A Blacklisted Artist Responds To Hype Machine
Last week music blog Hype Machine blacklisted 40 artists that it said had been trying to manipulate its rankings. Neil Cartwright of marketer Media Junction, who works with Master Shortie, one of the named artists, shared their side of the controversy:
There is delicious irony in this story – Hype Machine, in an effort to protect their integrity, have revealed a list of 40 artists who they claim were manipulating their charts by creating multiple profiles and favouriting themselves. In other words, hyping their position in the 'Most Popular' chart.
One of the artists, Master Shortie, happens to be one of the artists we work with. I'm going to declare now, it wasn't us or Master Shortie – frankly, we have better things to do in our lives than create 50 fake profiles.The point is, what is the difference between hype & promotion, when is it marketing or manipulation and where is the balance?
For many years labels, fans and artists have collaborated in forming online street teams – dedicated fans who will promote the artist via link building, posting, recommending and favouriting. It seems that in many of these cases, some fans took the time to create multiple profiles on Hype Machine to boost the rankings.No-one likes to be manipulated and since Hype Machine is Anthony's website he can do whatever he likes. If he believes this is against the spirit of the site, that's his call. But by the reaction of some people (here, here), you would think the artists had defrauded a little old lady of her life savings.
The web is full of opportunity for hype/promotion/marketing. Perhaps this crossed the line? Or, what if we had somehow got bloggers to talk about the artists, which are then featured on Hype Machine. Because it's a step removed is this OK? Or is it because some blogs questioned Hype Machine's integrity he reacted badly.
The bad taste & anger I feel is simply because Anthony has automatically punished the artists rather than digging deeper and banning the IP addresses or sending a warning first. Why not go the whole hog and ban any artist who employ's people to promote, market or talk about them?
Neil Cartwright, Media Junction
http://millionmedia.wordpress.com
Amen! Integrity is something you need to design into your system, not expect real world users to have. Nobody who takes security remotely seriously would build a system that relies on the good behavior of the general public.
Blaming others for your own inept laziness…never a good look.
@Justin, I second that. This is becoming a fiasco.
Yea this is pretty funny. If we were to reprimand artists for engaging in so-called “unethical” marketing techniques, i’d say roughly 85% of the household names would be guilty.
There’s no such thing as ethical promotion when it comes to commercial business.
If I had an artist accused of gaming the system and we had absolutely nothing to do with it, I’d do my own research, find out who was behind it, and then publicize the situation. If I found that it had been overzealous fans, I’d announce that and say we appreciate their support, but that it had been misguided.
Let’s just say that if I were an artist, I’d take this opportunity to tell our story.
On the other hand, if we had been responsible and had been outed, I’d probably either keep my mouth shut or apologize.
I think it is always better to become popular in a grassroots fashion than to game the system, so those artists who rise to the top without the manipulation deserve special recognition.
Who really gives a shit?
Yeah, it really surprised me to see the name of an act I used to work with pop up on that list. In an effort to save them embarrassment I won’t mention their name. Why? Because I’m pretty sure the band doesn’t even know what the internet is, let alone have the wherewithal to “game” the system.
Amen to that…..when we did research on Ads and banners for top artists,you would not believe the huge names turning up on internet porn sites….(Bey once was a huge example)
its actually amusing to really see this happen.
so i agree with:
“There’s is no such thing as ethical promotion when it comes to commercial business. ”
Build a system that works….and connect with people better is all I have to say…
With a name like “Hype Machine,” what did they expect??? They’re in the business of promotions/hype. Is this really any different than having 10 fans each call a radio station 10 times a day requesting a particular song? This type of hype has been going on forever. There’s no new news here… (yawn)
FYI, the bands were not “blacklisted” – we listed acts that were being favorited by groups of accounts that were made in a spam-like fashion and then listed the new measures we will be taking to prevent this in the future.
We also noted in the post that we have no way of knowing how or who created these accounts, but people should still know that this has occurred.
What we do know is that people don’t just sit around making dozens and sometimes hundreds of accounts on the Hype Machine for no reason.
This raises some interesting questions – some that I hadn’t necessarily questioned when the first article came out about the artists gaming the system. However, I think this story vs. ‘typical’ promotion is more than a matter of being “one step removed”. We are talking about the difference between self-promotion and authentic hype. Of course you will promote your own work. It is both natural and necessary. But it also lacks authenticity because of its inherent bias. That’s why repeatedly saying “listen to my music, it is great” really doesn’t mean much. Yet one trusted third-party saying “hey, this is great” has meaning.
In this case, Hype Machine’s purpose is to measure third-party (presumably the ‘authentic’) hype. So gaming the system here really does destroy the purpose-idea of Hype Machine, and, in my opinion, warranted the action that Anthony took.
I would have to agree with Andrew on this one. Authentic ‘hype’ is really just a measurement of the intensity of the emotions that fans (and casual listeners) feel towards an artist’s music (positive emotions!). I think the issue at hand can be further expanded-upon as: self-promotion vs paid-hype (marketing) vs natural, fan-derived hype.
I contend that this problem is not new, and in fact has existed throughout the entirety of the music industry—from the payola, to the indirect bribery that still occurs between the labels and what’s left of terrestrial radio (Billboard Charts…could they be any less accurate?), and now in the new social media industry via online chart manipulation. What it comes down to, at least in my opinion, is the relationship between money and an artist’s probability of achieving ‘success.’ I don’t think that an artist’s privileges—connections, access to large funds and/or a large marketing team—should determine how many fans that artist gains, and, consequently, how much income the artist earns. Most of those advantageous factors are dependent upon being in the right place at the right time, or being born into a wealthy family, etc. Luck-based privilege vs merit and hard work. Arbitrary privilege is the reason we have Britney Spears, the Jonas Brothers (or at least why they have such a dispropotionately large fan-base when compared to the quality of their music).
If instead artists’ average incomes were proportional to the effort & TIME that the artists puts into their songwriting/practice, artists would have a stronger incentive to advance their musical skills, and consequently, we, as consumers, would have much better music presented to us at the top of ‘the charts’. Aka, a true meritocracy.
On the other side of the equation, however, is the argument that artists shouldn’t NEED to deal with the business (marketing), as they should invest all of their time writing music—which, as a part-time songwriter myself, I think is a valid argument. But, as the times have changed, being web 2.0 savvy is just important as artistic merit if one wishes to make a living on creativity. So we have a bit of a catch-22 here, but I, for one, think that it can be solved.
Thoughts? Ideas?
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