Big in Vietnam?

Hooning about in the basement of the music industry, as most bands do at the beginning, rarely awards you recognition, unless you’re organised, well funded and of course good enough to be seen and heard above the masses. This presents a temptation for many to buy likes on Facebook for instance. I myself tried this some years ago whilst doing my dissertation on feedback (the verbal/written kind) in music, as an experiment. Within a few days of paying Facebook I found myself with over 100 new followers on my Facebook page! Brilliant I thought, here we go, fame at last!! Hang on though, why are they all young Mexican women? The answer is old news, as it’s been going on for years. I’d paid for click farm likes, empty likes that people are paid to do which very rarely result in real fans.

Well without my involvement this time , its sort of happened again!

I had been having a dry week for plays on Spotify and the money for marketing has dried up for the time being, so on opening my Spotify for Artists page I am shocked to see 997 plays not the 0 plays I had been resigned to for the last few days? What’s going on, have we began to get noticed? Is this the beginning of fame and fortune?

Well no of course, but still,1000 plays of our track scream in a few hours that’s a good thing right? Well yes on the surface, Scream now shows over a thousand plays to anyone who looks at the song stats, allowing some micro bragging rights from me, I mean we’ve just earned approximately £2.67 here!!! All our worries….are firmly and calmly staring us in the face, unmoving and constant, like a massive Buddha strapped to your face, whom you owe A fair bit of money to and is both reassuring and threatening at the same time.

So what is going on? Well I have been hawking our musical delights to people on Facebook who literally ask for you to do so, crucially with no cost involved. Some of these garner a few listens and maybe a fan or two grateful received. For most however, nothing seems to come of it and it becomes clear that they are in an adjacent boat to musicians so to speak, in so far as they are also shouting into the void! So these playlisters, internet radio stations, music influencers and so on are prone to the same numbers game temptations as us musicians and they may just buy “listeners” to get their numbers up.

And that is what has happened here almost certainly, the playlist on Spotify we have been placed (most gratefully I might add) has bought listeners via some kind of international click farms.

So this time it’s not Facebook likes, it’s Spotify plays, it’s not Mexico, it’s Vietnam and this is the odd bit, it’s not young Mexican ladies, it’s 60+ Vietnamese women!!! You know maybe we speak to the older ladies in Vietnam, I mean it’s possible?But I know really it’s not, because we have not had one more follower from over a thousand plays. Balls 😦

Still, look we have 1000 monthly listeners looooook!!! Just remember not to look next month as it plummets back down to next to nothing, and unless of course any other playlisters need some Cosmic thunder pop sludge on their playlist’s, they wish to buy listeners for? Anyone? Hallo? Hallooooooooooooo……..

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