🔵 Music's dirty secrets pt. 2: the bot farms driving fake fan engagement

Fan burner accounts - now operating at scale

Last week Billboard published an amazing interview (and accompanying video) with US marketing agency Chaotic Good.

I certainly recommend watching the full video:

In the interview, the company’s founders talked up their means to drive attention and virality on behalf of their clients, who cover all manner of artists across the spectrum (full disclosure: including some the MU is also loosely connected to, client-wise).

In short, the company utilises networks of influencers and (I am concluding from the piece) fake fan accounts to drive a false viral trend response to songs, triggering the algorithm of platforms like TikTok to boost the story accordingly.

And to be clear, it sounds pretty effective: there are multiple instances of the more recent hot bands being clients of this company, suggesting this technique has played a solid hand in driving fame.

Here’s the thing: on one level, I can absolutely relate to the logic being applied here. Everyone is slave to social platforms now, and in turn, reach is controlled entirely by algorithms, themselves coded by the parent companies. In the face of that, attempting to game that fairly irritating bottleneck of control is almost laudable. We’re sticking it to the man!

In reality though, this simply echoes the sentiments I had in my article about fan burner accounts - namely that this all feels like a race to the bottom.

It is telling when you look at the comments on the YouTube video above. Here’s just some:

“Thank you to billboard for confirming that most of these viral songs are botted af”

”That’s so insane they literally just confirm the dead internet theory. None of it is real“

“they outing themselves as scammers and they believe what theyre doing is okay ... simulate this simulate that, recreating inorganically sooo fake...”

“Casually confessing to having a cellphone farm with no shame displays some whopping great ego.”

… you get the picture.

The article appears to have echoed out beyond the trade press too, with fans expressing disappointment that the bands they love have used these kind of tactics - perceived as underhand - in order to cut through.

eliza mclamb was one of the first to jump on this all, and since publishing her own article on this last week, she has updated it, noting that Chaotic Good has now changed the wording on its website and that various clients’ names are no longer on there.

Clearly then, the suggestion is that this has all been something of a PR backfire for the agency themselves, in that they essentially admitted to manipulating Joe Public in order to boost their clients’ profiles, in turn utterly undermining the credibility of those artists.

What a mess.

Again though, my (likely unpopular) take is that I get it. We have hit this point where it feels like nothing works, and so opportunities like this make for a highly tempting prospect.

Really, this is the 2026 version of other manipulation strategies in the past, be that buying audio streams on DSPs (2018 to the present), buying views on YouTube (2015 or thereabouts), or simply buying radio plays (1950s-1990s, arguably). There has always been some means to cheat, and a vast number of acts you know and love have - without necessarily realising it - been a part of it all.

In my last piece on the topic, it had been mentioned post-publishing that some of the tactics around fan burner accounts may be in breach of T&Cs of the platforms in question.

This time around, I made some enquiries and the sentiment back was that this is indeed a potential violation of terms of service. TikTok, for example, has this clause:

Deceptive Behavior & Fake Engagement: We don’t allow accounts that mislead or try to manipulate our platform, or the trade of services that artificially boost engagement or trick the recommendation system

I would argue that is precisely what has been going on; in this case, the agency founders literally boast about it in the clip:

“a big part of what we are doing is posting enough volume across enough accounts with enough impressions to try to simulate the idea that the song is trending or moving or whatever you want to call it.”

and

“There are these AI dancing babies that are very very popular. And so it’s insane. Yes it’s insane. And so we noticed that and then very quickly made hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of AI baby pages just for that specific purpose. But we are not like pressing a button, generating a thousand pieces of content, having AI uploaded through the API. We’re not opposed to it. It just hasn’t been that effective.”

Not good.

Really though, what this whole situation once again highlights is the grim relationship - ‘dependency’ would be more correct - the music industry has with social media. The pervading view is that this is the only way to reach fans. Or if it isn’t, it is certainly the quickest way, and as the music industry also loves to cheat or take shortcuts wherever possible (harsh, but true!), that’s the route likely to see the most engagement.

As the corrective measures taken post-interview by Chaotic Good might suggest, the unintentional outcome here has been to essentially damage - or at least bring into question - the credibility of artists the company has worked with.

Think about that for a moment.

Reputational damage is the toughest thing to shake. In art, being derided as fake or (the old classic) an ‘industry plant’ can see your credibility disappear at an alarming pace.

Is that worth gambling with?

I would argue not.

Yes, this represented a quick fix (provided you had the budget) to reach audiences, but I still feel that longer-term and more meaningful success comes via accepting that one has to deploy original, authentic ways to connect with fans.

Perhaps someone somewhere may accuse me of naiveté by airing that sentiment, but I’ll own that. Motive Unknown has been around for 15 years now, and has grown to a thriving company representing some of the best labels (and label groups) out there, not to mention working directly with various management companies and artists. So perhaps we are proof that working authentically ensures long-term results for our artists and labels, and by extension us as a company.

But enough self-aggrandising; really my point here is that as an industry we have to do better - and right now, our number one priority needs to be moving in directions that take us away from utter dependence on Big Tech and its platforms. The music industry was massive long before the internet arrived, so there are ways and means to kick that habit. We just need to look harder and work to effect change here. It won’t be easy, but to partake in these kind of gaming tactics merely accelerates a race to the bottom in which nobody wins. Change is essential.

Have a great day,

D.

Thanks to Emily, Charlotte, and the whole team at MU for both highlighting the article, sharing their thoughts and generally aiding this article being written. 🙏🏻

🎶 Listening to “The Secret Tapes of Dr Eich” by Paperclip People. As Spring lurches into view and the sky shows us that it can be blue again, I returned to this old classic and was once again surprised at just how well it holds up. Carl Craig always had a phenomenal talent for flipping the detroit techno sound, often by applying breaks and other sounds one wouldn’t normally expect to hear in the mix. On this album though, he takes lithe funk basslines and layers on his classic Planet E synths and more, with the final genius being the thunderous kick drums that deliver hefty low end into the mix whilst also sounding like they want to smash your front door down. Genius, pure and simple.

📺 Watching “Chaos in the car industry; £65bn written off, EV projects cancelled, ICE returning. Who survives?” on YouTube. I found this a fascinating outline of just how badly things are going for car manufacturers in the EV space. In short it seems fewer and fewer people are wanting an electric vehicle now that governments are pulling all the perks to encourage sales, and that’s having a catastrophic effect on big car brands.

🤖 Playing with Claude Team. This is the company version of Claude, which allows companies to set up skills and various access levels to empower staff to use the platform as a kind of virtual assistant within the business. It’s amazing. Further proof (IMO) that Anthropic are currently developing the best solutions for AI where companies are concerned. (Sidenote: somehow Anthropic really undersell what the benefits of Team are - trust me, it’s better than they pitch it to be).

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Gleefully accepting music recommendations!

I do really enjoy getting suggestions for either existing music or forthcoming releases to check out. So, if there’s something you think I might like, do feel free to get in touch. Always keen to hear the weird and wonderful things going on out there. And, with 6000+ subscribers, I’m happy to spread word on things I’m loving too.

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