Has taste in music been hijacked?

{"text":[[{"start":5.35,"text":"In March, two of the co-founders of digital marketing agency Chaotic Good sat down for a live podcast recording with the music trade publication Billboard to discuss their company’s strategies for making songs go viral. Their approach, they explained, is designed to manipulate social media algorithms using thousands of fake accounts. They specialise in “trend simulation” — creating hundreds of posts, with tracks by their clients playing in the background, to manufacture the feeling that a song is everywhere. "}],[{"start":33.5,"text":"This is also known as paid-for “user-generated content”, or UGC, and is increasingly common in today’s online media. “We can drive impressions on anything,” one of the co-founders explains in the podcast. “At this point, we know how to go viral.” Chaotic Good also runs what it calls “narrative campaigns”, where it purports to shape public sentiment around an artist by saturating algorithmic feeds and flooding comment sections with positive reactions. An artist playing on Saturday Night Live, for example, might hire the company to ensure that when clips from the performance are shared online, there will be hundreds of positive comments posted by Chaotic Good, perhaps from the large collection of phones in their office."}],[{"start":77.95,"text":"In a meta turn of events, this interview about virality has now gone viral after the musician Eliza McLamb wrote a newsletter drawing attention to Chaotic Good’s work for the Gen Z rock band Geese, whose popularity seemed to rise suddenly in the past year. According to Chaotic Good, it was hired to promote both performance footage and interview clips for the band. McLamb’s story was subsequently picked up by Wired, and much debate ensued. Some fans were shocked to learn that such tactics have been used not just to pump the popularity of major label Top 40 acts such as Alex Warren and Benson Boone, but also artists with deeper ties to independent culture. Others have expressed concern over the extent to which their music tastes are being shaped by algorithmic manipulation. "}],[{"start":124.30000000000001,"text":"To be clear, when founders of marketing companies appear in the trade press touting the supernatural powers of their digital strategies, they are also doing a form of aggressive advertising — this time for their own services — to convince major labels and management companies to continue hiring their firms. We should not take their claims at face value, but nor should we take lightly the approach to marketing that they are attempting to normalise. Because what it represents is a disturbing threat to media integrity."}],[{"start":153.3,"text":"Undisclosed advertising is among the larger issues here. Put simply, advertisements should always be labelled, in whatever form they take. It is an open secret in the music industry that labels have invested, for years, in the practice of “song seeding” on platforms such as TikTok — tasking their own staff with running accounts like the ones described above, attempting to turn song clips into trending audio and then monetised streams. Stories have long circulated about labels running fake meme pages, too — all with no clear indication that the pages are run by the labels.  "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":189.8,"text":"There is also the more general issue of “paid editorial” on social media, wherein high-profile influencers receive compensation to post about certain artists without labelling those posts as sponsored. On streaming services, there are practices such as Spotify’s controversial Discovery Mode, where rights-holders are encouraged to accept a royalty reduction in exchange for promotion on one of the streamer’s algorithmic playlists. This means that when a user is recommended a track by an algorithmic feed like Daily Mix, Radio, or Autoplay, it might be due to an ongoing commercial deal that is unknown to the listener."}],[{"start":226.05,"text":"It’s easy to draw lines between undisclosed advertising online today and deceptive marketing practices of past media eras. Major labels and mass media companies have long attempted to engineer public perception and shape user tastes. Radio payola, for example, was a strategy where labels would pay broadcasters for airplay — a practice that was eventually largely outlawed. But the similarities to older forms of manipulation do not make these practices any less pernicious. In fact, that these new types of promotion are being candidly presented as business-as-usual should be a cause for concern. "}],[{"start":263.35,"text":"Artists are now sold the idea that paying for algorithmic boosting is just part of marketing — or even empowering, through the old myth that digital platforms have democratised access to the music market. These narratives help platforms avoid regulation and having to take responsibility for the types of works that circulate, or the effects on artists’ livelihoods. There is also a ripple effect on the music: algorithmic promotion most benefits artists whose work is optimised towards platform logic — smoothed-out and streaming-friendly — and visibility is awarded to those with the biggest budgets. "}],[{"start":298.5,"text":"These are some of the consequences of a consolidated media landscape where users passively consume content through algorithmic feeds, rather than actively and critically seeking information and recommendations. Another is the way it primes audiences to be less aware when they are fed AI-generated content. Several tens of thousands of AI-generated tracks are now delivered to streaming services every day, and a survey last year, commissioned by music platform Deezer, showed that 97 per cent of listeners cannot identify them."}],[{"start":330.65,"text":"Chaotic Good says its reliance on AI-generated videos is low, but another company, Floodify, is more bullish about its embrace of AI, saying that it “helps artists grow by seeding their music across hundreds of AI-generated influencer videos”. One of its core products is “Floodify Burn”, which claims to “deploy content across 45,000+ TikTok and Instagram accounts — AI influencers, meme pages, and niche fan networks to go viral at scale”. The company says it is “trusted by the largest enterprises in the world”, including all of the major record labels: Sony, Warner, Universal, Empire, Interscope, Columbia and Capitol are all listed on its website. "}],[{"start":374.25,"text":"Regulatory interventions are necessary: ones that prevent platforms from allowing these floods of artificial content and the subsequent manipulated influence they exert — or at the very least ensure it is labelled. The requirements that paid-for postings are clearly marked need to be enforced online. This could be carried out under existing laws that are there to discourage deceptive advertising practices, and require endorsements to reflect honest opinions. "}],[{"start":399.6,"text":"We can take this as a chance to remember that overreliance on corporate media and algorithmic feeds broadly makes culture more vulnerable to these sorts of distortions. A robust and thriving independent media landscape — one where advertisements are clearly labelled — could help us all claim back some agency in our listening."}],[{"start":419.75,"text":"Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram, Bluesky and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morn"}],[{"start":435.35,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1777616801_2549.mp3"}