Soundcloud.com/JoshUrban

No Marketing

Social media, branding, promotions, advertising — every amateur DJ who’s not marketing has an excuse. Don’t underestimate the importance of any of these. Whether you’re unsure of where to start or think you don’t have the time, it’s crucial to learn the basics and make time for marketing.

Take an online course. It’s not curing a disease — it’s mostly common sense. Schools like Pinnacle College, California offer programs in audio engineering that also provide courses in self-promotion and marketing. Read entertainment and marketing news and commit to so many hours each week for networking.

A Dead Website

Creating a URL and having a website made purely to host an online space for your portfolio isn’t enough anymore. If you rarely update your website, it will easily get lost among the millions of other pages that regularly update, promote, link and use SEO. To keep your site in a relative playing field, regularly produce unique content, practice on-page SEO and install a news feed widget that connects to your Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, SoundCloud or other social media sites. A blog is a terrific way regularly to post new content.

When you update your site, promote it via social media and email lists. By generating fresh, unique content regularly, you’ll eventually create an audience of subscribers. Remember that people want to read content that’s captivating and in some way informative or beneficial to them.

TMI

Social media strategies

If you’re already on popular social media sites, be aware that there’s a happy medium between nothing and overkill in self-promotion. When it comes to social media, follow the saying “If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything.” Social media are tools to reinforce your personal brand and essentially promote and advertise yourself and the music you play. The things you say and the way you say them will give you a reputation. By-the-hour tweets are annoying. Cut back on personal conversations and tweets about your broken nail or the hot chick at the club. Approach your social media use with balanced strategy.

Using Email

Some will argue that email marketing is dead, but it does hold value. The secret to sending emails that provide results is creating valuable segmented lists. DJs can designate fans from venues, media outlets and publicists. Use email to send press releases about new music, events and other news. Offer an incentive to joining the mailing list and create a call-to-action on your website. “For exclusive news, free downloads and new music: join my mailing list!”

When you’re out networking it doesn’t hurt to ask a person you exchange business cards with if you can add them to your mailing list. Don’t add people to lists without asking them first. Service providers like Salesforce and MailChimp are affordable and easy tools for organizing contacts and creating email templates.

Making Your Music Hard to Find

Make your music easy to find, play, download and buy. It’s as easy as that. Sites like SoundCloud are user friendly. Don’t bury your music in the website; have it available on the homepage.

Photo by Flickr user Rosaura Ochoa

A former music teacher and jazz composer, Steve Torres is thrilled that freelance writing enables him to be exposed to new forms of music, theatre and art.

Sound familiar? To some of you out there, it will. Certainly, it’s an experience that I went through when I started out playing music, and it’s one that frustrated me for a long time. Having put all that leg work in, only to put your stuff out there to the seeming indifference of the world is pretty disheartening. For many bands, that initial negative experience is enough to make them pack it in altogether, before they’ve even really started. Yet, as I’ve come to realize in recent years, the crushing sting of apparent disinterest can be avoided through a simple rule. In the words of Mr. James Brown, you need to stay on the scene (whether or not you do it like a sex machine is entirely up to you).

What I mean by this is that you have to get out there and actually start engaging and interacting with your local music scene if you want to get anything out of it. The rewards are there for those who are willing to get involved. And, if you’re stumped as to how exactly you get involved with your local scene, here are three suggestions to get you started.

1. Leave Your House And Go To A Gig

Image credit: boldorak2208 on Flickr

That one seems pretty obvious, but I’m still baffled by the number of musicians out there who don’t do it. Whether they’re introverts who would rather stay home than go to a show or just not that impressed with the local music on offer, a large number of would-be rock stars will try to get a gig at a venue without having actually been there. My advice, if there is a venue that you think you might be interested in playing, is to go there a few times so that you can see what that venue is really like. Get a feeling for the sort of music that gets played, the kind of clientele who hangs out there and the atmosphere of the place. By knowing the venues in your scene that are best for you to play at, you do away with the need for sending out blanket e-mails. Instead, you can point out to the appropriate promoters the specific reasons why your band would be a good addition to one of their gig nights. And, for a promoter who is inundated with blanket emails from various bands, that level of specificity might be enough to get you the gig. Of course, you might also help your chances of getting in with a promoter by…

2. Talking To Promoters When You’re At Gigs

Image credit: fabiolug on Flickr

Or talking to anyone who is involved with the local scene, for that matter. I mentioned in a blog article that I wrote last year about the importance of networking when you’re playing a gig. But making the right contacts is something that you can start doing, even before you take to the stage. If you’re at a gig that you’re enjoying then find the promoter and tell them so. Promoters are never hard people to spot. If they’re doing their job properly, then you’ll see them liaising between the bands on the bill, the sound guy and the people on the doors, making sure that everything is running smoothly. Keep an eye on them, and when you see that they’ve got a quiet moment, introduce yourself and strike up a conversation.

And when I say conversation, I mean conversation. This isn’t an opportunity for you to hard sell your band to them. That comes later. What you’re doing here is building up a rapport with this person so that, when it comes to you asking them for a gig somewhere down the line, they already know who you are. When that promoter is trawling through the aforementioned reams of unsolicited e-mails from bands, your familiarity to them is going to pay off in dividends. And, as I mentioned earlier, this doesn’t just apply to promoters. Photographers, bloggers and dedicated scene followers are all good people to know on your quest to musical success, and they’re all much easier to find if you’re getting out there and regularly going to shows.

3. Make Friends With Other Bands

Image credit: PUNKassPHOTOS.com on Flickr

For some reason, there is an attitude that pervades in many of the music scenes that I’ve been involved with, that bands should be in constant competition with one another. Sure, a bit of healthy competition never hurt anyone, but the best examples of thriving music scenes that I’ve come across are built on a sense of community and co-operation. And that sense of community tends to be built, as much as anything, by bands working together. So get to know some of the other groups in your scene, particularly those who you share some traits and influences with. As with promoters, you shouldn’t be afraid to approach them at gigs, introduce who you are, and congratulate them on a job well done. See if you can swap demos with them and show that you are interested in their music. Maybe even get on the internet and recommend their music to your friends and fans. By building good relations with other bands, you put yourself in a much stronger position when it comes to getting gigs. There have been several occasions in the past where my band has gotten a gig because we were recommended to a promoter by a friend’s band, or where we have been able to suggest line-ups to promoters based on bands that we know. Those scenarios only came about because we’d introduced ourselves to those bands in the first place.

Alec Plowman is writing a PhD thesis on liveness in rock music at the University of East Anglia. He is also a freelance media journalist, musician, and collector of Star Wars memorabilia. Check out his blog at www.alecplowman.com.

It Is Essential!!!

Now that we’re all on the same wave length, let’s move on. :)

While promoting your music is important and should be done as much as possible, it’s still important to remember that not all promotion will benefit you evenly. Some will get you bigger results then others, and some may actually hinder your music career. That’s right; Do the wrong kind of promotion, and you could end up doing more harm then good.

With that in mind, today I’m going to share with you three marketing related mistakes that you should avoid at all costs. If you find this guide useful, please share it with your friends and fellow musicians so they too can avoid these common pitfalls.

1. Making The Promotions All About You

Image credit: ronulicny on Tumblr

One of the most common mistakes I’ve seen is people making any promotions all about them. “Now wait a minute…” I hear a load of you thinking, “… if I’m promoting MY, music shouldn’t it be all about me?”

Well, yes and no.

You see, while the final outcome of your promotions should be raising awareness and sales of your music, adopting a ‘me me me’ attitude usually has the opposite effect.

As with anything, people generally only give time to people and things that benefit their lives. They wouldn’t buy a book on money making to make the author more money for example, they’d buy it so they benefit from the knowledge inside. The author making money is just a by product, and not something that factors a lot into the buying process for most people.

Now, in the same way someone would buy a book on making money in order to learn how to increase their income, the only way they’d buy (Or listen to) your music is if it’d benefit them in some way. Therefore, it’s your job to convince them your music will benefit them.

So leave the “Buy my song as I’m really good” lines, and instead show people how your music can benefit them. I’m sure you’ll see an instant change in the way people respond to you.

2. Promoting Your Music To The Wrong Target Audience

Image credit: {CP} on Tumblr

The next common mistake I see musicians making is promoting their music to the wrong audience. Yes the internet has made it easier to connect with a load of diverse people all around the world, but that doesn’t mean that you should!

Just because 99.99% of the world likes music of some sort*, it doesn’t mean they’ll all be interested in you (*Disclaimer: Funnily enough, I don’t know the exact number of people in the world that like music). Try and get everyone to listen to your songs, and I guarantee you’ll come up against more resistance and rejection then you ever thought possible!

So who should you be targeting instead? Simple, people that have a proven interest in the type of music you make! Find where lovers of your genre hang out, and reach them there. This is the best way to get the most out of your efforts, and will have you reaching a much more open and receptive audience.

3. Not Promoting Enough (Thinking The Marketing Stops)

Image credit: cherrybam on Tumblr

Ok, the final mistake: Thinking the promotion ends!!

Let me get this out there now: The promotion never ends! I don’t care if you’re in the middle of recording your second album or you’re at the song writing stage; As long as you’ve got any material out there, you still need to promote in some form or other!

You may think you wrote a song a while ago so it’s not fresh anymore and shouldn’t be pushed. In most cases, this couldn’t be further from the truth. As long as that song is still good, there is still room for you to milk it for what it’s worth. After all, I’m sure not every person who’s into your genre has heard that song right? If not, you should find them and get them to listen.

Now I’m not saying you should spend years promoting one single or album. What I am saying though, is there should never be more then five days of the week when you don’t do any type of promotion. Whether it’s reaching out to a big YouTube channel to see if they’ll cover you, doing a local gig, or communicating with fans on Facebook.

It’s already hard enough to find all the time needed for promotion, so use all the time you can to get yourself out there. If you’ve got a high level of talent but you’re not as known as you want to be, it’s because you haven’t promoted yourself in the right ways enough.

Music Marketing Mistakes – Conclusion

So there you have it, three big music marketing mistakes you need to avoid. Are there any others you can think of? If so, leave them in the comments section below and we can talk.

Want to know a bit about me? No problem. :)

My name is Shaun Letang, and I’m the owner of advice websites Music Industry How To and Music Marketing World. I also created and run one of the top online music schools; the IMA Music Business Academy. Check out my Facebook page by searching ‘Independent Music Advice’ on FB for daily discussion and guides. I’ll see you there!

Dotted Music thanks Terry Matthew from 5 Magazine for kindly allowing us to repost this article disrobing musicians who buy fake followers on social networks.

Social media has taken the chase for the fumes of fame to a whole new level of bullshit. After washing through the commercial EDM scene (artists buying Facebook fans was exposed by several outfits last summer), faking your popularity for (presumed) profit is now firmly ensconsced in the underground House Music scene.

This is the story of what one of dance music’s fake hit tracks looks like, how much it costs, and why an artist in the tiny community of underground House Music would be willing to juice their numbers in the first place (spoiler: it’s money).

‘Boringly Ordinary’

I’d caught him red-handed committing the worst sin one can be guilty of in the underground: Louie was faking it.

In early January, I received an email from the head of a digital label. In adorably broken English, “Louie” (or so we’ll call him, for reasons that will become apparent) asked me how he could submit promos for review by 5 Magazine.

I directed him to our music submission guidelines. We get somewhere between five and six billion promos a month. Nothing about this encounter was extraordinary.

A few hours later, I received his first promo. We didn’t review it. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, disposable: a bland, mediocre Deep House track. These things are a dime a dozen these days – again, everything about this encounter was boringly ordinary.

But I noticed something strange when I Googled up the track name. And I bet you’ve noticed this too. Hitting the label’s SoundCloud page, I found that this barely average track – remarkable only in being utterly unremarkable – had somehow gotten more than 37,000 plays on SoundCloud in less than a week. Ignoring the poor quality of the track, this is a staggering number for someone of little reputation. Most of his other tracks had significantly fewer than 1,000 plays.

Note the number of playbacks

Even stranger, there were only 117 comments – a very low number for a track with so many plays.

Stranger still, most of the comments – insipid and stupid even by social media standards – came from people who do not appear to exist.

You’ve seen this before: a track with acclaim far beyond any apparent worth. You’ve followed a link to a stream and thought, “How is this even possible? Am I missing something? Did I jump the gun? How can so many people like something so ordinary?”

Louie, I believed, was purchasing plays, to gin up some coverage and buy his way into overnight success. He’s not alone. Desperate to make an impression in an environment in which hundreds of digital EPs are released every week, labels are increasingly turning toward any method available to make themselves heard above the racket – even the skeezy, slimey, spammy world of buying plays and comments.

I’m not a naif about such things – I’ve watched several artists (and one artist’s significant other) benefit from massive but temporary spikes in their Twitter and Facebook followers within a very compressed time period. “Buying” the appearance of popularity has become something of a low-key epidemic in dance music, like the mysterious appearance and equally sudden disappearance of Uggs and the word “Hella” from the American vocabulary.

But (and here’s where I am naive), I didn’t think this would extend beyond the reaches of EDM madness into the underground. Nor did I have any idea what a “fake” hit song would look like. Now I do.

This Is What A Fake Dance Hit Looks Like

Looking through the tabs of the 30k+ play track, the first thing I noticed was the total anonymity of the people who had favorited it. They have made-up names and stolen pictures, but they rarely match up. These are what SoundCloud bots look like:

Don’t they look suspicious?

The usernames and “real names” don’t make sense, but on the surface they seem so ordinary that you wouldn’t notice anything amiss if you were casually skimming down a list of them. “Annie French” has a username of “Max-Sherrill”. “Bruce-Horne” is “Tracy Lane”. A pyromaniac named “Lillian” is better known as “Bernard Harper” to her friends. There are literally thousands of these. And they all like exactly the same tracks (none of the “likes” in the picture are for the track Louie sent me, but I don’t feel much need to go out of my way to protect them than with more than a very slight blur):

Bots liking the same tracks

Most of the comments are hilariously banal, but a few do stand out. You have to wonder what Louie thinks, knowing that comments like “YOU ARE A GOD” come from imaginary fans he’s paid for:

YOU ARE GOD

Most of them are like this. (Louie deleted this track after I contacted him about this story, so the comments are all gone; all of these were preserved via screenshots. He also renamed his account.)

Fake Plays, Real Dollars

It’s pretty obvious what Louie was doing: he’d bought fake plays and fake followers. But why would someone do this? After leafing through hundreds of followers and compiling these screenshots, I contacted Louie by email with my evidence.

His first reply consisted of a sheaf of screenshots of his own – his tracks prominently displayed on the front page of Beatport, Traxsource and other sites, along with charts and reviews. It seemed irrelevant to me at the time – but pay attention. Louie’s scrapbook of press clippings is more relevant than you know.

After reiterating my questions, I was surprised when Louie brazenly admitted that everything implied above is, in fact, true. He is paying for plays. His fans are imaginary. Sadly, he is not a god.

You have noticed that I’m not revealing Louie’s real name. I’m fairly certain you’ve never heard of him. I’m hopeful, based upon listening to his music, that you never will. In exchange for omitting all reference to his name and label from this story, he agreed to talk in detail about his strategy of gaming SoundCloud, and then manipulating others – digital stores, DJs, even simple fans – with his fake popularity.

Don’t misunderstand me: the temptation to “name and shame” was strong. An early draft of this story (seen by my partner and a few other people) excoriated the label and ripped its fame-hungry owner “Louie” to pieces. I’d caught him red-handed committing the worst sin one can be guilty of in the underground: Louie was faking it.

But when every early reader’s response was, “Wait, who is this guy again?” – well, that tells you something. I don’t know if the story’s “bigger” than a single SoundCloud Superstar or a Beatport One Week Wonder named Louie. But the story is at least different, and with Louie’s cooperation, I was able to affix hard numbers to what this kind of ephemeral (but, he would argue, very effective) fake popularity will cost.

This is “Louie’s” actual level of popularity – tracks that were put up months before he began gaming the system.

This Is What A Fake Dance Hit Costs

Louie told me that he artificially generated “20,000 plays” (I believe it was more) by paying for a service which he identifies as Cloud-Dominator. This gives him his alloted number of fake plays and “automatic follow/unfollow” from the bots, thereby inflating his number of followers.

Louie paid $45 for those 20,000 plays; for the comments (purchased separately to make the entire thing look legit to the un-jaundiced eye), Louie paid €40, which is approximately $53.

This puts the price of SoundCloud Deep House dominance at a scant $100 per track.

But why? I mean, I’m sure that’s impressive to his mom, but who really cares about Louie and 30,000 fake plays of a track that even real people that listen to it, like me, will immediately forget about? Kristina Weise from SoundCloud told me by email that the company believes that “Illegitimately boosting one’s follower numbers offers no long-term benefits.”

But to hear Louie tell it: it does.

If you are interested in the story, read the rest of it at 5 Magazine’s website.

Such things have traditionally been misunderstood by listeners, and it’s interesting that even people working in the music business forget what worries musicians sometimes.

This was a main topic in the Dotted Music’s discussion with Reimut Van Bonn, a former representative of VUT (German Association Of Independent Music Companies) and an indie musician himself. Watch the video, a part of the Stand Above The Noise series, below:

00:00:54 – Keeping the rights to your music.
00:01:46 – Social media: the good and the bad.
00:03:40 – The way music is discovered these days.
00:04:56 – A listener doesn’t understand how music world works.
00:05:39 – The challenges of making a professional music career.
00:08:11 – Two things to succeed in music.
00:10:30 – The music industry is changing.

Do these points sound familiar, or surprising? Let us know in the comments!